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libbee · 1 year

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ASTRO OBSERVATIONS April 2023

Scorpio is known for sex but I think it is the earth signs that are actually sensual. Earth signs such as Taurus, Virgo and Capricorn deal with senses and are the most stimulated by touch, visuals, taste, voice, beauty, pleasures of the senses. They are not intuitive but rather sensual, materialistic and interact with what is tangible, seen, physical. While Scorpio is intuitive and deals with intangible, unseen and spiritual.

Then why is Scorpio linked to sex? It is not about sexual pleasure and more about craving rebirth. Fact with Scorpios is that they discover a layer of themselves everyday going through life. Their identity, personality, beliefs need evolving and they need to die to be reborn. That intense sex is them tuning to their intuition and when they orgasm something in them dies. Since it is intuitive, each Scorpio will know what has died but it is not possible to tell it in words because it is a symbolic death. Sex to them is like a ritual, a sacred practice that assists them in passing from one stage to the next.

The force of 8th house is against will power. At best I read on a social media forum it being described like "Plutonic force is like your head being shaved against your will power, no matter how much you resist, it will happen".

Rahu can be such a fake, illusion maker and a mirage. Wherever it is placed in the natal chart can show what area of life is shown as the "ideal, picture perfect, larger than life, wow factor" but it is actually just empty behind the screen. If Rahu is in 1st house, native appears to be this dashing, grand, all-rounder person but actually nobody knows if they are actually that person or not, nobody seen them doing what they claim to do, it is just the image. If Rahu is in 10th house, they have this mirage illusion of being hard working, leader, planner, entrepreneur but they are not actually all that. If Rahu is in 7th house, they have this image of ideal partner, picture perfect couple, dream partner but actually it is just a mirage. It is the social perception that is ideal/mirage but in private something entirely different happens. For eg, they gift 100 roses to their loved one in office. Wow! How lucky, how romantic. Yet at home, they are like the partner does not even exist, totally different.

8th house moons can be hypersensitive to their mom's voice. It is as if they grow up and suddenly they are super reactive to their mom. If she says anything, 8H moon screams. "Be quiet!", "Change your tone of voice", they complain their mom irritates them which can be actually repressed memories of childhood being triggered every time mom says something. In the worst cases, they can even abuse their moms which is called "reactive abuse" where the party can no longer tolerate the abuser and explodes in anger.

Fire sign risings surely give the PERCEPTION of confidence, self assurance, burning hot even if they are extremely insecure inside, it would not appear in their persona. It is the rising sign that is how others see us and how we show ourselves to others, it is autonomous, spontaneous and unchangeable for this lifetime. Fire signs can be going through failures but not show in their faces.

Planets in 1st house emit the energy of themselves. But beware! 1st house is just the persona and your impression on others - not the actual person behind the mask. So Sun in 1st house = public perception is they are so confident and self secure. Mercury = they are so intelligent and cheerful. Jupiter = they are so wise and guide. Even if native is not these things, people are somehow convinced that they are those qualities just because of their facial expressions + language + vibes.

It is very important for 8th housers to be discerning in choosing their company/partner/friends. 8th housers are prone to feeling negative emotional hurts because they have survived extreme emotional situations in childhood, the side effects of which will last a lifetime. I also think that these natives inherit emotional wounds from their ancestors that makes them carry so much burden on their shoulders. So, they should choose such people who are empathetic, emotionally intelligent, know some psychology and know that "the wounds of swords and gun can heal but not that of the tongue". An unhealed 8th houser is like an open invitation to the world "come use me" and when the native has had enough of betrayals and shocks, they turn inwards to start doing self introspection, analysis of human nature and undergo drastic transformation.

#dark astrology #astro tumblr #astrology #astrology blog #astro notes #astro #astro observations #astro placements #astroblr #astro community #astrology community #astrology notes #astrology observations #astrology tumblr #astronotes #sidereal astrology #vedic astro notes #vedic astrology

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cancerjupiter · 4 years

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astrology notes: mars (pt. 2)

mars in libra

the mars principle describes how you set about getting what you need for yourself and shows how you define yourself. libra is about you in relation to others and gaining self-knowledge by using others as a mirror. these two opposing principles do not combine comfortably. how can you define yourself or decide what you want effectively if you consider the other person's needs before your own?

the person with mars in libra attributes enormous importance to what the 'other' wants, and often gives away their energy and sexual needs. they don’t know what they want until they discovered what the other person wants. if you ask them what they want to do, they will most likely answer by asking what you want to do. this makes decision-making virtually impossible because they cannot focus in on what they want, but are always looking for answers from the outside, drawing in others to help them decide. because of this difficulty in knowing what they want, they are very ambivalent and give out double messages all the time. if they make a definite statement, they will immediately qualify it, so that what they really want becomes blurred and open to doubt.

in their sexual relationships, mars in libra like to observe the social niceties - venusian touches such as romantic notes, thank-you letters, and cards sent to continue the connection. romantic and charming, they know what pleases and often show a flattering interest in their partner's life and emotional well-being. they always ask the right questions and respond appropriately, which can be very seductive. enjoying repartee and flirtation, people with mars in libra may flirt for ever without ever getting round to doing anything. they enjoy creating the right setting - a romantic meal with soft lights and sweet music.

sometimes there is a perfect atmosphere for sex, with the promise and the innuendo there, but the sex itself may never materialize. this is because Libra feels much more comfortable with the flirting stage than with the disturbing intimacy of sex. people with mars here like to start contacts, forge links and hold relationships together, but they also like to keep at a distance and avoid intense involvement, often using niceness and politeness as a barrier to intimacy. however, the urge to establish a sexual relationship is a driving force for people with mars in libra, so that even if there is not much actual sex involved, they need to feel they have an actual sexual partner, and will put a great deal of effort into pleasing their partner and holding the relationship together.

mars in scorpio

mars is in dignity in scorpio; and someone with this placement is likely to have a quietly powerful and unobtrusively charismatic presence, backed up by an inner strength and sense of purpose. these people will have a certainty in their manner that conveys that they are not people to be toyed with. this is the most assertive and potentially ruthless of the water signs.

this sounds a promising placement for passionate sex, and mars in scorpio people are passionate as fuc. however, with relationships they are often so intense and sex is often such a traumatic arena that they may never actually do it, though they can spend a lot of time anguishing over it. their sexual contacts are likely to be intensely emotional. they may have such immense feelings invested in sex that they shrink when they are attracted to someone, and all spontaneous responses fail; things just stop flowing. for a mars in scorpio, sex is all or nothing; they feel it as life and death - which can throw them into dreadful crisis and inner turmoil. sex is indeed intimately connected to life and death; and they will feel closer to this truth than anyone else.

this placement makes for a depth of emotional honesty and integrity that you do not find with mars in the other water signs, but it can also produce the most agonized expression. once a relationship becomes established, someone with mars in scorpio will not be afraid of commitment. these people will offer and demand absolute loyalty, and will stand by their partners through thick and thin. they will also be the most possessive of all the water signs, and are vulnerable to feelings of sexual jealousy. this is because their feelings become so deeply engaged in their sexual relationships. with such an emotional investment, they have a great deal to lose. there is nothing lukewarm about them. these people will want to own their sexual partner; anyone not wanting to be possessed might find their intensity too much.

mars in sagittarius

people with this placement have huge expectations of sex. believing it to be a path to self-knowledge, many are looking for sex to give meaning to life, and they may elevate it to the status of a religious belief. this can lead to restless promiscuity as they search for the spiritual enlightenment they crave. they can make a religion out of their own need for sexual freedom in order to pursue such illusive goal. on the surface, they appear to be happy and easy-going; but underneath there may be emptiness, despair, and a sense of having been cheated, as life constantly cannot match up to expectations. this provokes an endless search for the deep sexual healing that they believe could soothe this inner pain.

as with all fire signs, but most intensely with sagittarius, there is a propensity to feel limited by the body, which holds them down when they want to be all spirit; and this can lead to a total rejection of the physical. this manifestation of mars can show someone who despises sex and aspires to devote themselves to the concerns of the mind and spirit, therefore renouncing sex completely.

on a more ordinary everyday level, most people with mars in sagittarius do not live in such an extreme way, but they do all need to sex to bring meaning to life, together with a powerful belief in personal freedom. there is a common desire for sex to enrich their lives spiritually and offer a gateway to personal development. they are stimulated by differences and challenge, and so are often attracted to those who come from unique backgrounds who can give them a new perspective and widen their horizons. the impulsive nature of sag people means that they often jump too quickly into close relationships and then immediately feel restricted, so that often they have no sooner started a relationship than they have dreams of leaving. there is a tendency to run away from difficult situations rather than face up to the consequences of their own actions. they often find it hard to accept responsibility for what happens, believing that they have acted with the best of intentions and that therefore it must be the other person's fault.

in order to enjoy sex, these people need to act spontaneously. within a relationship that offers this, they are very enthusiastic sexual partners, uninhibited and keen to experiment. they need the stimulation of variety, and tend to become bored if sex is too predictable. the person with mars in sag will want to get a lot of fun out of their relationships, and will enjoy going out to the cinema, concerts, and other activities with their partner. these people are also likely to enjoy their partners taking part in sporting activities with them, so that a shared morning run or a tough game of tennis could be quite fun!

people with mars in this sign can make their partners feel fantastic. they have a warm enthusiasm which they give out freely; if they want you, they really show it. generous-spirited and optimistic, they expect to be desired, and so act in an open, confident way. if they are rebuffed, they will just try again or turn their attention elsewhere. they can, however, be rather careless with other people's feelings, acting first and think later, which can be very painful to those who are more sensitive. they find it hard to focus on the here and now or empathize with other people, as their gaze is firmly fixed on the distant future. they prefer to ignore difficulties, and that includes people's hurt feelings. rather than grapple with present problems, they will concentrate on their visions for the future and chase their dreams. for someone who shares these dreams, it can be an exciting road to travel.

mars in capricorn

someone with this mars is likely to have an air of authority, and an innate sense of dignity and of deserving (not sure if that’s the right word tho). these people give a powerful impression of self-control and conduct themselves with good manners. they may seem quietly distinguished (and are often called mysterious). all the earth signs exercise self-control, caution and reserve, but these traits are most in evidence in someone with mars in capricorn. this could be because they feel their dignity is constantly at stake, which is arguably something that matters a great deal to them. they may restrict their lives in order to maintain control over it.

when starting sexual relationships, someone with this placement will take considerable care not to make inappropriate moves. a rejection would be a loss of dignity. yet these people have a powerful sex drive and powerful needs for physical contact, so when sexually involved and certain of their partner they can be very bit as ardent as mars in taurus. people with mars in cap may be painstakingly slow in establishing contact, but once they have, they want the rewards for their efforts. they will take a sexual relationship seriously and expect it to last.

like mars in virgo, they can go through long periods when, if not in a relationship, they remain celibate. for mars in capricorn, these may be rather austere times, when they bury themselves in their work or productive activities and swutch off their sexual needs (my friend with this placement says she’s not crazy about masturbating, but to each his own ofc). this is their way of surviving. when they do have a partner, they will let go of some of their control and have a powerful sensuality.

people with mars in capricorn will be ambitious, and might choose a sexual partner who helps them get on in life or who enhances their status. they may choose someone who opens doors that might otherwise remain closed, or who has money. this is not as calculated as it sounds, for they may literally get turned on by money or authority. alternatively, a mars in capricorn person may start up in business with their lover. the dividing line between business partnerships and sexual relationships can easily blur. this is an ideal placement for a working sexual relationship.

mars in aquarius

this mars placement causes some impulsiveness and abruptness in manner or speech. they may do things quickly and unexpectedly, either because they make up their minds quickly or because they don’t fully realise the consequences of their actions. they often sum up facts or opinions and comes to a conclusion very quickly (the type of person to read the headline but not the article). they always seem ready for anything; mars in aqua often knows what to do in an emergency and how to stay level-headed through it. they speak readily and are incisive debaters, forcible and determined. their opinions are fixed and not easily changed from outside (aquarius is fixed after all); but when they do change, it often happens so suddenly and abruptly as if to surprise everyone.

the often alienate their friends because of their actions, easily suffering from opposition and hostility. this position is not favourable for social niceties, associations, companies or firms, as they don’t see the need to nice for the hell of it. however, they’re somewhat ambitious and aspiring, original and independent in thought, too much so to associate on an equal footing with others for any length of time; such relationships are usually broken either through their ambition or love of independence. sometimes they seem to be democrats, but there is a good love of autocracy in them; they love leading and guiding others.

mars in pisces

they’re the most romantic and tricky placement of the water signs. this is someone who is extremely sensitive to romantic gestures in love, and able to tune in to their loved ones on the subtlest levels. these people can make the most attentive lovers, who seduce and overwhelm their loved ones with flattery and attention. and yet, just as the object of their affections succumbs, they may be on their way, ever elusive pisces, to the next lover. their effusive gestures of affection can be in some ways impersonal (and superficial in retrospect). with a mars in pisces suitor, you are never sure whether you are the real thing or just a sounding board on which they’re practising - the idealized love object of the moment. these psople may want to keep their illusion intact more than they want a partner. plus they may enjoy the seduction process more than an actual relationship. they may be in love with the concept of being in love. if you are 'the real thing' for them, then your relationship will be infused with romance and mystery. these people will need intrigue to keep them involved, and will themselves regularly inject such ingredients into the relationship to keep the romance alive. they may read too much fanfiction for their own good (lol sorry, Bea).

there is a deep yearning for an oneness with their partner; a total merging, which they are likely to satisfy through sexual contact. for them, sex may be a spiritual experience. it may be an union with something far greater than their partner and themselves that they seek, whether or not they are conscious of it. for someone with mars in pisces, there will be a conscious awareness of this spiritual dimension. the practice of meditation symbolically represents their orientation. someone with such an orientation could, if not in a relationship, spend long periods celibate. paradoxically, they can also be the most promiscuous, with no sense of sexual boundaries, and wanting everyone that they feel attracted to. it really depends on their level of consciousness. this is the most passive of the Water signs, and perhaps the one with the greatest diversity of expression.

