It’s still 5:30

I turned off the water but it’s still running.

I slept-in til 5:30 this morning and went out to water the garden—it was dead quiet, though I did see a mama deer and her twins eating my russet tops. As they hopped away the silence remained in the most surreal artistry. “Must be the soft, thick grass,” I thought.

I sat quietly in sanctification—my stone table cool and covered in dew, the garden growing. All the sounds of summer sleeping, I close my eyes and drown my thoughts in the silence, then the silence drowns my thoughts. Purely, this was the most joyful quiet I could recall since my boreal beginnings. After a time (it felt) I lumbered my way to the house, made a cup of coffee and slipped out again to wait for the first rays of light to shine through the treetops.

Something is a little different. I begin to wonder at this timeless moment enduring a little longer—longer than I expected.

Skillfully I go back inside, quiet, careful not to wake the misses and and the mutt. The one clock is blinking—the other is not. It is still 5:30. I look out the window and the water is still running.

Cup Fungi

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The Participants Have Become the Watchers

Very little living is now actually living life by experience. The philosophy that all the world is a stage, participants in a never ending play of the cosmos, has resorted to watching tv.

The average adult 18 and older spends four hours a day watching TV or Netflix types, and those over 65 watch nearly seven hours a day (so much for that anticipated retirement)

On the other hand, the total number of people who use YouTube is 1.3 billion. 300 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute. Almost 5 billion videos are watched on Youtube every single day. In an average month, 8 out of 10 18-49 year-olds watch YouTube. Combine this with 8 hours of sleeping, eating, and getting ready for work, when do we find time for life?

Sitting in front of a glass screen, watching others live life or represent the drama in some fashion instead of living? Indoor sterility—you can’t touch it, smell it, or taste it. If the Hindu philosophy of life being a drama of watchers and participants were true, the watchers are now watching the participants watch, where they spend the bulk of life sleeping, getting paid to do what they hate (that’s why they pay you) and watching a glass screen.

This is the superior life in the age of progress and truth. One thing is certain—if there is a purpose to life it is to be entertained. To experience different roles and to watch others do the same.

With all of the rhetoric and belief in the world there is one thing we most certainly all agree on, regardless of culture, religion, or science or time. Do you know what that is, this universal, primary reality?

All photos 5/30/20

Where We Go From Here

If this life were part of a series of reincarnated experiences, why would it matter at all in mankind’s search for purpose if we can’t remember them from one existence to the next? Where does it all go when you’re dead and buried? In the next 85-90 years another entirely new crop of humans will populate the earth, while nearly 8 billion purported “meanings” and “purposes” of life are lucky to be remembered after 1 generation.

From my former religiously stained fingers—death is the great escape into peace. Not by living again, but by offering exactly the same “freedom from care” that we experienced before we were born. What was lost—peace, is once again found only to be unknown—again.

We have risen to life, now against the odds of inevitable aging and death we hope to carry on, realizing some form or potential. Would we settle to be a meadow of wild grass or a meandering brook, only to prolong any semblance of physical experience? All this searching for meaning over a brief flicker from past lives feign to recall (or sleep paralysis) or merely an active, imaginative brain inventing?

The desire to live forever is a notion implanted—a wishful potential of an ideal—yet death will reunite us to our past”.

Certainly there are things I enjoy now—things that I would miss, while others disdain—if I were aware to see it.

“Such is the audacity of man, that he hath learned to counterfeit nature, yea, and is so bold as to challenge her in her work”—Pliny the Elder

All of these experiences seem a little futile if you can’t remember them when in the physical realms where they are useful to us. If reincarnation were real, what good is finding out purpose in this life if we don’t remember it coming or going?

Is it so hard to live in the present? Are we just hamster-wheeling for nought?

The crooked trail into our wilderness.

Interesting mushroom

Neuro-Cleansing

During waking hours our brains build up proteins and other waste. During sleep, brain cells shrink and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) washes and rinses brain cells. The importance of sleep to maintain brain function is critical to life itself. Without sleep we die after a few days. Alzheimer’s and every other disease linked with dementia have one thing in common—sleep disorders.

During sleep our brains are flooded with CSF. Changes in brain cells size and debridement of unwanted toxins are flushed of beta-amyloids to maintain healthy function. During this time we are susceptible physically and mentally. Sleep is defined “a condition of body and mind such as that which typically recurs for several hours every night, in which the nervous system is relatively inactive, the eyes closed, the postural muscles relaxed, and consciousness practically suspended”

Microsleep is also fairly common, especially during monotonous times of work, driving, or periods of sleep deprivation. Dreams and revelations can be heard as well as audible voices and other sounds, right in the daytime without the knowledge of the subject having fallen asleep. I had an old packing buddy that would have these episodes frequently. It was amusing that he never recalled falling asleep.

One of the most popular LDS revelations came from Lorenzo Snow during a time of financial difficulty. The revelation on tithing came to the 85 year old leader after an exhausting trip to southern Utah in 1899. He went into trance at the pulpit while speaking, and that is the backbone of the Mormon tithing commitment. It all fits a microsleep scenario and dream.

Every day comes and goes and nearly a third of it is spent unconscious for the sole purpose of rejuvenation and cleaning. During this time of washing, or lack of cleansing due to irregular sleep patterns, we are physically and mentally susceptible. Flies can rest on your face and intruders can enter your home. During cerebral cleansing, unwanted waste is flooded over shrinking brain cells, stimulating all areas of the brain inducing dreams, nightmares, and visions. If you want to trust your dreams in this state and call it god, know that even people blind from birth often dream visually. Spectral Evidence (if you missed it) is the backbone of religion, and even people that have never seen, can see things that were never there. Trust that to revelation or a calling from a god? I think not. More like recalling a B horror movie in a nightmare.

Hypnagogia or Revelation

Transition in and out of sleep often produces a wide variety of sensory experiences from several to one modalities. Most frequent, as in the case of my spouse, is auditory sounds. People will frequently hear their name called out or hear a loud clashing sound or a mild whisper. Knocking and loud bangs are also fairly common.

In my case I typically see down a fleeting, extending corridor. The images are sometimes clear, sometimes darkened, and as I become aware of them they disappear. Usually this is in color, but occasionally black and white. Once in a while they are very vivid hallucinations I can recall shortly after wakening, but usually not.

Thought processes on the edge of sleep tend to differ radically from those of ordinary wakefulness. For example, something that you agreed with in a state of Hypnagogia (excellent read) may seem completely ridiculous to you in an awake state. On a different direction though, many (including myself here) are able to solve problems in this state. Edison, Tesla, and other inventors have reported ideas or problems they have solved in this condition. The brain is fascinating!

Also, research has shown that during the hypnagogic state subjects are very open to suggestion and EEG readings show elevated responsiveness to sound around the onset of sleep.

Hypnagogic state is also frequently re-created with the use of psychedelic pharmacology. Very similar findings across the spectrum between near sleep and drug induced experiences create these visionary experiences.

Hypnagogic phenomena may also be interpreted as visions, OBE’s, astral glides, prophecies, premonitions, apparitions, or enlightenment, depending on the experiencers’ beliefs and those of their culture.

There are some famous hypnogogians who “heard” the voice within themselves; Abraham, Noah, Muhammad, Moses, Paul, Joseph Smith and so on. Happy to be living at a time where we have valid explanation for hallucinatory experience that precludes sleep. If there is a god, he’s right between your ears. It is us. Top that off with a little peyote or LSD and you’ve got yourself a church.

WARNING: Images can be quite complex and detailed, and may not make any sense. Enter Religion