Living la vida lowcarb

Well, it was some ungodly hour in the dark morning of the 18th when I stepped on the scale and decided to go back on the low-carb lifestyle, which I never should have ditched to begin with but that's another story.

It's going fine so far. Since I'm dropping carbs and I'm significantly overweight the initial period is pretty easy for the loss. So far it hasn't really been any problem for me. The food is great, if you know what you're doing and know the range and in some cases, have certain ingredients that can vastly improve your food life.

(Edited to add: the guy who used the phrase of this title first is a real success story in changing a life. His blog is here: http://livinlavidalocarb.blogspot.com/)

I just finished reading this exercise book called "slow burn" and I'm going to take up that exercise plan as soon as the eclipse period has fully passed (superstitious, I don't want to start anything during an eclipse, an astrology no-no).

My viewing and meditating have been minimal recently but my dreams have been totally amped into the stratosphere, I don't know what's going on inside but I'm "sitting in on the lives" of many and it's reaaaaaalllly interesting.

I haven't been reading email lists, forums, etc. since about the same time I went back on LC. It's kinda nice to be honest. It eats a lot of my time which is already so profoundly underavailable.

I have more physical energy than I normally do, lately, from dropping a lot of carb-related retained water from my body and the gradual shift into K. That's pretty nice! I'm trying to think of what to do with all my time tomorrow, time I would normally spend online that I'd like to spend actually DOing something.

Quote of the Day

I have studied many philosophers and many cats.
The wisdom of cats is infinitely superior.
~ Hippolyte Taine

Quote of the Day

"We are what we repeatedly do.
Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit."
- Aristotle

Time-Space-Love-Money

I have a relationship with time. Not a good one.

I long ago came to the conclusion that time is space is money is love. I mean in a rather metaphysical, create your own reality way.

They are a measured-quantity. They are critical to how we perceive ourselves, our world, and how well we get along in it. And the four of them are almost never found in abundance at the same point-of-now. It's almost like they are the four cardinal directions of self-allowance, in a Sethian sense.

I've had every one of them individually. Often two. Rarely, three. Never all four for more than ten minutes.

I once theorized that any problem in a person's life was an internal geometry that was interacting with another given area of the person's experience, but that the internal part could manifest in any/every situation for that person. To compare it to psychology, as that might make it clearer, you could say that a person who has a problem with authority (as an example) is going to manifest that in many ways. In career, in parenting, in relationships, in finance, and they will possibly also manifest others who have the same issue around them too. So when the person comments on an 'issue' with their wife, you may understand that the dynamic driving that, is probably also causing them 'issues' in their job, with their taxes, with their social groups, etc. etc.

By this same kind of thinking, I concluded that whatever underlies a person having a serious lack of one of them, was probably about the same as whatever was under some other person having a lack of another of them. In short, that it's like a belief system nutritional deficiency, and the person just chooses what area(s) they are going to suffer the shortage most in.

One of the things I find most interesting, in an armchair psych way, is that each person has a variety of settings for things in their life. Some people have money, but no time. Some have time but no money. Some are crowded in their environments and can't seem to get enough space. Some have space but no money, or space and money but no time. And some have much love in their life but none of the others, or all of the others but no sense of real love.

In some esoteric experiences, I have observed that all of these are subjective. Including space. You may think that six feet never changes, but I can tell you that six feet can be a reach away or a room away and still fit the ruler. Yes, this makes no logical sense to the rational mind, but just like time, space is subjectively experienced, and I've just had the interesting opportunity to see that.

So if time, space, money and love are all subjective, and if our reality of "plenty" or "lack" in them is all rooted in us, why is it such a pain in the butt getting it all straight and abundant? If I can work out an abundance at each one of these things at varying here/now-points, why can't I work out proper quantities for them the rest of the time?

Even as a teen, I felt that time was inexorable. That it kept marching on and I could never, ever get ahead of it. That it was merciless, relentless, the impersonal conveyor belt of life, that you could never step off and that was destined to dump your butt off at the end.