#astrology #zodiac signs #mars astrology #mars in libra #mars in scorpio #mars in sagittarius #mars in capricorn #mars in aquarius #mars in pisces #libra mars #scorpio mars #sagittarius mars #capricorn mars #aquarius mars #pisces mars #happy halloween!

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kickthecan-revolution · 2 years

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Wordle at the 4th try. Damn.

I fell asleep early, then rattled around at 2am a bit, woke Minnie up and gave her lots of pets, then went back to sleep. These days Dr. Phil shows on YouTube put me to sleep which is kind of funny.

The hospice nurse checked out my dad yesterday to confirm him into the process. He was of course, perfectly lucid and said “I don’t need hospice, I’m not dying”. The anti-psychotic drugs are helping him. She did call me to discuss but I didn’t see the message, so called my sister and they talked about it. She ended up accepting him for 60 days because he’s so emancipated, so we’ll see. She can give him “comfort drugs” to manage his anxiety - we are talking the big guns - so who knows, he might live for another ten years but it also means we stop all of his blood pressure drugs, etc. I still feel so conflicted about it. My mom is now in a skilled nursing facility to heal her pelvis. She did test for a UTI after all which might have been the delusions, they don’t know. Maybe this happens at the end of life, breakdown and then your body surges to stay alive. This is now cyclical, they are fresh out of the hospital, hydrated, and on pain medications - this is the upward surge. All I know is it’s good they aren’t together and Medicare is paying for my mom. We are all shaky and exhausted, it’s hard to talk about. The roller coaster of chaos and grief, then anger, then my fear about their finances - it’s all surreal and I sense we’ve made a silent pact that we’ll break down when one of them dies, which will make all of this much less stressful. It’s a toss up who will go first but their minds are not letting go which only means they have more of their story to live here which is none of my business. I am immensely grateful for the siblings I have and the grace we give one another, and how we are all on the same page. Abusive parents can create intense fantasy attachment where in this stage of life, an adult child can want them to live at all costs- that would make this situation so much harder, so it’s a relief we are under no such illusion. Just the complicated grief of good people who are hurt and angry and also very sad, and are wrestling with a desire for them to just pass.

My team and I figured out our areas of focus. They are without doubt, the smartest people I’ve ever worked with. They all checked on me this week at various times to see if I needed time off, assuring me they can cover for whatever is needed. I had this amazing one to one with one of my employees where we discovered that our situation is exactly the same, her dad was an alcoholic and her mom is an undiagnosed borderline. It’s literally all we talked about - this is an employee that I’ve not felt connected to and I think it was really good for us both to use our time for that instead of work. Regarding how I’ve organized the work, we will see what my boss says, she is such a micro manager and is starting to cause real problems but I have to trust that my Senior Leadership team will see it. I’m going to insist that we try it this way for 90 days. She’s projecting her own fears into us, and I have to protect us from that.

Late afternoon yesterday, I noticed a meeting pop up at 4pm with my boss and her boss with a cryptic title. I had to cancel another meeting to attend while processing the rage a few of us were feeling at having a plan for the next quarter and then spontaneously, an initiative was moved up, disrupting said plan. I broke the news to an employee I work closely with (he used to work for me), and he literally threw his hands up and said “we’ll what the fuck are we even doing all of this for then”.

While we were talking, I noticed my boss frantically calling - I intuitively noted that she wanted to give me context for this 4pm meeting and/or give me patronizing instructions on how to handle it which I don’t need. I ignored her. I don’t need context - I AM the context, and this is my area of expertise so humble yourself, be quiet, and learn. I took a deep breath, drank a glass of water, ignored her frantic five calls and jumped into the Webex where my VP Big Boss needed help in preparing for a meeting post the European incident (shooting). We spent an hour reviewing what she needed to do, why, and I brought one of my team in for added detail who had already written a brief on it that no one bothered to read. We pointed out the areas that we are and are not accountable to. She was enormously grateful and hung up with what she needed, thinking through different ideas with us. She is the definition of respectful and inclusive. My boss made a fool of herself in several moments, and then wanted my employee and I to stay on after where she gave us some pats on the back we don’t need and then talked about how she was giving us permission to not feel responsible for the parts of this training we don’t own. No shit bro, what we do feel responsible for is our people who might get a gun shoved in their face. We don’t care about the rest. Catch up.

She hung up, and then my employee and I stayed on for another hour, he was like “what the fuck was that all about” and I just shook my head and we died laughing. I cannot lie to them, they are too smart and see it all. All I can do is continue to point out the places where she does add genuine value, and there are some.

We ended up talking about more work stuff as he ate his dinner with his wife and baby at the table, reminding me of things that I promised the team I’d do and sat there with me while I did them. His baby blowing me kisses the whole time. In hindsight, he likely saw how overwhelmed I am and gently helped me move into the week. The kindness I am surrounded by in these beautiful people is softening the impact of my boss who I believe Is doing the best that she can within her limitations.

It’s the weekend! I’m going to try to get the deck arranged a bit and start preparing for R to be here next weekend. I can’t wait. There’s also something downtown where they’ll be creating an art display with 100,000 tulips, and you get to choose your own bouquet so I’m going to do that too.

I hope everyone is doing well. I love you all so much.

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chaotichedonist · 3 years

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Tharunka (Kensington, NSW : 1953 - 2010)

Wednesday 9 June 1976, page 14

Some funny moments to tease you into reading:

Press: Roger, you're noted for your amazing screams.

Freddie: It's a controlled scream. I'd rather call it art.

Freddie: You're joking dear. I'm just a singer, dear.

It’s been a struggle, because in the beginning nobody knew what we were doing. We were the only people who believed in ourselves.

back at the hotel sleazy

For all those fans who were misled by the media, Queen did not spend a couple of days-relaxing on sunny Perth beaches - it rained the whole bloody time they were there. (In Melbourne the hotel was 'besiged' by fans, who to quote Pete Brown — Queen's personal manager — seemed to be emerging from the wood work). Not to be put off however, by the Australian conditions Freddie Mercury (lead vocals and keyboards) attended the press conference in white pants and a simply sumptuous summer synthetic top with delicate butterfly sleeves curling gently over his shoulders. He was even more beautiful than Sophia Loren.

They were all quite chatty only Roger (Meadows-Taylor, the drummer) would keep interjecting, usually over John Deacon (bass) who said not an audible word.

Press: Would you describe your music as mock opera?

Freddie: They call it cock-opera back home.

Roger: I suppose because the vocals are in the 'grand style'.

Press: When is your next album coming out?

Freddie: We'll have a rest and think about it..

Roger: We just don't bung'em together.

Brian: We don't sort of write sitting in hotel rooms you know.

Freddie: We gather influences.

Press: Your music has been described as snob rock. What do you think?

Freddie: I couldn't describe our music as anything. We certainly don't put across that this it intelligent music that is on a completely differenrt level to the people who come to it.

Roger: It's written for the people. That's what it's all about.

Press: The theme of death recurs on your albums. Why this preoccupation?

Roger: Freddie's morbid mind.

Press to Freddie: Do you consider yourself a sex-symbol?

Freddie: You're joking dear. I'm just a singer, dear.

Press to Roger: Do you consider yourself a superstar?

Roger: As meaningless, (blows kisses).

Roger on the media - absurd for a magazine combine rock and politics.

Press: Roger, you're noted for your amazing screams.

Freddie: It's a controlled scream. I'd rather call it art.

Undauted by the fearless Australians they continued talking about their lyrics and the esoteric implication.

Roger: Freddie just loves the word 'Beelzebub'.

Freddie: Yes, well, Brian's got a taste for unusual words.

Roger: You talking about dandling on your knee and things?

All four of them write songs and each has at least one song on 'A Night At The Opera'.

Brian: It's very difficult to talk about our songs as a group because we all have different ideas of what the songs are about.

Roger: No we don't.

Freddie: Roger's the sensitive one. 'I'm in love with my car' is the most sensitive song on the album (Night At The Opera).

Roger did tend to sit there pouting at the bows on his pink lame gym-boots. One hardly noticed the dark roots in this gold angelic hair. We did ask, but unfortunately Roger didn't have a pic of himself in the gymboots. Roger was later accosted by David Essex fans in the foyer of the hotel, who wished to know if he was a popstar, girls now have Roger's autograph. Back to the lyrics..

Freddie: Every song is written by one of us and means something special to each one of us. Certain songs have a very literal meaning and can be understood straight away. Then there are some songs that can be taken on a lot of different levels.

He describes a lot of his songs as fantasies. 'We want to consciously lose ourselves. There are certain things we want to escape from in our lives or whatever.' He feels that people should create their own private fantasies from the images in his songs and so doesn't like to talk about what they mean to him. 'I'd hate to shatter someone's illusion. If I listen to somebody's songs I conjure up a fantasy of what its about and I like to keep it that way.'

He elaborated further.. 'Lyrically it is helpful to use certain words. You see it depends.. sometimes I want to use words that are phonetically useful. In the beginning they're surface words but you entwine them into the meaning of a song. That's what I mean about different levels.'

Brian May has a different approach to his songs, 'There's usually something serious behind them, but I feel a big responsibility not to over-indulge in idealogies. In 'White Queen' I was very interested in the significance of Queens and White Ladies in English folk lore. The song started off as a personal experience, the frustration of not being able to communicate, I was thinking about Robert Graves' ' White Goddess' and that became involved in the song.'

Roger: Romantic slush.

Brian: Our 'Now I'm Here' song is really about our first American tour. A big experience for anybody. It's a conglomeration of all the experiences we had on that tour. We had a great time with Mott the Hoople. I suppose they taught us to be a touring band.

We're very critical about each other and very cynical. We don't get deeply into meanings because you're living with it all the time. You have to be a bit light-hearted about it.

With four individual writers the albums were not done with a specific concept in mind. The 'White Queen' was written four years before the 'Black Queen'.

Brian: I don’t think that Freddie’s 'Black Queen' was a reaction to the 'White Queen'. We just discovered that we had these songs and the rest of the album seemed to fit around it.

Freddie: It probably subconsciously coheres.

Similarly ‘A night At The Opera’ has no overall concept though the name of the album is related to Freddie’s ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’.

As Brian puts it ‘We are four very different people with four very different directions, but there is a musical development that does make some kind of sense. Queen is very much an independent thing. We are always bouncing ideas off each other. We are very aware that we need each other.’

The rapport between them onstage bears out this statement. They work off each other in a carefully intergrated show thatt creates an atmosphere of spontaneity for the audience.

At the opening of their set there is a flash of fire and smoke as Queen emerge on stage. While music winds up they launch into ‘Orge Battle’. Like a Greek God or a simister Mephistopheles Freddie's powerful vocals cut through the smoke and flames.

With the stage show the band is doing something different to stimulating their records. Brian: "You don't get up there and behave like you do in the street. You go up there to entertain people and give them some kind of excitement". They have rearranged some of their songs especially for stage performance, including a medley of 'Bohemian Rhapsody', 'Killer Queen', 'Black Queen' and 'Leyroy Brown', which grinds down into 'March of the Black Queen' and then skips out on a lighter note which features Brian on genuine Japanese ukalele.

The brilliant solo Brian performs in 'Brighton Rock', with sweet high Paginini frills and harmonies, stimulating two or three guitars on stage, is in a style he has evolved himself. He got the idea the first time he was in a recording studio. Says Brian: "It was my first experience of doing multi-tracking. It happened to be in the cannon-things which repeat themselves. You play one, then you play the same over the top of it after a time interval. Later we started to do those things on stage but there was the problem of how to do it. We started having a single delay and then another one over the top of it. Then afterwards you do another repeat on the second. You can then do three part harmonies with yourself. We started to base it all on ten second solos and it grew and grew. There's a lot of other people doing it now and I'm glad because it’s a thing you can play around with.'

In the stage arrangement of "Prophet's Song' Freddie uses a similar echo feedback system which multiplies his voice into a celestial choir. His voice floats as a vision - "Listen to the madman' - while Brian plays some beautiful guitar.

encore amore

Brian describes their encore performance as the time when the band really unwinds. "It's nice at the encore to just completely unbend and make a fool of yourself. It gets rid of the tension between the band and the audience. I used to get a kick out of going to concerts to see rock groups like the 'Who' and feeling involved, like the group knew you were there. WE go by the kinds of things we think people would like at an encore. It's at a very basic level really, an energy level, a physical level. Rock and Roll is kind of a body music. I get as much satisfaction out of basic rock'n'roll like Status Quo as the most sophisticated music I know.'

The audience certainly enjoyed it and really let loose their energy. Roger (who claimed the most female screams) in rainbow mop-wig opened the encore with slow heavy rock-beat as Freddie did a dramatic entrance in a silk kimino. As he eased into 'Big Spender', he peeled off to striped hot pants for an outrageous version of 'Jailhouse Rock' - simple hard-driving rock'n'roll that had everybody out of their sets.

gettin' feelin' thru th' transistors

Brian was rather upset that the Australian Press should braiid them as a manufactured band. If 'Bohmeian ,hapsody' can be seen as incorporating the spectrum of s talent - mood changes, heavy stuff, the soft ballad - it is not because they (men of letters from universities) have developed a magic 'X' formula. Rather the song can be seen as a musical progression, a reworking of motifs off their other albums.

