Altered States and other Revelations

It's been a bit of strange day. Actually, it's been a weird week.

To begin with, phase shifting is very much harder with a baby. When we left Colorado last Tuesday, Laz was on a schedule where he woke up shortly before noon, which corresponds to about 7 PM here in London. In other words, he was nearly 180 degrees out of phase when we got back to our flat in Harrow. Add to that the fact that neither Sunshine nor I managed to get much sleep on the flight while Laz did and we have a rocky beginning already.

Now normally I try and get some sleep on the long haul and then stay up as long as I can, probably going to bed in the early evening. But you can't really explain this to a 1-year old, so instead we've been trying to wrap him forward by keeping him up as long as possible and then keeping him asleep as long as possible. This sorta works, but he's also got a bit of sleep intertia. Anyway, he's pushed over enough now that he's waking up a bit after midnight, which is at least a schedule that allows me to go to work during the day. But it is decidedly weird, since it effectively means that our days are backwards. We get the evening and then the sun comes up and I go to work. My inner clock is quite confused.

Meanwhile I'm applying for jobs... again. It's a bit weird though, as some of these positions I'm applying for are connected to people I already have working relationships with. So I'm writing weird impersonal cover letters to people I'd usually e-mail and call by their first names. It's ever so slightly twilight zone. Or maybe it's just the sleep schedule.

Or maybe its something else. Just before leaving Colorado I bought a bunch of Buddhism books, and so I've been slowly soaking in Zen for the past week or two as well. I started with The Eye Never Sleeps by Dennis Genpo Merzel, which is really quite lovely. It's a discussion of the Hsin Hsin Ming, an ancient Zen poem. Genpo Roshi's (his current title) discussion is really quite refreshingly modern. It's still inscrutably Zen, but what would you expect?

Anyway the Zen seems to be seeping in a bit. On the plane flight home we watched Hou Yuan Jia, (known to the western world as Jet Li's Fearless). Actually not a bad movie. "Kung Fu movies" have come a long way, and many of them are really quite beautiful now. Anyway, I found my brain getting snagged on the Buddhist undercurrent in the film, so the brain is definitely digesting some of this.

I've also been slowing sampling the ILP starter kit. The "Out of the Box ILP" is not terribly helpful, and their "body" modules seem a bit hokey to me. (At least the "1-minute modules" versions of them.) But the meditation CD seems like it might be more useful. Today I watched the first of the DVDs: Big Mind Meditation (again with Genpo Roshi). This was actually quite good. In fact, it might even have worked which kind of surprised me. Maybe it was the weird sleep schedule, or the 5th cup of tea today, or maybe it was an actual kensho experience, but much to my surprise, I actually felt something. Indeed, it even seemed to be the 'right' sort of something. It was a particularly strong resonance during the 'Big Heart' section, and corresponded very closely to the descriptions on the DVD, but (and this is the part that is hard to dismiss) I felt it prior to hearing the description. So its not just a simple implanted suggestion. Perhaps it was a more subtle effect, or perhaps it was an actual Subtle effect.

Sort of hard to describe actually. It was a gradually growing tingle... sort of similar to an orgasmic sensation but centered primarily in the upper chest. There was also a sensation of dizziness and a disconnection with the senses rather akin to the buzz of drunkenness. During the "Big Mind" portion of the meditation there was indeed a sense of free-flowing motion and boundlessness in my head. But with the transition to "Big Heart" this shifted to a much stronger sensation of gushing forth from my chest and a desire to (for lack of a better description) hug the world. (Yes, Ick, I know. It's like a Coke commercial!) Anyway, skeptical as I tend to be about these sort of things, I was surprised to find it actually seemed to be doing something. Certainly gives me something to ponder.

His Big Mind technique is kind of interesting. Instead of engaging the sort of typical breaking down the ego methodology, he actually employs the conscious intellect using a Voice Dialogue technique borrowed from psychotherapy. Maybe this is the Buddhism for Gearheads I was looking for. Certainly psychobabble is a lot easier for a modern to swallow than magical energy.

Finally, returning to more mundane reality, I got some weird mail in my slot. A manila envelope addressed to Dr. C L Gerardy, and with a strange return address from Jerusalem, but postmarked from Phoenix. Inside, a mad bunch of bible quotes and other strangeness, mostly from Revelations. Presumably just harmless madness from someone (though if I do suddenly come down with anthrax have someone check the envelope), but I do wonder what I did to rise to their attention. Ah well, it goes with the territory I suppose, but usually I get the crazy messages through e-mail. Here, someone actually spent a few bucks to post something to England. No explanation of course, just madness. Perhaps nutters should learn the art of the cover letter?