great article on perception

i came across this article in The New Yorker today, referred by something in the New York Times. NLPers especially may be interested, because it's about perception, the brain and nervous system, and meaning.

the article is long, 8 pages, but you can start reading at the bottom of page 4 if you don't want to read a gruesome story about a woman with an incessant, horrible itch on her scalp. you might feel better if you skip that part.

toward the end you can read about using mirror therapy to work with phantom limb pain. there's a way to retrain the brain's sensors. no drugs or surgery needed. end suffering quickly.

one fascinating factoid i read is an estimate that only 10 to 20% of what we see is actually information entering the visual cortex through the eye. the rest comes from elsewhere in the brain, like memories.

click the title of this posting to go to the article.

bumper sticker

i put a bumper sticker on my white 2003 honda civic hybrid. it says:

the earth does not belong to us. we belong to the earth.--chief seattle

by the way, i've put 1,600 miles on my car since i got it at the end of april. that includes a couple of round-trips to dallas.

average gas mileage is 41.6 mpg. it can get 50 on the highway.

hybrids rock.

dream: no conscious memory

i awoke on friday, june 27, with a sense of having had a full, complete, satisfying dream sometime before i woke. the dream left me feeling intact and congruent, maybe even entertained.

i have absolutely no conscious memory of the content of the dream. not an image, sound, word--just a feeling that all was right with me and the world.

i used to feel disappointed when i didn't remember dream content.

not any more.

it's worthwhile to explore what i do have a sense of when i awaken, instead of focusing on what is missing. i know my unconscious mind is working for me. even the dreams i don't consciously remember have an energetic impact. they can be healing and peaceful and joyful and build congruency, even though i don't remember any content.

if i wake up at the "right" time in the sleep cycle, or a dream has enough "news of difference" to remember, i will. if not, my dreams are still working for me.

dream: singing in a convertible in LA

dreamed on june 21, solstice.

i am in los angeles. (I lived there when i was 3. it's where my first memories are. haven't spent any time besides layovers there since then.)

i meet up with people. we are all dressed nicely, in linen dresses and summer suits, summer hats, sunglasses. we look polished.

we are going to an art museum with beautiful grounds. we're riding in a very large convertible with the top down. it's so big, there must be 10 of us sitting in it. we pull into the parking lot. someone else in the parking lot asks a question of us.

in response, we spontaneously burst into song, singing "jesu, joy of man's desiring" in beautiful harmony.

i'm glad i'm with these people. i enjoy spontaneous singing a lot. others at the museum are more sedate, and curious about our joy.

people from various stages of my life appear: lela and hannah, paul, roger, suzy, bj and her kids. they join us.

someone wants to go see the ocean. i've been in LA for awhile but haven't seen it yet. we are driving down the mountains, and the air is hazy. i can't see the ocean from here.

the group splits up. the LA people go off together, leaving us visitors on our own inside the art museum. end of dream.

==

i was thinking about booking my flight to maui for october, and after this dream, i made sure to book through LA. it's done. oct 8-22. for details, click the title of this post.

charisma

so much has been going on, i'm catching up. i did two full days of public speaking boot camp on monday and tuesday. i went in wondering what i'd learn, with kind of a "show me" attitude. i've done some public speaking, but not a lot. i'd like to get better at it.

by the end, i felt like it was definitely a learnable skill that i could practice. so now i'm looking for a toastmasters group to join and practice with.

one thing the teacher said that stayed with me is that i have charisma and can learn to trust it.

whew! i'm not sure what he saw in me to say that. i don't feel like i have charisma. barack obama has charisma. i know that sometimes i'm "on". present, grounded, capable, conneced to the source. maybe that was what he was picking up on. i think it must have to do with having done yoga for 10 years. yoga is good for my energy. i'm teaching kj some yoga that she can take with her.

keith pointed out that hitler had considerable charisma. so that's something to keep in mind--you can use it for various purposes. hitler was trying to build up the german people, who suffered greatly after losing in world war I. in his mind, he wasn't evil. he saw a need and filled it.

charisma is being congruent, putting yourself 100% on the line. JFK supposedly had it too. i was a child when he was president and paid more attention to his speech--"cuber" and that massachusetts accent, which was strange to my ears--and how much hair he had.

keith says i have a kind of stillness to my energy. that may not be putting it well. my energy is more quiet and powerful, is i guess what he's saying. i'd like to meet someone with that energy so i can know what he's talking about.