Brian can only say that, 'They obviously didn't see us in the earlier days. I can understand why they'd say that over here. Big impact. Overnight success. It must have been all calculated. If you’d seen the way it happened in England, you wouldn’t think that. I’ve had years playing pubs in England where people were drinking beer and discussing what other people were doing and not listening to the music. I want to build up this thing where people do want to go to a concert. While it begins to look like the commercial side, it;s what it’s all about. I want knock it because I want people to come and hear what we do.

It’s been a struggle, because in the beginning nobody knew what we were doing. We were the only people who believed in ourselves. We started playing because we had some kind of vision that we thought was worthwhile. For over a year and a half we were playing to ourselves. Gradually you gather people around who believe and that’s the way it happened.

Nobody is going to tell us to play what is commercial. What we play comes from us. We’re very lucky really in that we have a kind of audience who are attentive to whatever direction we choose to follow. One of us will come up with a song and we'll say, 'Yeah, it needs that kind of treatment and maybe that turns out to be something you call heavy and sometimes something which is light.'

To get back to the charge that they are a manufactured band, while he doesn't like it, he can only take it as a compliment that they think the band is so good. He doesn't consider himself a technician "technically I've stayed the same for the last six or seven years. Progress is what you feel and what you are putting across. That's what playing is about for us.'

Freddie: There's a lot of music there too.

Roger: A bit of music, yeah.

low key queen

By Anne Finnegan

Wednesday 9 June 1976

If you save, do not forget to leave a link to this, coz i kinda found it by myself and made and transcipt. Thanks :)

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redantsunderneath · 3 years

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VAL and BILLIE EILISH: THE WORLD'S A LITTLE BLURRY

I shouldn’t be allowed to watch documentaries. All that any documentary seems to be about (at this point, to me) is the relationship between itself and the truth. I don’t know if it’s 2000's reality TV or that one time I watched Capturing the Friedman’s and Waco: The Rules of Engagement back to back that broke me, but what interests me isn’t the subject matter but standpoint epistemology of the thing. These two docs are very different, diametrically opposed in almost every way, but both are defined by the ways in which the text struggles against reality. Val is about an old man who used cameras (himself) to capture his entire life as he pretended to be someone else on film. He is infirm, occluding his laryngotomy tube to talk, and his handlers try to manage his naps around meet and greets where he sells the shell of the person he once was for the fans who still care. It’s forbears are archeological dead celebrity docs that try to find the elusive star at the center (Robin Williams, Heath Ledger, Amy Winehouse) and those about reclaiming memory (Alzheimer Project, Waltz with Bashir) but it’s just… he’s the cameraman and he’s still shuffling around. Closest comparison (minus the age part) is probably Kid 90, which was being cut at the same time. This doesn’t get at how weird this is, though. He used to make movies with his brother, who drowned during a seizure and haunts the movie (he would put up his brother’s drawings in shots on film sets, the talks about or around the event constantly). He often hands off the camera to people so he can be seen in his world with complex instructions (when I walk off, focus in on that speaker so when I go onstage you will hear my first line) and when the camera hits a mirror he lingers (as in the video of his newborn baby). He seems to always be performing, an aspect of life we are all familiar with by now but less common when this footage was taken. His wife is uncomfortable on camera, usually mugging or hiding, and you get the feeling the distancing from his life is intentional as he focuses on internal transformation away from ego resolution, but he still needs to be seen, his sense of self tied up in an object permanence issue. The movie is structured as someone trying to sort through memories of their life and come to terms with them, although the memories in this case is a small warehouse full of video tapes and film canisters. In his current life he can only communicate with difficulty and tries to convey reaction with meaningful-but-of-what glances and gestures. Effacement by time and looming death drench the whole enterprise - when his brother dies he says his father “lost his charisma” (just contemplate that). His current simulacra of celebrity makes him feel like a ghost, signing “you can be my wingman anytime” multiple times for people who this means something to. So he brings up the footage and tries to reconstruct his life (his credit as cinematographer is both funny, touching, and chilling). This thing is full of interesting moments. He is doing a line reading of Hamlet at Juilliard and Peter Kass stops him to ask where the performance is coming from. He responds that he has never considered killing himself which causes Kass to explode, insisting that no-one in the history of the world has not had that thought. This seems to rob us and him of a potentially revelatory moment as Kilmer seems different, spiritual in an unusual way… maybe the reason why he never thought of that was more interesting than that point. His entreaty to Marlon Brando to tell him what his earliest childhood memory is is responded to by Brando asking for him to rock his hammock with repetition of the question only yielding feedback on the rocking until neonatal-fat Brando’s satisfaction at being rocked seems like an answer. The argument with John Frankenheimer who does not want to be filmed is something else. The major things going on are here are being haunted vs feeling like a ghost and an arrested Lacanian mirror phase that complicates his intersubjective context, with the karmic

self-assessment of who he is trying to chill in the middle. The filmmaking knows this and orients itself as a process of evaluating memory where what is true seems elusive, heavily edited, and hall-of-mirrors-like. The question of what is performance is a subconscious struggle. Conspicuous in their absence are his own feelings on his decline beyond the fact that he “doesn’t believe in death,” real insight into his marriage (and breakup, other than an allusion to his method acting Jim Morrison being a problem) and relationship with his kids (who are around all the time, but seem like Sixth Sense characters), and the fact that he’s a legendary asshole on set. This last is, like, the one thing everyone knows about him. But you can sort of sense this stuff secondarily, right off the edge of the screen and in him relentlessly projecting onto his parents. The real crux is the study of a man who never feels seen, but tries to become so by disappearing into someone else, who needs recording devices so that he can capture himself properly, all controlled performance; someone unaware of his own loneliness brought about by not being very good at making himself available because his “self” is externally resolved and constant inner transformation masks the unformed nature of his ego at rest. The film accomplishes this by allowing him to reveal what is absent by his preoccupations and bearing witness to his deflection mechanisms, so that he is no closer to knowing himself but, by being manipulated in a way we can see the frame of, we kind of get a glimpse. Good experience, wish there was more Christian Scientist material (that seems like an angle of understanding the film wasn’t interested in). Billie Eilish: The World’s a Little Blurry is about a young girl who is followed by cameras capturing her entire life as she pretends to be herself on stage. She has a Simone Biles flavored psycho-physical compromise that everyone tries to “handle” while she sells herself as the person she isn’t to fans who care, at least right now. This is in the tradition of Truth or Dare mimics that seem de rigueur for female pop stars. Closest comparison is Miss Americana. This movie feels made by spreadsheet to contain scenes to develop the official narrative of an in-her-brother’s-room, in her suburban parent’s house, sui generis composite genius who is on the edge of mental unfitness trying to be as normal as she can in this crazy merry go round called fame. The obviousness of the put on is diffused by the relative lameness of the pieces. In some respects this is the typical documentary “look for the cracks for insight” play, but it is consciously using that as a tool too and doing it badly - the manufactured insight escape moments largely ring false. This comes off as a Zoom background era counterfeit, a series of YouTube clips where Markeplier or whoever lets the mask slip a little in the most forced bit of unbiddenness possible. There is a boyfriend who feels like a story mandated version of “from Canada.” But the interesting thing is the way it recapitulates the way modern pop is put together, not by writing, not by spontaneous “feel your way,” but by putting bits of ideas together and trying to emulate form. There are a lot of moments in the film that feel like they could have been real, but the non-actors were asked to do another take and can’t quite nail it. It actually has such a boner for produced casual that it is pretty much allergic to authenticity, which is quite a thing for a documentary. The major things going on are here are grappling with whether she brings anything musically to the table (the brother seems like the musical force, she’s afraid her voice is bad, they make a point to show her idea notebooks as work product), her wish to only perform if she can give the fans her best show (possibly her version of just wanting to call in sick, understandable) is at odds with her being the center of a machine that has to move, her as a product of a not entirely with it older parents who gave their kids an open creative runway

and now are instrumental in managing her as a resource that is tricky to work with, the work being her and her brother dicking around and making magic happen, and an attempt to paint her as a Beleiber who now is on the the other side of the fan dichotomy. Development of her style, arguably her #1 thing, is sort of left as her telling a video director “I drew this bleeding eye woman, can we do something like this?” and sort of suggesting through letting her point around that she is a de facto co director. At times, it feels like a try at icon forging that someone wanted to fail, but it is probably just the high school conception-to-production level tat ultimately comes off as a larger indictment of making a movie like you make modern pop music - overdetermined manipulation of flimsy elements without a satisfying ethos, that looks too be an insubstantial assemblage of spliced pieces that live of die by their stickiness. But it begins to feel, more and more, that it’s about how non-exciting pop stars can be as people and that a narrative that people respond to can kind of die if you show that’s it’s just work and somewhat normal people trying to be a piece of an illusion. It’s this partitioning away of the hyperreality and an attempt to show the official story acted by the sausage makers trying to pretend the banality is just crazy man. Where Val is a simulation of an habitual performer considering who they actually are selectively sorting their life and failing to confront the loneliness of age and death (more elusive to them than us), this is obvious hoax unintentionally (?) revealing the fabricated nature of the image-music industry by way of demonstrating the strangely normie creatives, green-yellow ombre or no, can’t be arsed to summon a proper freakout (the whining seems authentic, though). Music videos may lie to you, but the official story is strangely correct - kids living in mom’s house cobble together catchy stuff and pull off pop stardom due to social media age production savvy and a little zeitgeisty imagery, it’s just everyone is well adjusted if stressed and someone’s only donning the costume of the online archetype of a specific kind of girl. Val uses the constructed nature of these narratives as a tool wielded in the open to suggest the inner working of a mind failing to be honest with itself while the other is interesting in its transparency and failure to convince us of the loosely conceived fiction, leaving reality apparent as bong resin. Baudrillard would have liked this one more, probably.

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0x1ashtyn · 3 years

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A Letter For You...

I forgot my diary when I went to get coffee today so I'm going to type. I'm trying to be happy these days. Even when things are crashing and burning around me, I'm smiling. I keep telling myself the answers and solutions are in my hands.. hopefully this will manifest into being true (see, positive talk aha). But even though I'm okay most days and aren't brought down by my thoughts it doesn't mean they still don't run wild. I'm thinking a lot as my life is in a shifting period. I've moved to the big (expensive) city. I've slept on my friends' couch and finally found a place (I can't afford) after my first Christmas away from home. I've been looked down on and called manic or irresponsible and even stupid for doing this so spontaneously. I came here with no plan, no job, nothing. I packed a suitcase and left. I needed to run, I finally understood that feeling now. I always thought of moving to the city when I was growing up. My best friend and I would plan it together in media class when we were 15, but I always planned it as a plan, not an escape. Life happens, unexpected circumstances arise, pain comes and sometimes doesn't heal as easily as a bruise does, it’s much deeper than that. For me there was blood, a lot of blood, so much that the only thing that could stop it was a 3-hour plane ride. A whole new life, a rebirth without physically dying.

So here we are. Today I've decided to share my deepest thoughts and struggles of growing up in the 21st century with you. Welcome my 20's. Here's my story, I hope it can comfort you and feel like we are in this together and you can find strength to carry on too despite every reason to surrender in defeat. I also hope that when I fall, you fall, we all fall, we can come here. I know and I'm sure you know the feeling of falling onto the cement instead of someones arms after a hard day. I will be your arms, and if you don't feel any of that, that's okay, I'm happy enough to speak up for the ones of us who can't. So, mock me all you want, I will wear the embarrassment proudly.

Here's the part that we all dread on the first day of school whether it's out of anxiety or just pure annoyance of this stupid activity, I shall introduce myself. A name to the fallen words. I shall not run from the mistakes and dark parts inside my heart with you guys, my name is Lina. I'm 21 and I can now proudly say I live in Sydney, Australia. I'm finally in the place I've always wanted to be. Living the "girl goes to the big city and becomes everything she's always been destined for" dream. I've been here 3 months now. It's currently 11:02 on a Thursday morning. I'm jobless. I have no source of income and I made the actual reckless decision to rent a place I can't afford. But like, if not now? when? I don't regret coming here, I would rather struggle here then where I was. I am thought currently studying so hopefully I will be able to find my feet soon.

It might seem empty, my introduction, but that's the point. It's that whole blank canvas thing, this is my new start. I guess I could tell you my hobbies and things like that but it really is true the whole blank canvas thing. Along the way somehow my body turned to survival mode and I've forgotten how to live. I've forgotten something as simple as walking. How? Literally it's the only thing that is certain about why we are here. Life. Living. I've forgotten. I don't know how to have fun, like what to do and things like that yes, but even if I get myself up and somewhere to do things, I can't even enjoy it or I'm left there constantly checking in with myself trying to figure out if I'm having a good time or not because I'm in this constant defence mode to the world. I can't let my guard down; I can't let myself be hurt again. Nothing has ripped my heart out more than when I first saw happiness in the flesh only to see the flame burn out before I could feel it's warmth on my skin. I haven't seen it since. It makes me wonder if it was all just a dream. An illusion I made as a naïve little kid. This could sound dramatic but if you've had this feeling you understand the arm bar you keep up ever since at moment. Not completely shut off by the idea of life but not completely jumping at the idea of participating either. So yeah, I don't have fun. I can't remember the last time I genuinely enjoyed myself so much to create a memory for later. It's okay, I haven't had fun in a while and I'm still alive. You can't really miss what you haven't had right. plus, school takes a lot of energy for me. I'm up at 6am and back home by 7ish in the evening. This is enough to keep me busy.