I was spending a few hours a night doing webcoding, doing correspondence. So I dropped out of it for the most part. Aside from an occasional blogpost and my best friend, I've ditched it all. I refuse to read anything from email lists, forums, etc. even if I think I have a little time when I see it.

And I still don't have enough damn time.

Some part of my belief system is obviously involved. I have enough money for what I want most, but not nearly enough for what I need (serious obligations). I have space enough for what I need (my own house, my own room) but not nearly enough for what I want (the environ is so tightly cluttered I feel space-deprived). I have enough love for what I need most; I don't get close to many but those I do have, share something on a soul level. Not to mention a loving little girl. But I don't have enough for what I want; all my best friends, in all forms of relationship, live very far away.

I feel as if my belief system has certain major limits it's imposing on my reality. The most serious one is time.

They say that people who schedule time have more of it. This is hard for me to understand, since when I budget money I always have less of it. (This is my belief, anyway, as when I pay attention I panic and am short in 12 places, but the less I pay attention and accept that things are alright, the more they tend to be.)

I recently started tracking my time and what I do with it. There is work and sleep of course -- never enough sleep. And then there are half a dozen things I want to do every day -- meditate, view, exercise, time with kid, a couple other things. And then there is 'everything else', to include everything that is social, internet, reading, watching, from leisure to obligations to personal research. I find that of my available time, everything is falling into 'everything else'.

Just like with money, it's the same fractal in a different color: I have time, I spend time, I spend time on things I want to do, yet I don't have time for the things I NEED to do, like sleeping, viewing, etc. I am tempted to think that if I inquired deeply enough into my issues of space and love I would find the same pattern, replicated, manifesting within the context of the subject.

My friend says there's an eclipse coming up and nothing new should be initiated from the 22nd-24th as a result as such things seldom turn out like planned. I have no personal hard data on this but astrology's a decent tool in the right (very rare) hands so I'll take that at face value. Tomorrow I have to start a schedule or an exercise plan, or wait till next week for the grand beginning. Both tie into my FAVorite issue, of course: time.

I would meditate on this problem, but I can't find the time.

Dance

Was in the dance mood. Here's some cool youtube links for anybody else who likes dance.

First my own favorite: a lovely young girl doing jazz dance to 'Fever' in a competition - wow, really cool!




Another way cool thing in part because it's the gen-u-ine original uprock, get this of the 1930's!,
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6297781268173309822&q=uprock&hl=en




Some b-boying which it turns out is the original name for breakdancing. This appears to be composed of several major component styles, much more detailed than I realized
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0azySiQP2Q&NR




This guy gives an example of how he came up with one b-boying move, it's interesting and looks really cool when he's done!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eV6Am87jh4U


You can blame the b-boying etc. on LD, an obvious bad influence, that's his thang


This is a long one, called 'stomp' when the feet and something minor (like a pole in this case) is used for all the percussion. I love percussion! And when they go into the part of using the poles like staffs -- way cool.




New Jack Swing 'all stars' video compilation, pretty cool, kinda like piecing together dance bits of 1980's videos and such
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZ9U4TVLSYk




If you prefer riverdance tap, which I don't but some do (I prefer jazz tap), here's a little one




Now beware, the boogie funk framptonesque e-pop (and louder than most of these videos) might kill you, but these japanese "lockers" provide nearly 10 minutes of demos of that particular art form (this is part of b-boying too), some of it's really cool



It's like a whole generation of stuff that kind of passed me by. Cool though.


Here's another jazz number with a couple of neat movies, far less jazzy than the one at top but much more humor




To mellow you out after all that thick chompin beat stuff, here is an offbeat eye-candy Chinese dance




And let's be fair, this famous ice dance routine qualifies as dancing by any measure



Nice.


And here's a long dim-stage lighted group dance, Jabbawocky in a b-boying style, gets a bit more interesting as it goes on:

Today is the tomorrow you dreamed about yesterday

Well as of today I am officially on a kinder but definitely less-gentle personal plan. I can't believe I'm 41 years old and still waiting for ... I don't know what. Time to get off my duff and deal with some of the stuff I'm usually too busy, distracted, or in denial, to deal with.