i think of charisma as being present, being able to influence people, being a leader. it can be dazzling, really giving attention, really being in the moment, thinking on one's feet, having good eye contact.

perhaps a presupposition of having charisma is that the universe is friendly. i've been working with that one. i recognize that i didn't believe it for much of my life, but that doesn't mean it's not true.

i like what tom best says about beliefs. try on the opposite and see which you like more. in this case, i like believing that the universe is basically friendly, and that what we human do has some positive intent.

dream: visiting a church

dreamed on 6/18/2008.

i am in a church. it is a rather large church. the service hasn't yet begun, the choir is singing, pews are filling up as people enter and get settled, waiting for the service to begin.

i find a stray purse and want to connect it to its owner, only i don't know who it belongs to. i carry it with me, holding it out so its owner can recognize it.

i go up into the choir area, and someone in the choir says, "you can leave that here--i'll get it to its owner." i set it down on the floor.

i am in a foyer, reading the bulletin board. i am reading an account of a visit to another church by a member of this church. the writer, a woman, is telling the story at the same time i am reading it. i hear her voice. it is not exactly simultaneous with what i am reading, but not too far off, either.

the written part is typed up like in an old-fashioned church bulletin.

the church she and her husband visited is on a college campus where they are visiting their daughter. it is a notable church, old and historic.

==

i wonder if this is the first time i have ever dreamed that i was reading something simultaneously with hearing someone tell the same story i'm reading. it was like harmony or stereo, deepening the experience.

there is something about church in my life--my father was an episcopal priest full time until i was 11, when he went to grad school and changed careers. i went to church just about every sunday of my childhood. i wouldn't say that i "got it" but i value the experience--the exposure to the liturgy, the words, the ritual, the progression of the service.

what i remember most is feeling like i was a good person, spiritually clean and uplifted, after attending a church service. even when i didn't know what the words meant. church gave me a new start every week.

one inspiration for this dream is playing church music. i have stayed at glenda's several times now, and in the evening right before bed, she plays her piano. she asks first if i mind. heck no! i love hearing people play who know how to play.

glenda plays hymns--nothing too complex, but with skill and feeling. her playing is a wonderful send-off to slumber.

the last time i was at her house, she played several hymns saturday night. sunday morning, i got ready for eNLP early and wondered if anyone minded if i sat down at the piano and played. no.

it had been years--so long ago i don't remember--since i played the piano. i started with treble clef only, reading music from glenda's hymnal, which is a baptist hymnal, i imagine--at least that explains why i didn't recognize so many of the tunes, having been raised episcopalian.

i searched out hymns in the key of C, or with only one sharp or flat, feeling rusty at reading anything more complex. i found some i could play that had harmony in just the treble clef. the rhythm just came to me.

glenda was full of praise for my sight-reading. beam!

then i found a hymn i know well, "morning has broken," which i will forever think of as an old cat stevens song, although the hymnal attributed the tune as traditional gaelic. i pointed that out to keith, my scotch-irish friend (and glenda's son-in-law) who plays pennywhistle. he hung around a bit and sang.

i love that tune, and the words in the hymnal. click the title of this post to read the lyrics.

i got bolder and added the bass clef notes, slowing me down considerably, but it came back to me. and i knew what i would need to do to quickly learn to read and play bass clef better than i ever have.

right then, after playing it twice reading both clefs, i spotted what i thought might be a flute in its case. sure enough, it was. i took it out and put it together and played it.

oh, my. it's been at least 10 years since i've played flute. mine is sitting on my bookshelf in its case, not functional.

the beauty of playing music and wanting to get better at it is something i would like to have more of in my life. maybe it's time to get that flute fixed.

walker's island review

Here's my review of K. J. Radebaugh's astonishing first novel, Walker's Island. Click the title of this post to see this review on Amazon and order the book.

==

K. J. Radebaugh is a born story teller. I started reading Walker's Island several months ago and finally finished it last week. Completing the book felt like saying goodbye to a dear friend, complete with tears spilt on the last page.

This story, which rambles through the period from 1865 to 1898, is set in a fictional county in south central Florida. The main characters are cowboys. Now, I am not someone who seeks out stories about cowboys in Florida, set two centuries ago. I just want a good reading experience, something that opens me up and moves me somewhere.

I got that from this book. Like life, the story moves sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly, enjoying the telling. It makes life bigger and richer. Let me share a few sentences from the book.