This is actually what inspired me to write today. I now have 2-3 hours a day with myself to think thanks to these long train rides and overly deep and emotional Korean songs I listen to on my way to school. I want to cry a lot these days. No particular reason as to why, the urge just creeps up slowly throughout the day until it's taken complete control over me before I can even realise it. By then I don't have a choice. I just let the tears go. I'm very much well aware it's okay to just cry. My heart must feel heavy for reasons undiscovered yet. So, I will let my body try fight it off naturally in tears before it gets out of hand just like it would with the common winter cold. I'm also at this point where I sit in coffee shops and whisper conversations to myself.... this is totally not good. I even laugh at my own jokes.. THEY ARE EVEN FUNNY. Like why am I telling myself jokes in the first place ? It's kind of cute in a way I guess.... maybe not aha. I need friends. I TOTALLY need friends. I've never been good at not really the making friends part, more like not good at keeping the friends part. I always leave so then I can't feel the heart break of them seeing my broken parts and not liking me anymore, seeing me as "too much of an effort" to be around. Now because of this I've never been close to anyone. I have never had a friendship last longer than 2 years because by that stage you should be getting to know each other on a deeper and personal level. The forming of a committed relationship as one may say. You know what that means, I am and have been professionally told I have an underdeveloped social cognition for someone 21 years of age. And fun fact, this is actually a narcissistic trait. I have learnt that just like everything else in the world even narcissism has a spectrum, so I'm not the whole "I'm better than everyone else" kind of narcissist, I just have more of the inability to socialise part which we all commonly know would come from the ‘superior complex’ associated with narcissism which THANK GOD I don't have. I’m slightly too depressed to ever feel that way. So, I guess you could say I'm a little sad. I think we all are in this day and age. That's what I'm hoping this letter (?) can help with. Being alone in this world goes against all of our primal animal instincts. We are physiologically made, wired in our brains, to be in a pack, so without that we feel vulnerable and weak, as if we would not survive in the wild. So, I don't know, I guess if you are feeling the same, or in a similarly made structured boat, I guess I'm saying come here. Come to me, come to the others who I know will find this page because this here is the pack we belong in, it's meant to be. I will try my best to be a comfort for you to tell your stories to. Rip them out and give them to me instead, I shall take your burdens away happily and I'm sure others will too. We can be in this together. So, for now, read this, read it as a hug. Respond. Tell me your story, I want to hear every word you ever say. It’s beautiful. We shall grow together. This is a safe place for you to come to when you aren't sure where to turn. Use me. I promise I will be here and I will do everything in my power to turn your scars into works of art. Thank you for coming today and reading this. Have a wonderful morning, afternoon or evening. Hug yourself tight for me. And I mean it. It's not stupid. And I will talk to you again soon.

- Lina over and out.

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virgosaturn · 6 years

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~♡ mini synastry report ♡~

this is for a follower who is getting married soon! it is a mini synastry report (does not include all aspects or overlays just main ones), which i am available to do for free in some situations (when i have the time + there is a more permanent relationship). enjoy! x

💃her sun and mercury and vertex in his 5th

fun and easy and romantic. he’s drawn to her and loved how she was in early stages of relationship

🏡his vertex uranus in her 4th

unique home life together full of shared eccentricities. he felt drawn to her and fated to be with her based on home life/family

💃his uranus and saturn in her 5th

conflicting. on one hand, he brings out the quirky cool parts of her interests but can also make her feel weird or invalid for having these interests. he can rain on her parade sometimes

🗓her moon/venus/mars/uranus/neptune (5th house stellium) in his 6th creating 6th house stellium

she wants to serve him!! very sacrificial for him! willing to do whatever he wants to do. (or the opposite - he wants to serve her/do whatever she wants.) sex as part of daily routine. romance as part of daily routine. enjoying structure together and not needing anything grand to enjoy each other’s company. watch out for inequality though

💞her jupiter in his 7th

optimistic future together! likely to feel even more free together and have a jovial life together

🎡his sun/venus/moon/ceres/mercury 10th house stellium in her 9th creating 9thhouse stellium

he opens her mind up and shows her a whole new world like aladin. he brings out the spontaneity in her and makes her feel like she is growing with him

he appreciates how she thinks about spiritual and philosophical matters and may have fallen in love with her because of their travels together, how she interacts with foreign surroundings, how she takes risks

💟her sun trine his sun and moon

easy flow of energies for the two main bodies

💟her sun opposite his mars

conflict of egos occasionally. watch for tempers and lack of understanding - communicate to work through that

💟her sun conjunct his saturn, uranus, and neptune

conjunct saturn can be the saturn person feeling very strongly like a paternal figure and she can feel she has to work and live up to his expectations, she feels a lot of pressure from him

conjunct uranus she feels more rebellious, electric, and exciting with him

conjunct neptune she is more attached, dependent, and illusion filled with him

💟her moon trine his moon, mercury, venus

all easy going and create great flow with communicating about feelings and being affectionate

💟her mars square his sun and moon, trine jupiter, and square pluto,conjunct his dsc

conflict when mars is square both sun and moon. could be petty and common occurring. watch out for that. like sun opposite mars, is ego clash and then to bring in moon, he may feel like she comes on too strong sometimes and she can easily hurt his feelings.

trine jupiter creates bountiful sex life that is highly enjoyable and not too serious

square pluto is power struggles. intense and passionate sex, but also potentially volatile blow ups

conjunct his dsc she is his physical type to a tee and he loves her energy

💟her venus trine his mercury and jupiter

lots of compliments/verbal affection

love feels expansive and freeing

💟her saturn square his mars

he could feel sexually restricted by her and/or that she restricts his general actions and energy. try not to give him a hard time with how he physically expresses himself and the amount of energy he has. be open and communicative about sex and encourage him to be so as well

💟her uranus square his sun

he could feel she is an odd ball sometimes or a shooting star just out of his reach, but its electric and attractive too.

💟her neptune trine his mercury and venus

affectionate and all over each other in a romantic but physical way

may be prone to glossing over conflicts

💟her pluto opposite his mercury

she may come on too strong in conversation and frighten him from speaking his mind. try to lay off sometimes

💟her north node trine his sun

good indication of you both moving in similar directions in life

💟her chiron opposite his sun and moon and venus and conjunct his pluto

with a lot of chiron aspects, look out for her trauma being brought up. be communicative when it does get brought up by him. understand he is not intentionally bringing it up

💟her vertex opposite his mars

meaning also conjunct anti-vertex. a good indication of fated relationship and attraction

💟her mars, jupiter, uranus conjunct his dsc

great, great indication of attraction that will remain and what inspired him to want to marry her. she fit right in with what he needed

#synastry #synastry report #married #marriage #engaged #couple #love #compatibility #aspects #overlays #astrology #mine

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premakalidasi · 6 years

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The Will, extreme nondual/immanentist practice, initiations, and responsibility. Amma, Shiva, Kali, the medicine of stillness, awareness, witnessing.

The difficult path of taking your life into your own hands, making your own judgements about what's valuable, using your own heart instead of blind dogma as your moral compass, the world as Scripture, being aware of all the tremendous power you have, and then truly manifesting the Divine as the Goddess you are--not just *saying* it but living it, whatever you want to call it, extreme “I Am That”, “Samsara is Nirvana,” “Do What Thou Wilt,” really walking the talk--

You know what that is?

It's fucking terrifying. That's what it is.

And if anyone tries to tell you otherwise, especially if they try and sell it as just sitting there peacefully with a smug and radiant smile--that’s not the entire story they’re telling you (or then they’re so out of touch with this world that you’re better off walking away from them very slowly). Or they’re of the sort that’s sitting there happily imagining everything’s an illusion and they’re smiling because they’re so high on that--on the opium of it all being a big play, a big joke (which is fair enough; I like Amma and she’s like that).

But you know what? Opium is a painkiller, and they’re milking their inner poppies exactly because deep inside,

it is all

still

frightening

fuck.

Even Amma’s charity work began from anger at being so appalled at human suffering. And Shiva himself, white as poppy milk, is a painkiller, and I will get to that a bit later. But let me digress here for a bit, since we mentioned self-initiations earlier.

You will be frightened when you realise your full power. Especially--since we were talking about initiations--after having had that power of yours affirmed by an external source, you know you can't pretend you’re an inexperienced idiot any more, can't run away from it all any more. Because when you self-initiate (which *is* legitimate, as is spontaneous enlightenment), it has its own problems. One of the biggest ones being this: exactly because of the “you’re a fraud” crap from outsiders, because of everyone outside of you thinking you’re not *quite* ready anyway, it *can* give you an excuse to fall back on that when the shit hits the fan. If you fuck up, you can lean back on that and lisp “ok, yeah, I guess I wasn’t ready for so-and-so after all. I guess even that big, epic enlightenment experience I had as a kid when staring at the sky, and that spiritual explosion I had that other time when I felt my pulse beating as one with the Earth’s, weren’t somehow enough. Maybe I really do not have enough skill yet.”

Which is bullshit. Those experiences don’t magically become less valid if you fuck up. Which we all do sometimes. You do have the power. It’s not gone anywhere. You’ve always been Divine.

But our minds *love* excuses, and one of the main reasons behind all these passage rites and initiations (hell, all rituals) is exactly because they hit your brain harder when things are made Official. The human brain loves symbols and rituals; animals have rituals. So we work with symbols and rituals because Ug the Cavewoman inside of us all really gets off on a big-ass bonfire. And rites of passage serve to tell you that you’re grown up, now; that it’s time to leave the previous stage of your life behind; to lay down that shit, completely forget about *that* shit, and take this shit, and that shit, and the upcoming shit over there seriously.

Initiation is a part of what teachers are all about: it’s an external person doing the same thing you *could* do yourself, but because they are good at it due to practice and knowledge, and because your funny monkey mind thinks that they’re Special (even though they are the part of the same goddamn Force), it will hit you harder. Just like legal documents are just ink and paper, but once you sign them, everyone’s forced to take them more seriously than had you just said those words out loud. And because we’re all parts of Nature, an initiation is ultimately Nature patting herself on the head: you only *feel* that it’s someone else placing her hand on your head and your funny little monkey mind is ripped open and goes “whoa.”

Funny, ain’t it?

And there are different initiations for different times. These are all different for everyone, depending on your spiritual makeup, personality, whatnot. Some great soul can just snap into Goddess mode just like that; the power just opens up and that’s it. They’re born with the hardware for that software upgrade. But more often than not, what you hear from quite a few interesting people, is that their journey has always been a mix of spontaneous enlightenment (self-initiation), visions, and then someone else giving them teachings, the world itself acting as their teacher once you’ve reached a certain point (it’s all a matter of opening your eyes to it--if Nature is your divinity instead of someone hard to reach high up on a cloud, removed from the world, it’s easy to tune in to that station and listen). There’s also truth to the old cliche that once the student is ready, the master will appear. But in the meantime, there’s no need for despair, because--and I repeat--the knowledge and the gurus and the wisdom are already within your reach, and you just need to open your mind to the possibility that there’s a teaching in everything.

But again, I digress. The point I wish to make here, in the middle of this crazy, crazy neo-conservative culture where people are obsessed with “authenticity” and initiations and authority (and I see a lot of you young people suffering because of it) is that it’s *not* a sign of your unworthiness if you can’t find a physical teacher, let alone afford the journey to see one in a different part of the world, or attend one of those godforsaken 750e ~weekend intensives~. It’s easy to talk about initiations when you live in fucking San Francisco or Boulder or New York or London, or a culture where there are mystics around every corner! But if one knows anything about the nature of the world (I don’t want to say “privilege,” but I am saying “privilege”), one also knows that great teachers don’t grow on trees. As someone who’s lived in very remote areas herself, in incredibly spiritually sparse cultures, I know the reality of how difficult it can be to find even fellow devotees, let alone great teachers. So if you’re living in Bumfuck, Novaya Zemlya, it’s going to be more difficult for you because you’re going to have to go the way of books (please, do read books, old books, pre-2000 books; the Internet is full of really, really poor-quality and watered-down and contaminated “information,”) and learning from friends and family and the world to get your learning and evolve as a person. But that doesn’t mean attaining (or, rather, rediscovering, re-linking yourself to the Divine) is not possible, and there have *always* been individuals who were great souls in the middle of nowhere. It’s just that they lived and died without the world knowing of them, because they lived in jungles, tundras, deserts.

Thankfully, in this day and age of the jet engine, there are amazing teachers who can travel the world (especially Amritanandamayi, to whom I’ll get in a bit, who has embraced 30+ million people and is doing it somewhere right now), but even then, it’s going to be difficult to find the right one. If you’re following a rarer path, especially a world-affirming and sex-positive path, these teachers may not even exist, and there are so many abusers out there in those paths that, especially if you’re female, it’ll actually be safer for you to not go near *any* of those guys. (But just because you have to do it on your own, that’s not an excuse for you to be an egotist, either--rather, it’s a burden, because it will make things even more difficult for you because you have to watch out even harder for your ego. Being different is a quick way to feeling you’re a special snowflake, a great adept who knows The True Way, and the shelves of esoteric bookstores are lined with masturbatory works by people like that.)

