Consciousness and the Paranormal

[boomerang]

Does anyone have experience blogging? I had an account on Blogger years ago - but it has been taken over by Google . . . is it still a good one to use or does anyone have other recommendations?

No. But I do have limited experience in short story writing and I would offer a note of caution. Writing on any subject, real or fictional, long and intensively enough will reveal things within yourself of which you may be unaware and are sometimes (at least in my case) not intended for public perusal. I had read this and did not believe it until I found those little subconscious beasties staring right back at me from the printed page !

 

[smcder]

No. But I do have limited experience in short story writing and I would offer a note of caution. Writing on any subject, real or fictional, long and intensively enough will reveal things within yourself of which you may be unaware and are sometimes (at least in my case) not intended for public perusal. I had read this and did not believe it until I found those little subconscious beasties staring right back at me from the printed page !

This has been my experience too.

 

[Randall]

Does anyone have experience blogging? I had an account on Blogger years ago - but it has been taken over by Google . . . is it still a good one to use or does anyone have other recommendations?

Most larger internet service providers include free disk space on which you can blog with whatever platform they include or build your own custom site free of charge. It's not hard to build a basic custom website to publish what you want. In some cases it's even easier than trying to figure out a blogging interface. Otherwise re-establishing your original Blogger account is probably just fine.

 

[trainedobserver]

No. But I do have limited experience in short story writing and I would offer a note of caution. Writing on any subject, real or fictional, long and intensively enough will reveal things within yourself of which you may be unaware and are sometimes (at least in my case) not intended for public perusal. I had read this and did not believe it until I found those little subconscious beasties staring right back at me from the printed page !

Yes, that's where all the real stuff comes from. A deep pool, chilly and dark at the bottom where large things move unseen until they break the troubled surface to drench us in a sudden spray of insight. Stings when it gets in the eyes.

 

[Tyger]

I think we're all conditioned as we grow up as to what is appropriate feeling and behavior for females and what is appropriate for males. But I also think that such conditioning to a degree emerges from and overlays {often to absurd extremes} something deeply embedded in nature.

I had a friend growing up - very dynamic, very intelligent - who was always being told that she 'thought like a man'. Her response was always: 'I am a woman. Therefore, anything I am is womanly, native to being a woman. You need to expand your definition of what you think a woman is.' Not many have her sense of self assuredness at such a young age. In no way would she allow herself to be hoodwinked into thinking she was exhibiting 'mannish' attributes. Such is the insidious 'message' that young people are continually being fed - and if their sense of self is weak, they will fall for the false image and start to believe they are the other gender 'under it all'.

Surrender - does not the man surrender as much as the woman? Same for mastery - the roles can reverse in an eyeblink - one to the other - all-in-one. Our definitions of what a man is , what a woman is, are askew, and far more culturally driven than we realize.

As for empathic and nurturing - as Constance states below - there are no rules on this.

Decades ago I recall the experience of seeing Italian men walking down the street holding hands. They were friends (not lovers) - no big deal. In the US this would have been snickered at as 'homo' and they would have risked being beat to a pulp. Still probably signals 'gayness' in the US. Sad. This is what I meant earlier - this is the legacy of Freud - we see a sexual overlay to everything - which means that we are emotionally starved. Fondling, stroking, being close physically, is a human need and we as a culture - in the US - have had to create a massage industry to adjust in order to get the physical touching we crave. Even teachers are prohibited from touching - from wrapping a crying child in their consoling arms to comfort. Emotional warmth is not sexual heat.

Indeed. Some of the most empathetic and nurturing people I've known have been men. I think it's been circumstances of birth, growing up among enlightened people (who are not at all necessarily well-educated people), that has been instrumental in saving such men from social demands that they severely control and even bury their emotions through dis-use.

Exactly so.

 

[Wade]

No. But I do have limited experience in short story writing and I would offer a note of caution. Writing on any subject, real or fictional, long and intensively enough will reveal things within yourself of which you may be unaware and are sometimes (at least in my case) not intendedthe wisest isor public perusal. I had read this and did not believe it until I found those little subconscious beasties staring right back at me from the printed page !

That is the wisest thing I have seen written in this forum this year.

 

[Tyger]

Yes, that's where all the real stuff comes from. A deep pool, chilly and dark at the bottom where large things move unseen until they break the troubled surface to drench us in a sudden spray of insight. Stings when it gets in the eyes.

Wow! You should write - I mean it. A talent should not be hoarded. Keep in mind, you are dredging from aeons and it is the universal human.

Way back in the day of the Human Potential Movement out of Esalen in Big Sur, there were all manner of 'encounter groups' and 'karma sessions', 'primal scream' and 're-birthing'. I wandered into something called 'karma sessions' - each 'session' dealt with one of three topics: sex, power and money. (That about covers it, don't it?) Obviously some topics were more charged than others for various people but I can vouch that the sex karma session was the intensest - given we were all pretty much in our sexual primes. It was obviously not a topic everyone was willing to share about but the lesson was: we are all the same. The deep, dark secret one finally spills in great red-faced embarrassment one discovers everyone (pretty much) experienced, or thought. The idea of what is 'normal' undergoes a substantial shift.