I am ditching most my online stuff for about six weeks, aside from sessions now and then and occasionally blogging. I'll be viewing and writing on the book instead.

And sleeping. Really, I am not making that part up.

Since my metabolism doesn't respond to anything but lowcarb, and since after years of reading and two previous trials I think this is reasonable (then again, I'm also a libertarian--well not entirely, but close to it--and a lot of people wouldn't find that very reasonable, either), I am going "back on the plan" as well.

Getting my husband to help me was worrisome. I implied seriously that he'd better help me or I was going to keel over any moment and then he'd have to get a job, and support the 10 year old into fashion and pricey videogames. I think he will help me just out of terror now. I was on LC when he arrived here a year ago, doing really well, but went off not long after; when someone wants to eat outside-food most the time, or wants to make stuff laden with carbs, it gets a lot harder to maintain your own space without a separate household.

I went on LC briefly years ago, my first time, and he suddenly had the urge to eat all MY food while I worked away from home, then to be making desserts when I arrived home (town of 900--no store open) so I either starved or blew the diet. I made him move back to Canada after that one. I figured he was trying to kill me, indirectly. I suspect he thinks I take these things too literally and have no sense of humor.

Dr. Michael Eades (one of my more favorite LC-related docs) has an interesting article on "intermittant fasting" (you gotta love any diet-related term with an acronym like "IF"), and aside from the beginning where he was being deliberately pollyannic, it's pretty interesting, as it does seem a bit of a pain-free way of pulling fasting into the eating plan, getting the benefits of it, yet never despite 24/24 on/off fasting, never actually going a whole day without food. Read the article for more.

Caloric restriction is a terrific way to lose weight and get healthy; problem is, it's not much fun. When rats live out their little ratty lives calorically restricted in their cages they seem to show signs of depression and irritability. Primates do for sure. If primates don't get enough cholesterol, they can actually become violent. But, if you're willing to put up with a little irritability, hostility and depression, it might be worth cutting your calories by 30 percent for the rest of your long, healthy miserable life.

He's a lot more seriously into the Meat Thing than I am. I was a vegetarian for five years, not for health reasons but because I love animals so much. Mostly just screwed up my health bigtime. That is not the diet for someone who (a) doesn't much like fruits and vegetables, and (b) has food sensitivities to gluten and other grainish things, and (c) seems a born carb/dairy addict. I once said that doing LC in today's world was like trying to be Amish in New York city. It does seem easier nowdays though, with so much info available. Oh yeah: and I decided I'd buy that karmic (so to speak) responsibility, for the end of the animals. It's mine either way. I just feel better about it now, and do anything I can to support organic, free range, etc. foods.

I have a bunch of groovy references I've been wanting to post for free stuff online, like image makers and such. Later. Gotta work.

.

Catching Up

As always, when I wait too long between blogposts, I don't know where to begin.

Where was I when I got distracted?? "Life is what happens while you are making other plans," as the saying goes.

I've done minimal viewing of late, not to mention I've sucked on keeping up with the Radical group. Fortunately most of them are already serious viewers, and from the email digest I just saw, they are not sitting around waiting on me fortunately!

There is no excuse. If I wanted it to be a priority it would be. Of course, even parsing down the things I'm interested in, to about 3 things instead of a million, I haven't time for them all. Damn but working for a living sure wipes out the majority of waking life... a pretty big testament to why one ought to do something for a living that is basically what they want to do anyway. (Several unwritten books are pulsing in the binary cosmos at this very moment going 'Yeah!')

Have had the same experience on my last few sessions as I was beginning to have more often in daily work just before life wigged out a few weeks ago though. First, that at a certain point in, I'm hit by a sort of "condensed intensity of data quantity" that I can't parse. I know it sounds silly to write it that way but it's the most descriptive way I can think of to analogy the experience. (Within minutes of reading this someone will invent a new phrase-acronym for it.)

There are a few different ways I can feel this. The first is as-if it is going 'near' me. For example, like it's flashing by and there is no way I can catch it. A bit like, "here it -- wait, there it went!" Like I am inside, and it is outside the window flashing past.