On the other hand, the right teacher may well exist, but you’re not ready for them yet. I wasn’t ready for Amma when I was an angry teenager rebelling against all organised religion and a cynical twentysomething who’d seen it all by then; I am still not a fan of the elements in her teachings that are aligned with mainstream Hinduism and I still don’t believe a 4-year-old dying in agony from leukemia deserved it because she cheated on her husband in a past life. But I did not know the level of her universalism, then--I did not know then that she didn’t care if I accepted that or not, but that what I *did* accept--my own path--was the most important thing, and that she would only tell me to dive deeper into that. When I first heard of her, I shrugged it off because I knew how most Hindu gurus, just like most Hindus in general, are pretty conservative and most certainly aren’t fans of Pagans or Tantrics (if that sounds contradictory to those of you who don’t know much about religion on that side of the world, extreme Tantrism is as anti-dogma and as far removed from conservative Hinduism as feminist witchcraft or Satanism are from fundamentalist Pentecostal Christianity. And the worst and most visible types of Tantrics are massive abusive, black-magic-fetishising, conceited, violent assholes way beyond what an American highschooler wanking over childish “left-hand” books can imagine, so Hindus have reasons to dislike them/us). Most Hinduism is focused on escaping the world and the cycle of birth and rebirth, not about venerating it all as the Goddess (only a small handful of Tantric/Bhakti cults and individuals do the latter, and their role is exaggerated in the West). But when I heard from one of her disciples that she had a temple to Kali in her ashram and had done extreme nondual sadhana herself and that she equated Nature with God and sounded like Ramakrishna more than any of the stuck-up gurus, and when I saw just how 100% affirmative she was about everyone being different and that being a *strength,* and how she did *not* force anyone to accept those mainstream Hindu (or any other) ideas about religion, and was--at her core--about only absolute, immanent love, having dedicated herself to supporting every goddamn soul on this planet and not judging them or even thinking about their “sins” but just affirming the divine spark in everyone--was I ready.

Now, Amma gives mantra initiation (mantra diksha) to each and every soul who asks. That’s pretty much the most accessible initiation from a spiritual master (and full-time 24/7 channel of the Goddess) one can get in the world right now. I can’t think of anyone else of that level who does it so universally for everyone on that kind of global scale, regardless of your religion, without imposing hers upon you--*you* choose the deity or the concept you want a mantra for (atheists have asked for a mantra for love or compassion, and so on). She doesn’t want to make you into a Hindu unless that’s your path; she wants to make you go deeper into your own faith/practice. The diksha itself will be over quickly and you’ll be pushed and shoved through the crowd, and it will probably feel like a downer, but you’re nevertheless walking away with a gem. The value of a mantra given by someone who really Gets It, on that Ramakrishna-but-female level of equal vision where she can kiss a leper’s wounds and initiate someone as antinomian and as erotic in her practice as yours truly without a shred of judgement but rather the message “well, go forth and do it *properly,*” can’t be overemphasised.

But, like I said before, there's no turning back after that, so ask yourself if you really *are* ready for that initiaton, whatever form it will take. A guru, or being ravished by a trickster god on the edge of sleep, anyone else. You don’t fuck around anymore after that. Perhaps you’re self-initiated and don’t fuck around either, so that’s good. But just know that whatever it ends up being for you, it will be a big-ass turning point and that even after that, fear is normal. Real initiation, when it happens, will be Huge. Perhaps you’ll only feel it as something subtle at first, but it will be Huge later, trust me.

[Amma being what she is, she half snuck it upon me--I should've realised that this was her way (with me) at mantra diksha already, when I'd asked for what I thought was a handy kitchen work knife and she gave me a fucking chainsaw instead. But it was only two years later, when she bestowed nama diksha (name initiation) upon me (and all kinds of other, unexpected things and life-changing things besides, that same moment, similar to the damned chainsaw thing) that I really had to come to terms with the fact that this was fucking *it.* I could not sit the fuck around any more; that’s why you have this blog. Decades of mostly private devotions were ripped open and even old and fucked-up poems written in the style of self-torturing bhaktas/Sufis wanting to be crushed by the Beloved, poems which I knew people would misinterpret, were poured out as acts of bhakti (but that's another post entirely; either on some spiritual masochism as an offering of one's neuroses to the gods or on how I will never understand how the Tumblr generation/culture can be so obtuse as to forever and always think the author=her works, I haven't decided yet). Besides, I thought I was dying by that point anyway, so I didn't have much time left for faffing about in any case. I suspect the clever bitch might also have given me some extra time on this planet as well, so that I could make the most of it in Kali's service--well, I *had* asked for her to help me become Kali’s instrument, just NOT ON THAT LEVEL, HOLY SHIT, WHAT THE FUCK--but that's how these things go with her and myself, it seems. Whether it’s just the hug, or a mantra, or a name, or an answer to a question, she gives you more than you ever think you deserve, and then some. She hugs you but she also punches open your heart if that’s what has to be done, delivers a mighty defibrillator-blast of energy to wake up your own heart-power like a goddamn volcano and then gives you That Look and a conspiratorial smile that's basically all "That's it, kid; you've got it. Now, don’t fuck it up.”]

That realisation, that unveiling of your own power is going to be a bomb going off, blasting you to bits and then glueing you back together with irradiated mutant powers.

And if you *don't* feel awed, afraid about it--if you don't feel "shitshitshit" about it on a regular basis--

--Then I'm afraid you are a narcissistic, egotistical, privileged git who hasn't experienced awareness more than halfway, if that. You are the spiritual equivalent of someone running around with scissors, but unaware that you are doing so. You need to go back. You need to dig into the 101. And only when you’ve shat yourself, can you come back.

True awareness, true power, true understanding of your Divine Self comes with a crushing, devastating responsibility that you feel you can't handle at times--and feeling this is a good sign, because this kind of feeling is not likely to happen without empathy. If you do have empathy, if you truly do understand just how intricately everything in this universe is interconnected and just how human delusions, idiocies and oppressions--especially self-inflicted oppressions--work, you will feel like absolute rubbish and helpless and small.

This is why so many yogis, so many intelligent empaths, so many hypersensitive people are so fucking angry all the time. It's not that they are crap at knowing the Self, crap at knowing Reality. It's that they are all *too* aware of it all, and it stinks.

But it’s what you do with that pain that is the enlightened part, the divine action, the divine embodiment. Awareness is the ignition, suffering is the fuel, your heart is where the combustion takes place, and your body/mind is the vehicle. It's that pain that impels you on, the whip at your back, the tack on the chair that makes you jump up and do something about it all. It is what makes you strive for the ecstasy of love all the harder, for establishing more of that love and that awareness in the world around you; it makes you work until exhaustion to make at least one little corner of this world less of a dark and miserable place.

In fact, you can say pain is the very catalyst of transcendence.

And by transcendence, I always mean the transcendence of human, societal idiocy and the suffering it's caused, not this beautiful world and embodied existence that is the Goddess. People have mistaken suffering, wounds and illness for the entirety of the world and the body for too long; they’ve mistaken human/societal crap for all there is; when in reality, we/the world are much more than that. Even physical pain and death are but opportunities for us to transcend them through analysing how we approach them, and how we could do that more fruitfully; how we could get something even out of these things to make the world less miserable a place. They're nothing but buttons that switch on the turbo mode for your capacity for intense empathy and compassion--for example, a temporary illness limiting your motor abilities making it easier for you to understand people with 24/7 limited mobility.

After you’ve understood that, there’s no excuse.

You have to, as they say, feel the fear and do it anyway.

***

This terror, too, is Kali. She cuts and smashes and chews and rips and tears and stomps away at everything until it's all a bloody, painful mess; but it's all ultimately in the service of liberation, of cleaning things up. She’s the doctor who lances the boil, the surgeon that cuts out the tumours. And at the end of that bloody stampede, the only way out of the pain and confusion that’s the battlefield of existence, the only way out of her drunken, righteous battle-rage is Shiva: pure consciousness, pure witnessing, pure Love offered, waiting for her to join her power with his stillness. In an extreme state of one-pointedness, become but Awareness--symbolised by the erect, ready linga pointing towards her--he awaits until she sits down upon him, lover into womb, babe onto breast, whichever version you prefer--and the world *snaps* back together again, the pieces fit together perfectly again, and there's but the Whole. Nature reels contented, beyond dualisms and permeated with the blissful peace of Awareness; her tongue--rajas, the active principle in the world; action, drive, passion--rolls out to point to her heart, the centre of All.

And it's that dance of chaos and destruction that is the human world, the world of society, and it's *supposed* to feel bloody terrifying if you have a heart; only Love-permeated pure Consciousness can ever anchor us within it, snap us out of it, too, to return us to the Whole. Only stillness, only calmness, only Love given with strength and integrity. Not a neurotic love or a possessive love or an overly self-sacrificing love, but a love that is about wholeness, about equalising, about balance. It’s only apt that it’s symbolised by the phallus because it’s far less vulnerable than the yoni, far more difficult to abuse and to hurt. It’s love that stands on its own, as it were, the Beloved given the freedom to do whatever She wishes with it, taking what she needs, at her own pace, in the way that satisfies her, without hurting herself or him. Revolutionary. In a world where the opposite is the default--women’s and other givers’ and carers’ bodies and souls being abused and exploited in the name of love--it’s an idea worth contemplating, realising, embodying in one’s thought and action. A love that stands on its own and gives without diminishing, without being enslaved, vampirised.

But you can only be that, you can only give that if you are Consciousness and if you are Still and a Witness to the craziness outside--when you start thrusting too hard into things, thinking you’re just trying to love (but are only really satisfying your own desire/ego/dick), you’ll end up hurting the recipient and that’ll trigger a cycle of pain that will end up hurting you too. Only if you can contain yourself, *then* will the energy sit down with you peacefully. And together, now a balanced whole, can you get to work. Only that stillness, only that patience, only that witnessing is the opium that enables even the cripple to walk--Kali the doctor, Shiva the medicine both working hand in hand, linga in yoni, soul in body, consciousness in matter.

***

So, it's not about being not terrified. It's not about never feeling crazy, weak. It's about knowing all that and going ahead anyway because you've got work to do.

There are enlightened, supremely intelligent beings out there who are, in some part of their seemingly serene bodies, absolutely fucking *shitting* themselves and screaming with fear, and/or running amok, absolutely batshit crazy; but it's just that they hold on to the consciousness, the anchor, identify with the Shiva principle so tightly that they seem calm. They may even be in great pain, but the pain is but fuel for them and drives them ever onwards, even with gritted teeth and bloodied feet.

And that's the vast majority of what they call enlightened existence. Not necessarily a state of being permanently blissed out, but one permanent internal scream of

--AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA--

--and going forth into the world anyway.

#fear #shiva #kali #initiation #nondualism #amma #amritanandamayi #advaita #i guess i am doing sermons now #immanence #tantra #prema kalidasi #sermons

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garywonghc · 6 years

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How Will You See the Guru?

by Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse Rinpoche

Guru devotion is the head, heart, blood, spine, and breath of the incredible Vajrayana, the path of Buddhist tantra. The Vajrayana is not a safe stroll in the countryside. In fact, safety is probably the least of our concerns. The Vajrayana’s way of dealing with ego and the emotions is hazardous. The methods are sometimes even reckless. Therefore, the tantric path is the most adventurous of all Buddhist paths. If this is not an adventure, then there is no adventure.

Deciding to follow another human being — not a god, not a machine, not nature, not a system of governance, not the sun or the moon but a shower-taking, sleeping, yawning, shitting, moody, bribable being — is either the stupidest thing a person can do or the most rewarding. It is a gift to have this inclination and the tenacity to follow it. It is a gift to have doubtless confidence. It is a gift to be able to kill doubt with doubt. Not everyone has these gifts.

Nyoshul Lungtok’s student had these gifts. Once while doing the guru’s laundry, he found a shit stain and thought, “Oh, the Vajradhara shits.” But having received instructions on how a student must regard the teacher as Buddha, he immediately reprimanded himself, “How can I think the Vajradhara shits?” But then he reprimanded himself again, thinking, “Is this just me being a sycophant?” Then for a third time he reprimanded himself, coming to the conclusion that being a sycophant is just a concept, a fear. And after all these scoldings, he still followed the guru, not blindly but wholeheartedly.

Once you have started the journey of practicing Vajrayana, many things can happen, and you have to be prepared. It’s important to have faith, but it’s good to also have doubt and use reason. Often faith comes in the aftermath of doubt and doubt comes in the aftermath of faith. And the one that comes second is often much more powerful. In the end, we have to abandon both.

The Vajrayana is a path of the union of wisdom and method, the union of science and faith, the union of myth and truth, but even many Vajrayana practitioners find it difficult or don’t even think to try to marry these seemingly unmarriable qualities. For example, many apply the method, such as prostrating to the guru or offering a lotus flower, hands beautifully folded in anjali mudra, but they do so as a ritual without applying wisdom. Prostration is surrender, but very few people prostrate with genuine confidence; they don’t think, “I am prostrating to the deity who is none other than myself, and likewise the deity is prostrating to me.” Knowing that the deity and the prostrator are one and the same is the ultimate prostration.

The guru is actually like a horizon. A horizon is apparent — a line where earth and sky appear to meet. But in reality, they never meet. There is only an illusion of an ending point, a point of reference where we can stand and measure and assess. In this way, the guru is like a horizon between wisdom and method, myth and truth, science and faith.

THE OUTER GURU

In the Vajrayana, the guru has three aspects: the outer guru, the inner guru, and the secret guru. It’s important to be clear about these before entering a path that uses the guru as a method for awakening. The great Sakyapa master Könchok Lhundrup explained that the outer guru is the physical person you can see and communicate with, from whom you can receive verbal and symbolic teachings and instructions. The outer guru is “as Buddha as it gets.” The inner guru is the nature of your mind—in other words, a mind that is not thinking of a “thing” but is simply cognisant and undeniably present. And the secret guru is the emptiness of all phenomena.