The willingness to be vulnerable is the sign of a great soul. We think of power as mastery and impenetrable command - yet it is not so. That is brittle bound to crack. It's both that command that can yet be open - yet relinquish - yet dare to be revealed. That is the immeasurable gift of the great artists - painting, singing, sculpting, writing - perform for us. They reveal themselves - stand up to be judged and stare it down - and reveal to us more than themselves, they reveal us all.

You should write. You have a gift.

 

[trainedobserver]

...It was obviously not a topic everyone was willing to share about but the lesson was: we are all the same. The deep, dark secret one finally spills in great red-faced embarrassment one discovers everyone (pretty much) experienced, or thought. The idea of what is 'normal' undergoes a substantial shift.

Empathy, the great peacekeeper and the true fountain of human spirituality, is only possible when we realize the universal nature of human experience. Regardless of what we would like others to think, we are all consumed by the same needs.

You should write. You have a gift.

Thank you, I appreciate that. I do write for a living, although not creatively just yet. I have a screenplay in the can and several other pots on the fire and I'm in the market for literary representation, but I'm still writing for the "Step 1, Step 2, Step 3" market.

 

[Wade]

Empathy, the great peacekeeper and the true fountain of human spirituality, is only possible when we realize the universal nature of human experience. Regardless of what we would like others to think, we are all consumed by the same needs.



Thank you, I appreciate that. I do write for a living, although not creatively just yet. I have a screenplay in the can and several other pots on the fire and I'm in the market for literary representation, but I'm still writing for the "Step 1, Step 2, Step 3" market.

Trained is the original Deep Thought.

 

[trainedobserver]

Trained is the original Deep Thought.

Thanks Spooky. I just checked and the answer is still 42.

 

[smcder]

Empathy, the great peacekeeper and the true fountain of human spirituality, is only possible when we realize the universal nature of human experience. Regardless of what we would like others to think, we are all consumed by the same needs.

Thank you, I appreciate that. I do write for a living, although not creatively just yet. I have a screenplay in the can and several other pots on the fire and I'm in the market for literary representation, but I'm still writing for the "Step 1, Step 2, Step 3" market.

Project Gutenberg Self-Publishing - eBooks | Read eBooks online | Free eBooks

The purpose of Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is to encourage the
voluntary creation and distribution of electronic books. Project Gutenberg
Self-Publishing’s purpose is to create a cloud service for contemporary writers
to share their works with readers.

What is your take on self-publishing?

 

[trainedobserver]

Project Gutenberg Self-Publishing - eBooks | Read eBooks online | Free eBooks

The purpose of Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is to encourage the
voluntary creation and distribution of electronic books. Project Gutenberg
Self-Publishing’s purpose is to create a cloud service for contemporary writers
to share their works with readers.

What is your take on self-publishing?

I think it might be hard to make a buck that way. The trick seems to be to get someone to pay you real money to turn a phrase.

 

[smcder]

I think it might be hard to make a buck that way. The trick seems to be to get someone to pay you real money to turn a phrase.

With podcasting, YouTube and e-publishing/self-publishing - crowd funding/PayPal donations . . . music, video and talk-radio all growing this way . . . the someone who pays you real money is the reader, you send the e-file, no middle man. I just don't know exactly how or how well it works. I suppose in the end it comes down to promotion whichever way you go.

 

[Wade]

I have several customers who use lulu print on demand service and are quite content with it.

 

[Tyger]

From June 2012 -

LINK: Self-publishing a book: 25 things you need to know | Fully Equipped - CNET Reviews

 

[Constance]

Your feelings, and the thoughts that come to you as you contemplate the image, would inform you regarding what the 'story' was behind the images. Care to share? I myself - on an intimate level - do not have a 'happy feeling/memory' regarding Rome. Intellectually it's all fascinating and I know what I need to know to teach Roman history - but the 1st to 2nd century A.D. - when I contemplate it in my being - feels very 'barren', empty, hollow. The images I get of being in a Roman villa are very sterile, not happy - though I sense privilege. I sense there was also a good intellect but no heart warmth at all. I'm repelled by it.

I feel about Rome and its Empire the same way you do, so I've never been interested in studying Roman history or literature. The hypnagogic image I described went by in a flash, followed immediately by three others that I've forgotten. The first image was so impressive and intricately detailed that I think it woke me back up on the verge of sleep. I had little time to think about or feel anything about it because I then fell into a deep sleep. But I did remember that image in detail when I awoke the next day and still remember it vividly. It was a demonstration to me of the variety of information we must all carry around in our personal and collective subconscious. It was definitely an artistic rendering of some scene from several millenia ago. It's possible that I saw it at an earlier time in my life in an art history class or a history textbook or a gallery, but it looked completely unfamiliar to me. Perhaps I saw it in an earlier life. Perhaps someone else did and it's still floating around in the combined memory bank of visual information shared among our species' collective unconscious. If no information can disappear from the universe (a current view among physicists) and if it is all entangled holographically (another view held by many quantum physicists) and if we are likewise entangled in that immense hologram -- our minds being porous, sharing, receiving, and sending information locally and nonlocally -- then paranormal experience and capabilities will eventually become explicable, and celebrated.