The second is as-if it is presenting itself to me. For example, like it's springing up "within my absorption sphere" (...whatever that is. I mean it's not outside me, but within my understanding area) and I could normally perceive it, in the 'place' I'm sensing it, but there is just way too much, too dense, too fast, so it isn't that "it went by and I couldn't catch it" but rather, that "I have it, I just can't get any kind of grasp on it at all."

The third is as-is if it going 'through' me. For example, like it literally got into me on some level, all of it, and then my body is trying to "bring it through" the physiology, but utterly failing because there is just way more data there than I can pull through me all at once, like it's running into some kind of bottleneck-effect. I had that shortly before 'The Steve Experience' as I now jokingly call it, in a previous session.

Other kinda new stuff, had in the last dozen sessions almost consistently, but not much before that. Like amazing visuals. I mean, LONG visuals, like I am sitting there going, "Wow, this is incredible! This is like total VR!" as it goes on -- nothing vague, no microsecond blip. I don't know what the heck that is! I mean technically that's supposed to be incredibly rare. And usually wrong. Yet so far (not counting the mutant sandworms session hahahaha) the data's been GREAT and has suggested I'm taking the literal experience-perspective of a person in the target. Similar to the experiences I sometimes have where I perceive someone else in an amazingly literal way, the focus is utterly clear, but there is like zero peripheral somehow.

Also, have had: a sense of 'standing in the environment' of the target (and I don't always record it but so far that's been good info). I really never had that before. Sometimes I'd have a single impression that was aesthetic, but not the whole "I'm standing on the street in a very grey industrial section of a city" sort of feel.

And weird stuff. Like in a practice session the other day, almost interfering, I feel I'm "in" a library, I sense something local to my area, and I turn toward the aisle and a little girl, with real short hair, is there, and she's looking at me like she wants to say something. And I suddenly realize she is a ghost. Then I'm out of it thinking, "I know that is not part of the target!"

Why does it hit me, if it isn't part of the target? Is my subconscious just so intrigued it's looking around for stuff? Is my opening up to data of that nature somehow making me more 'visible' to ... ah ... 'energetic constructs or identities' of that sort?

I was nearly tempted to see if the tiny city I was sitting in when I did the session had a library but I decided that would be taking it a little too far.

You know, I don't want to end up totally nuts like Brown or Dames or other people who've clearly remote viewed several too many aliens (out of protocol to boot, haha). I don't mind getting the weird stuff -- frankly my totally spontaneous life was WAY weirder prior to my getting into Remote Viewing -- but if it isn't on target, then I'm not sure there is any point to it.

I think it's easy to get distracted by the novelty of stuff like that and lose the focus of why one is in session... much like some people start out looking for spiritual growth and end up obsessing on crystals or something instead, as if that's any kind of replacement. If the girl was in the target potentially, in any way, it'd be one thing, but I don't think she is. (No FB yet.)

o0o

I was re-thinking recently following a post on McMoneagle's blog about remote viewing visuals. You know how you're going along and you're getting info and no matter what it is, you don't really know if the data compared to the target is going to turn out to be literal or symbolic, right or wrong, etc. You get what you get, as Calabrese used to say (I wonder where she is these days), and the more you want it to be one thing, or need it to be another thing, the more you're going to screw it up, AOL it to death, or just flat out prevent better target contact by being neurotic instead of letting it flow.

McMoneagle was talking about letting it flow, simply accepting it and communicating it as clearly as you can. He was reminding people that what you see is as likely to be a memory clip or symbol or analogy or whatever, as the actual target itself, so you just can't take most visuals that seriously -- or rather, you do take them seriously, you just don't assume that you know what they mean, or that they mean exactly what they are. Just because it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck doesn't mean it isn't the most un-duck-like thing you've ever seen. (I joke about ducks in targets because I've only had two and both have been totally weird sessions that had nothing whatever to do with the target duck.)