The inner guru and the secret guru have no skin colour. They have no title and no seat. They have no form to be clad in silk brocade. They are not bound by moods, attitudes, or culture. And somehow the absence of these attributes adds to their value in our minds, and we hold them in higher esteem than the real McCoy. Outer gurus are invariably complicated entities because they are tangible and lovable. They have moods and attitudes and phone numbers. They are less mysterious because they yawn and go to sleep when they are tired. But all three manifestations of the guru — outer, inner, and secret — are equally valuable. There is no hierarchy.

We begin the path of the Vajrayana by imagining, fabricating, making believe, “meditating” on the outer guru as Buddha. By the power of our imagination, we see the colour of the guru’s skin as gold like Shakyamuni or lapis lazuli like Vajradhara. We may see the guru’s body with the extra arms of a tantric deity and the guru’s gender switching from male to female or female to male. After a while, we begin to see this living and breathing person as Buddha.

But this “seeing,” contrary to what you might think, doesn’t necessarily mean the guru will appear on your doorstep tanned with gold or encrusted with lapis lazuli. It means you will no longer interact with the guru as a dualistic ordinary being as you once did. How will you see the guru? The classic explanation is that interaction with the guru will be a direct experience of form as emptiness and emptiness as form; it will be a mingling with the jnanas and kayas. This explanation is not so far-fetched. Just think about how your perception of a person transforms from the moment you meet them as a stranger to when you fall in love to when they become your lover. As your perception changes, the experience changes.

By the time you manage to truly free yourself from your limited perception of the guru, you will also be free from the limited perception of colour and shape. Gold will be indistinguishable from the colour of a sponge mop. A thousand arms no longer stupefy or get in the way — in fact, it becomes almost ridiculous to think that a perfect human being would have only two arms. At this stage you stop worrying about all attributes — size, weight, gender, and so on; their significance melts away. It’s like nettle soup: once it’s cooked, you don’t worry about the stinging hairs anymore.

The guru is not a trophy, nor is seeing the guru as the Buddha the end of the story. To be happy with just that would be a contradiction of the Buddha’s words. To focus only on the Buddha would be like focusing on a finger that’s pointing to the moon instead of looking directly at the moon. When we recognise our own mind as the Buddha, that is the final victory. That’s when you become your own master; you no longer seek, find, venerate, follow, or obey one particular person or object — this is the glorious uniqueness of the Vajrayana. Without recognising your mind as the Buddha, the Vajrayana would be a defective path akin to Kim Jong-il-ism.

TWO SUPREME METHODS: THE PRACTICAL AND THE MORE PRACTICAL

The Vajrayana offers two supreme methods for accumulating merit: developing compassion for sentient beings and generating devotion for the guru. We can always accumulate merit through veneration of the Buddha, but for beginners this may be too abstract a concept: we have never seen the Buddha, and we haven’t met anyone who has met him. He’s purely our imagination. The guru whom you have encountered, on the other hand, has appeared before you within your own capacity, and you can communicate with him. You can think of him as a buddha — not Shakyamuni but your buddha, if that’s all your merit can handle. As your ability becomes more efficient, the projection of the guru becomes more sublime. Therefore, the guru is the perfect object through which to accumulate merit. With the guru, you have personal contact, a personal relationship; you can actually have an interaction. In the tantras it is said again and again that to venerate even one pore of the guru’s body has much more merit than making offerings to thousands and thousands of buddhas.

For many of us, generating compassion for all sentient beings is very abstract; devotion to the guru feels more practical and feasible. Even if we manage to generate a vague idea of what “all sentient beings” might mean, we might be able to sustain compassion for them for a day or two, but it’s difficult to feel compassion for all people at all times. Devotion to a guru whom we have chosen for ourselves is much more practicable. Our compassion for all sentient beings is always marred by partiality and projection. Devotion to a guru, however, is very personal and much less abstract. It can begin with admiration, awe, obedience, and inspiration, though they may all be sporadic.

MERIT DICTATES HOW WE PERCEIVE THE GURU

As Jigme Lingpa said, the moon has all the qualities necessary for its reflection to appear on the surface of a clear lake. If the moon did not have a shape or substance, and if it didn’t reflect the light of the sun, it would not be possible for it to appear on the water’s surface. Furthermore, the quality of clear water is that it can reflect, and when the moon and the water — wo entirely separate entities — are perfectly aligned without any obstruction between them, a reflection of the moon will appear effortlessly, without intention. Similarly, our inner Buddha has qualities that enable it to manifest effortlessly and without intention. When there are no obstacles, the Buddha will reflect spontaneously in sentient beings who have the merit.

Some beings have the merit to enjoy the reflection of the inner Buddha in the form of the outer historical Buddha Shakyamuni, who came 2,500 years ago. Some have the merit to enjoy the reflection of the inner Buddha in the form of a large fish during a time of famine. For others, the Buddha may be stone statues, paintings, a lotus, a garden, or any of the other material objects that give sentient beings temporary happiness. And those with the most supreme type of merit have the ability to see nondual bliss as the Buddha.

The process of relating to this reflection of the inner Buddha is called devotion. As long as there is the stream of thoughts, there is no end to the projection of samsara. Until the end of samsara, there is no end to the path. As long as there is a path, there is devotion. And as long as there is devotion, there is an outer teacher.

THE HUMAN BRIDGE

If the concept of the outer guru as Buddha is beyond comprehension, recognising the inner guru and the secret guru is even more vast. In the beginning, we can only form a hazy idea about any of these three aspects of the guru on an intellectual level. To truly understand the inner and secret gurus, we need a bridge that extends from one shore to the other — from ourselves to our inner and secret gurus. The only bridge is a person we can touch and see and with whom we can share experiences, who can be a reference and an example and who has the familiarity and knowledge to introduce the inner and secret gurus. The only bridge is the outer guru.

The relationship with a guru can never be simple. We human beings have a habit of hope and fear, and we each come saddled with our different cultures and characters. As long as we are bound by these distinctions, we are deluded, and as long as we are deluded, our relationships are complicated.

Through the veil of your everyday deluded perceptions, the outer guru may seem like an ordinary person. He shares your taste for pizza with anchovies but also drinks strong coffee, which you don’t like at all. He appears to get cranky when you don’t get it right. He’s a human being. But he wasn’t born in your neighborhood, so he’s exotic and interesting. The more exotic the better, especially if you’re a naive and gullible disciple easily impressed by colours, shapes, and races. The best is when his skin is a completely different shade. Then again, if it’s too exotic it doesn’t work.

BEYOND HUMAN

It’s difficult to accept a guru as “beyond” human because we practitioners are human beings ourselves; there is a part of us always looking for familiarity. We want our guru to be shaped like us and to like the same love songs as we do. On the other hand, we want our guru to be exceptional and sublime but not too exceptional or too sublime. If the guru had three eyes, we wouldn’t know how to handle that. We buy gifts for the guru and imagine how surprised and pleased he will be to receive them. At the same time, we want the guru to be clairvoyant, if not omniscient, so he will already know what we are bringing. It’s complicated, our mind. So the guru needs to serve both purposes: being an ordinary human who can make sense, and also being one who has all the skills to take you beyond the human state. The guru must be half ordinary being and half sublime being.

The work falls in your corner. You won’t have any trouble seeing the guru as a human being because that’s already your habit. But you’ll have to work to make that person a hybrid by “seeing” him or her as sublime. You have to do whatever it takes — educate yourself, habituate yourself — to see him or her as sublime. And most important, you have to have the merit and the ability to think that way. This is why we have mind training and guru yoga.

BEYOND DUALISM

While many err on the side of expecting too much of a guru — like constant worldly emotional support and advice — others reject a human guru altogether. It’s as if they are afraid to relate to a living being. They say things like “I am my own guru,” using the convenient and educated-sounding excuse that everything, including the guru, is the nature of mind. But after some questioning, it becomes clear that they don’t have even a faint understanding of what “nature of mind” means.

I’ve met many middle-aged Europeans who resent the Abrahamic religions they were brought up with for managing to infect them with the virus of guilt. At some point along the way, some managed to rebel, perhaps when they were teenagers during the post-World War II era. Some of these rebels managed to get excited about Buddhist teachings; they were turned on by concepts like “everything is mind” and “you are your own master,” and they remain excited to this day. These beliefs align with their rebellious nature and validate their resentment of organised religion. Intellectually, these ex-Abrahamic dharma seekers no longer believe in original sin, but because of their upbringing, the habit of feeling guilty and sinful is still strong. This type of person has a tendency to over enthusiastically wave the banner of inner and secret gurus.

This attitude — that the inner guru is enough — is often adopted by those whose intellectual orientation is slightly nihilistic or who are from very controlling, high- achieving families and resent the idea of yet another powerful person breathing down their necks.

Then there are others who like to be led. Even when it comes to mundane issues, they don’t trust their own judgment or inner voice. They can barely go to the grocery store without being full of doubt. They also tend to be a little bit lazy, asking the guru for advice on every little thing that pops into their heads. These types of people have to learn to trust themselves and rely less on the outer guru. They might find that the more they trust the inner and secret gurus, the more they rely on and love the outer guru.

Ultimately, the question of whether the inner guru is enough for you is irrelevant if your spiritual aim is to attain enlightenment. But there is an easy way to find the answer. If you can overcome any and all external circumstances, then maybe you don’t need the outer guru, because by then all appearance and experience arise as the guru anyway. On the other hand, if a practitioner is not able to control circumstances and situations, then all kinds of mind training are necessary. Therefore, one needs to be led, to be poked, to be spoon-fed.

To find out whether or not you are controlled by circumstances and situations, there are myriad things you can do, such as skip lunch. If you are a man, wear a bra and walk around in public. If you are a woman, go to a fancy party in your bedroom slippers. If you are married, see if you can tolerate someone pinching your spouse’s bottom. See if you are swayed by praise, criticism, being ignored, or being showered with attention. If you get agitated, embarrassed, or infuriated, then more than likely you are still under the spell of the conditions of habit and culture.

You are still a victim of causes and conditions. When a loved one dies or the life you are trying to build collapses, it’s likely that your understanding of the inner and secret gurus will not ease the pain. Nor will your understanding of “form is emptiness and emptiness is form” provide solace. In this case, you need to insert a new cause to counter these conditions. Because your understanding of the inner and secret gurus is only intellectual, you cannot call upon them. This is where the outer, physical, reachable guru is necessary.

As long as you dwell in a realm where externally existing friends and lovers are necessary, as long as you are bothered by externally existing obstacles like passions and moral judgments, you need a guru. Basically, as long as you have a dualistic mind, don’t kid yourself by thinking that an inner guru is enough. When you reach a point where you can actually communicate with your inner guru, you will have little or no more dualism. You will no longer be repelled by or attracted to an outer guru.

Therefore, the outer guru is necessary until you at least have the gist of the inner and secret gurus. When you realise the inner and secret gurus, you won’t even be able to find the outer guru anymore.

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samosoapsoup · 3 years

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Living with a Visionary

For more than fifty years, my wife and I shared a world. Then, as Diana’s health declined, her hallucinations became her own reality.

By John Matthias

January 25, 2021

You would think it was a performance of some kind. When she wakes up, if she has slept at all, she tells me about the giants carrying trees and bushes on what she calls zip lines, which I am able to identify as telephone wires. Beneath the busy giants, she explains, there is a marching band playing familiar tunes by John Philip Sousa. She is not especially impressed by either of these things, and the various children playing games in the bedroom annoy her. “Out you go,” she says to them. Then she describes the man with no legs who spent the night lying beside her in bed. He had been mumbling in pain, but nobody would come to help him. She remembers her own pain, too. “I could hardly move,” she says.

And she can hardly move now. Her legs are stiff, her back is cracking as I lift her out of bed. Although still clearly in pain, she gives me a sly look and gestures with her chin toward the flowerpot in the hallway. “The Flowery Man,” she says. “He’s very nice.”

She is fully articulate, in many ways her familiar self. She asks me if I saw the opera. I’m not sure which opera she means; we’ve seen many over the fifty years that we’ve been married. She means the one last night in our back yard. She describes it in detail—the stage set, the costumes, the “really amazing” lighting, the beautiful voices. I ask her what opera was performed. Now I get another look, not a sly one but a suspicious one.

“You don’t believe me, do you?”

I say that it’s not a matter of belief but of perception. I can’t see what she sees. She tells me that this is a great pity. I miss so much of life. I used to have something of an imagination, but I’ve evidently lost it. Maybe she should start spending time with someone else. Also, she knows about my girlfriend. The one in the red jacket. There is no girlfriend, but there is a red jacket hanging over the back of her walker. Suddenly, she forgets the girlfriend and remembers the opera. “Oh,” she says. “It was ‘La Traviata,’ and we went together with Anna Netrebko before she sang.”

Now I have my own brief vision. Diana is only twenty-one, I am twenty-five. We have just arrived in South Bend, where I am teaching English at Notre Dame. A friend wrote about us in those days as having appeared to him like two fawns in the grove of our local Arcadia. Diana wore the clothes she had brought from England, including her miniskirt, and people in cars would honk their horns and stare. In London, where we had met, it had been the middle of the nineteen-sixties; at our Midwestern college, it was more like the fifties. A former student told me that when I held classes at home, for a change of scene, he and his classmates took bets on who would be lucky enough to talk to her.