BTW, Constance, some time back you mentioned something about the Cathars. I always meant to respond, to question you about what you said, but now I wouldn't be able to find your post. Could you repeat what your thought was? (The Cathars are very dear to me).

I vaguely recall mentioning the Cathars but don't remember the context.

 

[Tyger]

it looked completely unfamiliar to me. Perhaps I saw it in an earlier life. Perhaps someone else did and it's still floating around in the combined memory bank of visual information shared among our species' collective unconscious. If no information can disappear from the universe (a current view among physicists) and if it is all entangled holographically (another view held by many quantum physicists) and if we are likewise entangled in that immense hologram -- our minds being porous, sharing, receiving, and sending information locally and nonlocally -- then paranormal experience and capabilities will eventually become explicable, and celebrated.

Fascinating - because this may be where the ancient esoteric science of the human being meets modern physics, because this all sounds very much like the description in the Sanskrit of the so-called 'Akashic Record'. It is posited that there is nothing that has ever happened that is lost - all events and thoughts exist as 'memory' in that 'Record'.

I vaguely recall mentioning the Cathars but don't remember the context.

Well, if you ever want to discuss them, I'm game. They were an impulse before their time. The destruction of the Cathars was the beginning of it all: the Inquisition, the Police State - it's a terrifying historical moment. Everything that would come to ghastly fruition in the 20th century had it's unholy seeds then, when that amazing impulse and civilization was purged from history.

 

[boomerang]

Yes, that's where all the real stuff comes from. A deep pool, chilly and dark at the bottom where large things move unseen until they break the troubled surface to drench us in a sudden spray of insight. Stings when it gets in the eyes.

Yes ! Poetic and so true.

 

[boomerang]

Wow! You should write - I mean it. A talent should not be hoarded. Keep in mind, you are dredging from aeons and it is the universal human.

The deep, dark secret one finally spills in great red-faced embarrassment one discovers everyone (pretty much) experienced, or thought. The idea of what is 'normal' undergoes a substantial shift.

In a flat universe, if one sees far enough, the view is of the back of one's own head. Is this why the journey and not the destination is the point? Travel the path and meet yourself at journey's end, I think.

You should write. You have a gift.

I agree !

 

[smcder]

I will give myself as an indication of the gender confusion when using text as the sole clue. I signed up to this chat site and omitted indicating male or female. Up until this thread - when Constance referred to me as a 'generous woman' - I have been referred to as a 'he' on this chat site. So which am I - based on text alone?

To be fair, I have been surprised to learn a poster was male when I had assumed they were female, and vice versa (not everyone indicates their gender). But it's also interesting that I will look to see if a poster is a man or woman. What is that about? Why do we need to know?

Bottom line, I've been on chat sites that were mostly women and god help you if you got into an intellectual vise grip with one. Not pleasant. Women do not know how to have a reasonable conversation any more than does a man under certain conditions. It's not a gender issue imo - it's whether or not the intellect (and human being behind that intellect) has been adequately trained/educated - and that transcends gender.

This might be interesting . . . paste in some text to have your gender checked by a computer program. It correctly identified me as male, based on two posts I copied from this thread:

Gender Classification from text

From 2003:
Program identifies writer's gender | Science | The Guardian

A new computer program can tell whether a book was written by a man or a woman. The simple scan of key words and syntax is about 80% accurate on both fiction and non-fiction.
. . .

Koppel and colleagues trained their algorithm on a few test cases to identify the most prevalent fingerprints of gender and of fiction and non-fiction. They then set it searching for these fingerprints in 566 English-language works in a variety of genres, ranging from A Guide to Prague to AS Byatt's novel Possession - which, intriguingly, the programme misclassified by gender, along with Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day.

and 2011:

Gender-spotting tool could have rumbled fake blogger - tech - 17 June 2011 - New Scientist

Developed by Na Cheng and colleagues at the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey, the ever-improving software could soon be revealing the gender of online writers – whether they are blogging, emailing, writing on Facebook or tweeting. The team say the software could help protect children from grooming by predators who conceal their gender online.

To determine the gender of a writer or blogger, Cheng and her colleagues Rajarathnam Chandramouli and Koduvayur Subbalakshmi wrote software that allows users to either upload a text file or paste in a paragraph of 50 words or more for gender analysis (update: since we posted this article, the servers have enjoyed more traffic than they can handle. If you can't get a response from clicking the links in this paragraph, we suggest trying again at a different time of day).