So I was thinking about this, from an experiential point of view. I've talked about this with viewer friends before, it's a popular topic for kicking around. Joe gave the example of a boat smoothly sailing through the water being symbolic for a relationship going well, as an example of data that seems literally but may be symbolic depending on the viewer. This is a little exasperating though. The outline of viewer angst I tend to have and talk with friends about goes something like this:

1. You may have no clue whether data is literal or symbolic.


2. You are not supposed to care, during session.


3. You care desperately. Reason: there seems little point to getting into the detail of the way that shape curves, if the shape is only part of a ship and the ship is only there to show you symbolically that your target is having a good relationship. Even if it DID help you get more/better concept data on the relationship, it'd also result in a ton of totally wrong/non-literal data sort of 'mucking up' the better data.
   

1. You may have no clue which 'part' of something you see is the part that is meaningful to the process at hand.


2. You are not supposed to care, during session.


3. You care desperately. Reason: that 1/8 second flash of information would take you 10 minutes to fully record on paper, and you really only have like a few seconds to write down what matters and move on or get lost in AOL about every detail, so you MUST prioritize one way or another, but didn't we just say you don't always know what part of it matters, so...

So then usually with enough consideration of real-life-experience, one meanders around to things like:

1. With proper target contact, it doesn't matter if it's literal or symbolic, because you have a 'feeling' for what it means.


2. With proper target contact, it doesn't matter that you get a bundle of reference data, because you have a 'feeling' for what part matters most.


3. Most of RV life is working on achieving proper target contact.

...and...

1. Since we don't always know for sure when we've got it (proper target contact), and since that is more a matter of degree than any on/off thing anyway, then we are still left working on how to deal with the good % chunk of the time that we are NOT so well connected (or, "yet") that we can 'feel' intuitively what matters and what things mean.


2. Which brings us back to where we begin. You're in session, you get data. Do you follow up on given data points for more about them... or let it go because you don't know if it's literal or important or the aspect of what you got that matters?

In the end, it seems like over time, remote viewing starts to work more as a side effect than whatever I intended in the first place, by which I mean this:

The more I let it happen, the more I allow symbolic data, the more I APPRECIATE the data I get even when it's symbolic or other, then the more I tend to "spontaneously" get better data, more advanced data, more detailed data, more literal data.

So while I am being a happy camper about my potentially wild-ass-weird symbolic data, some other part of me, emboldened by how receptive I am, decides to just tell me that it's a metallic 3-layer composite walled structural object related to high technology, or that it's a machine shaped like so and if you do this it will do that, or that it's a man standing in formal wear, or whatever.

So while I am busy not-stressing about it, gradually I'm starting to get the kind of data that I desperately wished for to begin with, but that usually could NOT be deliberately gotten to any great degree, at least not without sufficient wrong data or symbolic-etc. data mixed in. I think it may be the most significant example of the infamous 'avoid the Lust for Result' lesson I've ever had.

o0o

Let's see, what's the last session I did. Oh yeah, a Tandem practice in the dojo for TKR. That is really fun, viewing with someone else on the same target. Gets me off my butt to do something even if I'm pretty busy, and is sometimes fun to compare after the fact.

I had a few fairly generic impressions. A strong impression of repeated vertical parallel shapes, lots of them. Then a funky dynamic visual that looked sort of like -- but too fast for details -- a coffin-shape that rolled over, a lid opened up, and something spilled out of it. This was so fast and so odd though, that I asked myself what part of it mattered, was it what was inside? the motion outward? The opening? The turning? The shape of it? the superbrief concept-overlay of it? --and decided to write down the "rolling over and opening up" part.

Then I had the sense of this shape that I compared to a variety of things such as a tree, a flaring vase or vase of flowers, some fireworks, stuff where there is a smaller bottom and something rising up and flaring out at the top. Got a couple simple shapes, and then had an impression of an area that was set up for people, a long table, chairs, things like that. The only thing clear was seating so I wrote down that, then I was getting more on the initial shape again, it seemed like it had some importance to the target, just couldn't figure out how. As it was tandem it was time limited and I ran out of time (having spent the first 15 minutes meditating), but just before I ended I had the clear but sudden impression of a man who was dressed very nicely, formally in some way, being present standing in the target. Fine, outta time, moving on.