I see her walking in from the kitchen with tea and her homemade scones. College boys—only boys were admitted back then—lift china cups balanced on wafer-thin saucers. Some have never eaten a crumbly scone or sipped tea out of such a delicate cup. Diana is often told she looks like Julie Christie, and my students all want to be Omar Sharif, Christie’s co-star in “Doctor Zhivago.” Some write poems inspired by Lara, Zhivago’s muse. Diana smiles at them, greeting those whose names she remembers. Hello, Vince. Hi there, Richard. She dazzles them. She dazzles me.

Art was her passion. Later, she earned an art-history degree and became the curator of education at our university’s museum. She devised a program of what she called “curriculum-structured tours,” ambitiously proposing to organize museum tours that would be relevant to any class. This she did—chemistry students learned about the properties of seventeenth-century paint, psychology majors studied portraits for signs of their subjects’ mental health—and eventually she exported her innovations to other college campuses. Because of her, students began looking seriously at paintings and sculptures. They followed her hand, pointing out some luminous detail; they listened to the music of her voice, her British accent slowly becoming Americanized over the decades.

Diana trained a new set of gallery interns each year, teaching them about all there was to see and find in the museum’s art. She loved them dearly, and they loved her back. She had been conducting tours for thirty years when a former intern, Maria, came by the house—ostensibly on an errand to collect some of Diana’s library books. Really, she wanted to talk to me. She explained that Diana had started seeing things. The first time Maria noticed it, Diana was showing a class of French students a reduction of Charles Louis-Lucien Müller’s “The Roll Call of the Last Victims of the Reign of Terror,” from 1860. It’s a very busy painting, with dozens of figures waiting to be transported to the guillotine. Diana told the students that at the center of “The Roll Call” was a man named General Marius. But General Marius wasn’t there; he was around the corner, in a painting called “Marius and the Gaul,” about which Diana had written her thesis, many years before. She was speaking in French, and at first Maria thought that Diana had got tangled up in the language. Surely it was her words, not her reality, that had become so confused.

Not too long after Maria’s visit, Diana returned home one day looking tired and depressed. She sat down on the sofa next to me, took my hand, and said, “The students tell me that I’m seeing things that aren’t there.” I admitted that Maria had already told me about this. By then, Diana had begun treatment for Parkinson’s disease, taking a standard cocktail of medicines in small amounts: levodopa combined with carbidopa, in a drug called Sinemet. She had received the diagnosis only because her doctor couldn’t otherwise explain her onset of general weakness. Aside from fatigue, she had virtually no symptoms, and her behavior had been absolutely normal while taking Sinemet. Now she confessed that she was seeing things at home as well. She pointed at a wadded-up sweater on a chair across the room. “That’s not really a cat, is it?”

I asked her what else she saw. “Little people,” she explained, “like Gulliver’s Lilliputians.” Objects had been changing shape—“morphing” was her word—for some time, but recently things had begun appearing out of nowhere. We saw a specialist in Chicago, who, like the neurologists Eric Ahlskog and Oliver Sacks, called these “illusions.” We suspected that the hallucinations were a side effect of Sinemet, and, after consulting many books and articles, Diana and I began to titrate her medication ourselves. Most Parkinson’s patients end up doing this, experimenting with how much they take of each medicine and at what time. There were new delivery systems for the basic mix of levodopa and carbidopa, and we tried them all, along with a number of adjuvant therapies.

At first, Diana could identify her illusions as such, and sometimes even dismiss them. (“Scat!” got rid of the cat.) The things she saw were not always frightening. Many of them seemed inspired by her work in the visual arts. Visiting a neighbor, Diana enthusiastically described a painting on a blank wall where, we later learned, one had been hanging until several days before. Her knowledge of eighteenth-century art may in part explain her delight in seeing topiary figures cut into very large trees, where I saw nothing but leaves. Some of the visions she told me about were clearly breathtaking. “If only you could see this,” she said.

I couldn’t see what she saw, but I could see her. She was somehow growing more beautiful—or beautiful in a new way. Everyone noticed this. Never one to use much makeup or even visit a hair stylist, she would wash her face in the morning, put up her hair or let it hang at shoulder length, and come downstairs to start her day. Her striking good looks belied the condition that would bring her down. It was Julie Christie all over again, but not from “Doctor Zhivago”; she was the aging Christie of Sarah Polley’s movie “Away from Her.” Adapted from Alice Munro’s story “The Bear Came Over the Mountain,” the film is about a woman with Alzheimer’s disease. Her decline is slow, until it is suddenly fast. Diana watched the movie without anxiety. She had not, so far, suffered any significant memory loss. When I reminded her that decades earlier my students had compared her to the actress, she laughed. During a trip to Chicago to see her doctor, we had been approached by a man on the street, who said, “I just have to tell you how beautiful you are. Forgive me for intruding on your day.” We got into a taxi, and Diana growled to me, “I sure don’t feel very beautiful.”

For two or three years, Diana’s condition was manageable through modifications in her medications, and through her ability to recognize the hallucinations for what they were. At the art gallery, she avoided confusion by writing out scripts for her tours. She managed to retire when she was scheduled to, not before. It was shortly afterward that her hallucinations began to increase in frequency and intensity. She insisted that the topiary trees were the work of giants, and she described the giants’ elaborate uniforms. Plays and operas were staged in our back yard, spontaneous parades appeared in the streets.

It became harder and harder for her to understand that her visions were not real. She sometimes asked me why these events were not written about in the paper or covered in the news on television. In the house, nothing held still: objects danced on the mantel, the ideograms on our hanging scroll of Chinese calligraphy flew around like butterflies. At the beginning, many of these transformations had given her pleasure. More and more, however, they annoyed and alarmed her. Three women were “hanging” in her closet and refused to leave. The Flowery Man roamed the house. There were rude people who masturbated into a dresser drawer and had sex on the living-room sofa.

When Diana could no longer shake these things off, she began to surrender to them. She slowly ceased to see them as hallucinations. I had read that it did not help to deny the reality of these visions, so I stopped doing that. I began trying to deal with them as if I could see what she did. Friends were encouraged to make the same allowances. For a while this helped. A fifth person at a dinner for four did not pose a big problem once you got used to this kind of thing. I informed the members of Diana’s reading group that she might refer to people who weren’t there, and they, too, made the adjustment.

One day, she shouted for my help. A housepainter in white overalls, she told me, was painting over the portrait of one of our daughters that hung on the living-room wall. The man didn’t speak; none of Diana’s human apparitions ever spoke, though their mouths would move without sound, and sometimes they would respond to stern rebukes. I could say things like “I’ll see the painter to the door.” But often the damage had been done. In the case of our daughter’s portrait, it continued to exist, for Diana, partially erased. She referred to the painting as “the half-faced child.”

Some medications work for Parkinson’s patients with hallucinations, but for Diana they all seemed to make things worse. In November of 2019, a new kind of confusion about both space and time took hold. One morning, I found her with her suitcase packed, ready to travel. When I asked where she was going, she wasn’t sure. “Away,” she said. She wasn’t sure why. But, she insisted, “we certainly can’t stay any longer in this person’s house, in a place where we don’t even speak the language.”

Christmas approaches, and I return to the present tense. Everything that happens after this feels like it’s still happening now. Slowly, through the winter, Diana’s benign hallucinations become terrible and threatening presences. (Meanwhile, in China, a new and deadly virus is unleashed on the world.) Diana loses her ability to sleep, a common and debilitating feature of Parkinson’s. Because she is either sleepless or tormented by nightmares, I am also unable to sleep. For a while, I am able to soothe her and offer comfort, but often her dreams continue unabated when she wakes up. Eventually, I am simply incorporated into them. When I ask her if she is awake, she says she does not know.

Her eating also becomes a problem, and I know that she is not getting proper nutrition. I use the blender again and again, counting calories, mixing in anything containing protein. She is getting very thin. I sleep only when she sleeps and eat a quick sandwich as I cook for her. She looks at me one morning and says, “Who are you? What are you doing here?”

Because Diana hides things, then promptly forgets where they are, I often find myself searching for her medical-insurance cards, her driver’s license, some kind of I.D. with her picture on it. She sends me on a wild-goose chase all over the house. This drawer. That closet. But I can never find what we need. The hallucinated people begin to take on more life than the living. And they have names. Not generic and rather charming names like the Flowery Man but monosyllabic American names like Bob, Pete, Dick, George, Jack. No one seems to have a surname. “Jack who?” I ask her. She gives me a straight look and says, “Jack the Ripper.” She keeps asking, “Who’s in charge?” I wish I knew.

In March, as the pandemic descends on the Midwest, I try to explain why she cannot go out or see friends. She doesn’t understand. I don’t dare leave her alone, even for a short trip to the grocery store. She begins going outside when my back is turned, and she frightens some of the neighbors with things she claims to see. I make rules. No phoning friends after 10 p.m. No going outdoors after bed or going downstairs for breakfast in the middle of the night. I finally move to a bed in a separate room.

With the country in lockdown, I can no longer reach Diana’s neurologist in Chicago. Local doctors help us refill some of her medications over the telephone, but have nothing to offer that might help the dementia that is now clearly part of the picture. My most recent reading makes me wonder whether she might have not Parkinson’s but something called Lewy body dementia, which produces vivid hallucinations. Its terrifying symptoms are believed to have led to the suicide of the actor Robin Williams. Diana talks about “jumping in the river.” (The St. Joseph River is only a few hundred yards from our front door.) Neighbors offer to do some shopping for us, but as the pandemic gets worse I hesitate to ask them for more help. When I finally make contact with two or three “senior helper” organizations, I am told that all their programs are on hold. I can do nothing but try to continue on my own. I begin taking pills myself—sedatives washed down with glasses of Merlot. We are living on cans of beans and prescription drugs.

There are still moments when Diana is very happy. Sometimes, she seems to be in a state of bliss. She stands at the open doorway and gazes into the sky. I stand behind her. “Look!” she says. “Why can’t you see?” I tell her that I’m trying, but maybe need some help. She becomes angry and shouts, “The gods! The gods!”

One day, I find Diana clutching a balled-up blanket to her breast. “What have you got?” I ask her. “A dead baby,” she says. I have never seen such terror in her eyes. I have never seen it in anybody’s eyes.

At some point—a day later, two days later—police arrive at the door. In the street, an ambulance is flashing its colored lights. The three policemen at the door have masks on, and I’m initially frightened by this, because I don’t know that many people are now wearing them. Someone has called the police about a lady who lives here who may need to go to the hospital. I stand there gazing stupidly at the policemen. They ask if they can talk to the lady. I tell them she’s my wife. Diana is on the sofa, more or less catatonic.

When I step onto the front porch, I notice some of our neighbors watching from their yards. I am asked questions about Diana and who has been looking after her. I begin to fear that I’m about to be arrested. Someone suggests that maybe it would be good for her to be completely checked out in the E.R., and possibly admitted for a day or so. The next thing I know, two of the ambulance men are bringing a stretcher up to the porch. One of them asks if he can talk to my wife. Finally, I’m able to say something. I say no. They are immediately suspicious. To my amazement, I hear Diana saying, “I’ll talk to them. It’s O.K.” They ask her what’s wrong. She describes a few of her hallucinations. She’s worried about what’s happened to the dead baby. What dead baby? I try to intervene, but already she’s explaining that she had the dead baby in her arms just a moment ago. Perhaps it has rolled away. She gets down on one knee and reaches under the sofa. “Oh, good,” she says, reappearing with the blanket. “Here it is.”

While the medics are conferring with one another, Diana suddenly says, “I think I should go to the hospital.” The ambulance guys seem delighted by this. Diana is put on the stretcher, and the ambulance disappears. No one asks what I think should be done. No one asks me to come along. In the confusion, the blanket has been left on the front porch. When everyone is gone, I take it inside.

That night, Diana is admitted to the hospital for observation. I won’t be able to visit her, because of covid restrictions. I am frantic: they’ll get all the Parkinson’s meds mixed up, they don’t know her schedule. What will happen if she misses a dose of Sinemet?

What transpires in the next days and weeks is sometimes vividly clear and sometimes swirling in a surrealistic fog. At some point, it is decided that I, too, should be examined in the hospital. In the E.R., I am told that I am suffering from exhaustion, malnutrition, and dehydration. I end up on the same floor as Diana. By the time I arrive, she has told everyone that she is a movie director working on a documentary about art therapy in hospitals. From my bed, I explain to her doctors, who are different from my own, as much of her medical history as I can. I am allowed to talk to Diana only by phone.

Social workers keep appearing with documents for me to sign. My daughter Laura and I have agreed, in theory, that eventually Diana will have to move into an assisted-living community. A new facility for patients with dementia has recently been built near Laura’s house, in Worthington, Ohio. Laura wants to take Diana there, and I have to admit that I am no longer able to look after her. I am barely able to look after myself. I sign the papers giving Laura power of attorney for Diana and me. There are decisions to be made, bills to be paid, and I am flat on my back in the hospital.

Covid is tearing through the country. The hospital is filling up with patients, my bed is in demand. My doctors ask if I want to be sent home or to spend three days in the psychiatric hospital associated with the general hospital where I am being treated. They talk about rest, recovery.

Where I end up is not a health spa but more like a boot camp. Before I am moved, all my possessions are taken away. No shoelaces, no belt. At the new facility, I am given a handful of large and small pills every three hours. At night, all patients are on suicide watch. I barely sleep. While I am in the psych ward, Diana is driven in a long-distance ambulance to the care facility in Ohio, where, after a fourteen-day quarantine, she will now live. How Diana deals with this news, what she understands and doesn’t understand, I do not know. She still thinks she is directing a documentary film. I am not allowed to see her before she leaves.