Raymond "fell into a waking sleep that rode the current of his breath until it joined the creek and flowed away, past the cold ground beneath him, past Beely's farm, past the raiders and Lieutenant Fitz and the war, all the way back to the beginning."

"The church, the hotel and cafe, the railroad track, and the road itself were Jessie's world, bounded by a sash and frame and separated from her by a piece of real glass with a watery ripple in one corner."

Red's hair "was the hot, brilliant red of a pitch pine fire, shot through with gleaming copper lights and piled on top of her head in a heap of curls and tendrils and waves that were barely contained by three large tortoiseshell combs. Its weight seemed to bear down on the woman beneath it, who supported herself with an elbow on a rough cypress table, head in hand."

"Jack was different. It wasn't his odor, which was grassy and sweet like cured hay, or his hair, which was fine and thin and floated on his head like dandelion silk. It wasn't even his peckish appetite or small, skinny, fragile-looking frame. The problem, at least in the beginning, was Jack's speech. He made odd sounds. Jack trilled, hooted, squeaked, and twittered. He hiccupped, snorted, sneezed, coughed, and popped his lips like a feeding bream. He twitched, too, tapping and fluttering fingers as thin as chicken bones. And he watched things as he tweeted and twitched - bugs and dust motes, sunlight reflecting off a pot, Jessie's hands on the biscuit dough - with an absorption that went beyond concentration."

That kind of writing made reading Walker's Island immensely enjoyable through all the ins and outs of 33 years in the lives of some people who now seem realer than real.

I'm happy to know this is the first novel in a trilogy, so I have more of K. J. Radebaugh's writing to look forward to!

dream: blue leaves

dreamed june 15.

the first part i remember of this rambling dream is that i am at work in an office. i have an intern, a young woman with sweet energy. we go outside in a very clean urban downtown to go to a drugstore to get something (not drugs).

the scene shifts. it's fairly early on a saturday morning. i'm with hannah/lela/little girl. i have a car, and she's going to get in. where the passenger puts her feet, blue leaves are piled up. i gaze at them intently. they are multi-pointed, like japanese maple or red oak leaves, only blue, and curled up, drying, but not crunchy dry. beautiful and unusual.

i scoop the leaves out of the car so the little girl will have a place for her feet. under the leaves are the little girl's dirty clothes and other odds and ends, including a car battery.

now i am on a bicycle. i realize i really need to find a boyfriend, so i'm going to take the little girl (now clearly hannah) home to her mom, lela. we will stop by the sonic on the way home and get some food to take to lela.

i start pedalling my bike north to the intersection of congress and riverside. the city is very clean and orderly. i stop and wait for hannah, who's running to catch up with me.

i believe i will find a boyfriend that day, and i know just where to look--the mountain out by lake travis that has two campgrounds. i've been to the lower one in past dreams. i know about the upper one but have yet to visit it.

==

blue leaves can be an adjective and noun or noun and verb. typical dream pun!

my extinct miata is sitting in my driveway with a car battery in the passenger footwell.

on eNLP weekends, we've stopped by the sonic so glenda could get something.

if only finding a boyfriend were that quick!

dream: witness

dreamed on june 12.

i am with my friend fantasia, and we are standing next to a screen on which credits are scrolling past, like in the movies, only it's daytime. in black print on a white background, a credit says "Witnessing", and under it is my name, "Mary Ann Reynolds".

i know that it was fantasia's idea to put my name in the credits. it's as if it's my work or talent.

--

i like this dream! "the witness" is something i've been playing with from eNLP. it is "merely observing," without seeking. it is transcendent of contraction, separation, attachment, needing, illusion. it makes no effort. it is simple awareness, and attention--the motion toward things--arises spontaneously and superimposes itsel on it.

dream: funny toilet

dreamed on june 11.

i work at a newspaper and go on vacation in a rented house somewhere in rural louisiana, near a small town. i'm with a woman friend. i'm really grateful for this vacation. i'm off work for a week.

i am with a man in this rented vacation house. (the woman friend is not present.) in one room, there's a very high toilet, like 4 feet high. he's sitting on it, posed like rodin's "the thinker" statue. he gets off it and puts me up there. there's a sheet of saran wrap across the bowl. he tricked me! i start laughing, and so does he.

we go outside and see a rough road cut into the dirt. it goes up a hill. we see where the driveway leaves the road and comes to the house.

==

i worked at two different newspapers when i was in my twenties, in small towns in western oklahoma.

this seems like a feel-good, goof-off, having fun dream.