The target turned out to be a man in formal dress uniform, playing a bugle (there's my flaring vase shape), looking over a military graveyard, each space with a vertical headstone. The text shows it was part of a big formal ceremony, which means I didn't consider the chairs/long table wrong as that would be likely on something official government formal, it just wasn't task focus. I laughed because that super-vague aolish-visual that started it with the coffin-shape opening up and dumping out something made sense then, although as a friend noted, "that was more than you wanted to know about it" LOL. I had to wonder if maybe that ref related to the combo of death and the bugle, like some biblical overlay (you know, like the sound of the horn and the dead will rise, or whatever). I didn't do great but didn't have long so it could have been worse.

o0o

Hero of the day: "Any girl can be glamorous," Hedy Lamarr once said. "All she has to do is stand still and look stupid."

Aside from being a lovely screen queen of the late 30's and 40's, she was co-inventor of the frequency-hopping torpedo guidance system, which didn't get fully implemented by the navy (though with electronics by then) until a couple decades later, a tech which remains the cornerstone of anti-jamming tech even now (sez the net).

Well on the down side, she was married six times, but who's counting. I adore smart women. All three of them. Wish when I was a kid, someone had bothered to introduce me to role models like that. My entire world of women when young was basically of the shallow, inane, manipulative, immature, somewhat crazy bizarro women my dad chose to marry. Repeatedly. Although this should have made me wonder about male intelligence (well, it did, but not until much later in life!), it mostly set me low opinions of women, which is why in most ways that don't relate to sex, I get on much better with men, and am fairly masculine even in writing-personality.

Now that I'm getting old (41 today!!), I see much more good in women than I used to, and have more women friends. But when young, I really didn't want to be one, since I failed to see anything particularly useful they did with their lives, outside the raising kids part which I never had any desire to do. Yes, I know, my kid is now 10, but she was not part of the plan. You know... she is 'the life that happens while you're making others plans'.

I adopted the moniker PJ in 1993 when I arrived on USENET and didn't want my unique name noticed by any directors or investors in areas talking about aliens (let alone alt.sex.stories hahaha). When I announced I'd had a baby in August of 1996, all kinds of friends nearly fell outta their chairs, promptly ranting that they'd been my good buddy online for 2-3 years and they'd always thought I was a man. Then they backtracked to anything ever said that they might not have said to a woman and how sorry they were about it and hoped I wasn't offended. It struck me as interesting that even in today's culture where we think the sexes are more equal and honest, that even ordinary online/email conversation would be subject to a clear bias based on the gender of who you're talking to.

As life would have it I married someone I met on the internet, took his last name as a middle name, and 'became' the PJ of my internet personality.

I may add Hedy to my list of potentially favorite people, though I'll have to learn more about her first. Current on the list are Ataturk, George Washington Carver, Luther Burbank, Jane Roberts, Aleister Crowley, Nicola Tesla -- well you can see the clear bias toward "explorers and inventors" here.

I hope I'm not too old to explore something now, though I suspect the more realistic question is whether I'm too tired.

o0o

My meditations have been nearly nonexistent. I've had a few clear moments but for the most part I've been in denial. And been avoiding sleep. Go figure.

o0o

Well, work is going well, life and home are going well, and I finally got off my butt and got back to work on my book about Remote Viewing, which is a big project but I think worth doing. I might be on the web, even the dojo, a bit less for the next few months for working more on that and viewing in my spare time.

My and Rykah have a date tonight. Amazon.com has something called "unBox" where you can download TV shows and movies and stuff. It only works for XP so far, and they have a player you must use (much like eBooks also do -- for security of course), but as something like a pay per view option (which you also get to rewatch, if you buy it), for my laptop, it's cool. They have the ENTIRE old early 1960's Twilight Zone series! And the "Firefly" scifi series, and lots of old classic movies. Some modern movies are $10, some older ones $3-8, TV episodes $2. Anyway, so we're going to sit on my bed with my laptop, eat microwave popcorn, and watch a show. It's way late to start given tomorrow is school and work so I better go!