In the second psych ward where I find myself remanded, I am the oldest patient by far. The program of endless group therapies seems designed for adolescents. At seventy-nine, I am too weak to do many of the things demanded of me. When I do not immediately respond to the pills I’m given, there is talk of electroconvulsive therapy. I object, and an online hearing is convened, where a judge concludes that, although I must stay beyond the hospital’s mandatory seventy-two-hour observation period, I do not have to undergo shock therapy.

Meanwhile, I am terrified of covid. Locked out of our rooms for most of the day, we are all in one another’s way, and patients share a common bathroom. One day, I am required to cut off my beard. Looking at myself in the mirror, I discover the corners of my mouth locked in a permanent grimace. The beard has hidden this from me: I can’t smile.

I try to explain to the staff that there has been some kind of mistake, that I need to rescue my wife, who has been taken to Ohio. The things I say to the nurses and therapists must sound mad. When I am finally allowed to see the chief psychiatrist, I hear the desperation in my voice. I watch the unbelieving faces of everyone around me, and wonder how often Diana saw the same incredulity in my own face.

Somehow, our family lawyer gets in touch with a woman named Mary, a registered nurse and “personal health-care advocate,” who is the one to finally secure my release from the psychiatric facility. I am asked to sign some papers that I haven’t read, and then I am free. On the way home in an ambulance, driving back the same way Diana came, I consider asking the attendants riding alongside me if they have heard of the Flowery Man, the topiary trees, the little people—any of Diana’s hallucinated cast of characters. For years I have tried as hard as I could to see these things, to share Diana’s view of the passing world. In her absence, returning to the home where I must now begin to live by myself, I long all the more to understand the reality that she inhabits.

When covid insinuated itself into the facility in Worthington, Ohio, in November, I had been at home for five months. For a couple of weeks, I had managed to communicate with Diana through screens. This confused her, though, so we started using the telephone instead. The last time I saw her face was on Zoom. She told me that she had something beginning with the letter “C.” Then she suddenly smiled her wonderful smile. “What a sweet little girl,” she said, following a hallucination with a sharp turn of her head.

Diana almost survived covid. After testing positive, she spent several nights at the hospital, but was sent back to her facility with a normal temperature and a negative test result. For a few days, I was able to imagine seeing her again, even touching her. I had it all figured out. I would be among the first in line to be vaccinated, among the first to embrace a loved one who had been unreachable for so long. I didn’t care how many hallucinated people came along, as long as Diana was around to see them.

Then her blood-oxygen level dropped. She was not likely to live through the night. Laura put the phone to Diana’s ear, and I read the first poem I ever wrote for her—about waking together in a small Left Bank hotel in Paris before we were married. Finally, I started reading from a book of poetry I had written about her struggle. The dedicatory poem is about the Greek goddess Artemis, known by the Romans as Diana. Its final lines return to Diana the mortal, my wife:

If she could change, she Might be like the woman called by her Roman name Reading in a book beside the fire in my own house. She has come down all these years with me

I couldn’t continue. “You’re doing great, Dad,” my daughter said, “but she wants to know about the Flowery Man.” So I told her everything I knew. ♦

John Matthias, a professor emeritus at the University of Notre Dame, has published some thirty books of poetry, fiction, memoir, translation, and criticism.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/02/01/living-with-a-visionary

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85 famous phrases by Salvador Dalí https://ift.tt/2N287um

Salvador Felipe Jacinto Dalí I Domènech, better known as Salvador Dalí, was a 20th-century Spanish painter, sculptor, engraver, set designer and writer, considered one of the greatest exponents of the genre called Surrealism.

Great phrases by Salvador Dalí

Salvador Dalí is known for his surreal images, his pictorial skills and as an expert cartoonist. This famous Spanish artist is possibly one of the most iconic people of the twentieth century and therefore deserves all our respect and admiration.

For those who do not know his work or his person, you can know a little more about him through the following 85 famous phrases of this great artist who was Salvador Dalí. We hope you enjoy them!

1. I do not take drugs. I am a drug.

Dalí was famous for his personality, which was commonly attributed to the use of recreational drugs and hallucinogens.

2. Knowing how to look is a way of inventing.

Finding the right perspective can give us a new approach to a work of art.

3. To be interesting, one has to provoke.

Finding the feeling in the other person is what can make us interesting.

4. Freedom of any kind is the worst for creativity.

When we get distracted or socialized we are not aware of work and how to innovate in it.

5. Geniuses should never die, the progress of humanity depends on us.

Great works are the fruit of a few geniuses, and when they die their work is paralyzed forever.

6. Genius has to go over madness and madness over genius.

A typical transgressive date of Salvador Dalí trying to confuse the recipient and at the same time recognizing his own madness.

85 famous phrases by Salvador Dalí

7. I think life should be a continuous party.

Salvador Dalí was known as a very sociable man and dedicated to his own recreation.

8. Intelligence without ambition is a bird without wings.

Ambition can drive us to achieve goals that we would not otherwise have achieved.

9. There are some days when I think I will die from a satisfaction overdose.

A date of Dalí in which he plays with the recognition of his addictions and the pleasure he feels at that moment.

10. A great wine requires a madman to grow the vine, a wise man to watch over it, a lucid poet to do it, and a lover to drink it.

Here Dalí tells us about the entire course of a wine's life and the men who accompany it.

11. I believe that the moment is near when, by an active and paranoid thinking method, it is possible to systematize the confusion and contribute to the total discredit of the world of reality.

A very surreal phrase without a doubt of this genius of surrealism that was Dalí.

12. One day it will have to be officially admitted that what we have baptized as 'reality' is an illusion even greater than the world of dreams.

85 famous phrases by Salvador Dalí

Reality is nothing more than what we perceive by our senses, it does not represent the totality of what surrounds us.

13. Give me two hours a day of activity, and I will follow the other twenty-two in dreams.

Dalí tells us here how he enjoys his particular dreamworld because it inspired him.

14. It is easy or impossible.

Without a doubt, a very transgressive date, making the complicated easy can be our duty or otherwise it may be impossible.

15. It is not necessary for the public to know if I am joking or if I am serious, just as I don't need to know.

Dalí tells us about his spontaneity and how he does not even know how he feels in each moment.

16. The first man to compare a young woman's cheeks with a rose was obviously a poet; the first to repeat it was possibly an idiot.

The one who invents something is the true genius, on the contrary, who repeats it is worthless as a person.

17. New skin, new earth! And a land of freedom, if that is possible! I chose the geology of a land that was new to me.

Dalí tells us about his need to find himself beyond where he was.

18. I am doing things that inspire me with deep emotion and I am trying to paint honestly.

Dalí performed with his works what filled him most, he was undoubtedly a born artist.

19. Don't worry about being modern. Unfortunately, it is the only thing that, whatever you do, cannot be avoided.

Being too transgressive can sometimes harm us, but it is also what makes us unique and different.

20. Picasso is a painter, like me; Picasso is Spanish, like me; Picasso is a communist, I am not.

Dalí shows us in this quote a part of his deep enmity with Pablo Picasso, also an icon of the same era.

21. Just as I am surprised that a bank employee never eats a check, I am also surprised that no painter before me ever thought of painting a soft clock.

Dalí tells us in this quote about one of his most famous works: The persistence of memory.

85 famous phrases by Salvador Dalí

22. When the creations of a genius collide with the mind of a layman, and produce an empty sound, there is no doubt that he is in error.

Many times understanding the works of a genius is complicated for people who don't have that genius.

23. Drawing is the honesty of art.

Drawing is a very simple and at the same time very honest way to translate our art on a canvas.

24. I want to perceive and understand the hidden powers and laws of things, to have them in my possession.

Dalí's search for constant innovation led him to a permanent search for himself.

25. The difference between false and true memories is the same as for jewels: it is always false that seems more real, the brightest.

When something is too good to be true it is usually because it is simply not true.

26. Life is too short to go unnoticed.

We must live intensely and take advantage of every minute of our lives to be our best version.

27. Wars have never hurt anyone except people who die.

Wars have always been one of the worst stages in the lives of all men, including Salvador Dalí.

28. Take me, I am the drug; Take me, I'm the hallucinogen.

Dalí always represented himself in this way, he was the drug.

29. Beauty must be edible, or nothing at all.

There is also beauty in the food around us, if we observe enough we can see beauty in almost everything.

30. If you refuse to study anatomy, the arts of drawing and perspective, the mathematics of aesthetics and the science of color, let me tell you that this is more a sign of laziness than genius.

Art design can be a science that can take us years to know and master.

31. Very little of what could happen happens.

Undoubtedly, in life many more things could happen than we really end up happening.

32. There comes a time in the life of every person in which he realizes that he loves me.

Dalí shows us here an egocentric point of himself, since all geniuses tend to be self-centered.

33. We must always remember that the Chinese Revolution was not a peasant revolution, but of the extreme right.

A revolution can be seen in very different ways depending on the prism from where we see it.

34. Every morning when I wake up, I experience an exquisite joy, the joy of being Salvador Dalí, and I wonder in ecstasy: What wonderful things is this Salvador Dalí going to do today?

Salvador Dalí showing off his particular sense of humor, something very particular about this genius.

35. All my knowledge of both science and religion, I incorporate into the classical tradition of my paintings.

Dalí incorporated into his works everything that went through his mind, topics such as religion and science going through many others.

36. There are only two bad things that can happen to you in life, being Pablo Picasso or not being Salvador Dalí.

Between these two contemporary geniuses, there was always a deep rivalry, as the public always tended to compare them.

37. I will be a genius, and the world will admire me. Maybe I will be despised and misunderstood, but I will be a genius, a great genius, because I am sure of it.

Dalí was aware that he was not equal to others and that for that reason he would be remembered as a genius, perhaps they would not understand him but his work would endure.

38. The problem with today's youth is that one is no longer part of it.

Dalí, with this phrase, showed us that he was already aware that his years of fullness had already passed.

39. God is just another artist, like me.

Dalí tells us here about this peculiar way of seeing the figure of God, somewhat eccentric just like his own person. One of Salvador Dalí's most repeated phrases.

40. Getting fond of money as I like it is nothing less than mystical. Money is a glory.

Money can be something very important in anyone's life, and Dalí needed him to maintain his lifestyle.

41. Cannibalism is one of the most obvious manifestations of tenderness.

A very characteristic quote that Dalí's famous black humor teaches us.

42. Talk about Dalí, even for good.

Although they speak ill of us it is always positive that they do so, because that shows that they are pending our movements by admiration or envy.

43. Each of the two halves is exactly attached to the other half, in the same way that Gala was attached to me ... Everything opens and closes and interrelates precisely.

Dalí tells us about Gala here, who was his life partner and his muse.

44. I use the words you have taught me. If they mean nothing, teach me others. Or let me shut up.

Dalí shows us in this quotation his way of seeing the relationships between people and his personal character.

45. An elegant woman is a woman who despises you and who does not have low hair on her arms.

Possibly, on this date, Dalí tells us about his personal tastes or what attracted him to his wife.

46. It is better to have loved and lost than to have to wash twenty kilos of clothes a week.

Dalí hated routine and laziness, I always lead a very bohemian lifestyle.

47. Everyone should eat hashish, but only once.

Dalí was famous for being an avid drug user, with whom he reached a trance state that later embodied in his works.

48. When I paint, the sea roars. While others only splash in a bathtub.

Dalí's way of painting is a reflection of his chaotic soul and his emotions in full bloom.

49. To have respect in society, it is good to have the talent to kick the society you live in the right shin. After that, be a snob.

To achieve the status of genius it is essential to have a great talent, Dalí was undoubtedly one of the most talented authors of the twentieth century.

50. Instead of stubbornly trying to use surrealism for subversion purposes, it is necessary to try to make surrealism something solid, complete and classic.

Surrealism was one of the genres that Dalí played most and he owes some of his most famous works to him, the respect Dalí had for this genre is clear.

51. Repulsion is the sentinel who takes care of the door of everything we most desire.

Something can be disgusting to us until we really do it, once we are in it it can be perhaps as pleasant.

52. If you understand your painting before it is finished, then you better not finish it.

A work is finished at the moment we decide, not a second before or one after.

53. People put me in jail, and my life became divine. Magnificent!.

Dalí's eccentric personality may never cease to surprise us.

54. To awaken my fervor, it was necessary to offer me something that I liked. Once my appetite returned, I became really hungry.

Dalí, like everyone else, needed to find inspiration by external means and when he got it he exploited it to the fullest.

55. Since I don't smoke, I decided to let my mustache grow is better for my health.

Without a doubt, Salvador Dalí's mustache was one of his most characteristic features and with which everyone identifies him.

56. Progressive art can help people learn, not only about the objective forces of society, but also about the social character of their inner life.

The art we do is an expression of the artist's personality and how he expresses it.

57. What is television for the man who can only see places that are accessible to the eye and never seen?

Television was a great change in the twentieth century and Dalí always preferred his own inner world.

58. I dedicate this novel to Gala, who was always by my side while writing it, who became the fairy of my balance, who took the salamanders out of my doubts.

Gala was the muse and wife of Salvador Dalí, was a source of inspiration throughout his life.

59. Without a doubt, I place Freud along with the heroes. He stripped the Jewish people of the greatest and most influential of all Heroes: Moses.

Dalí speaks to us in this quote from Sigmund Freud and his work in the field of psychoanalysis, without a doubt he discovered a new way of understanding the human mind.

60. It is obvious when my enemies, my friends, and the general public pretend not to understand the meaning of the images that arise and that I transcribe in my paintings.

Salvador Dalí's works have always been a source of debate and controversy, as these can be seen from many different points of view.

61. Since the French Revolution, a vicious and cretinic tendency to consider a genius as a human being equal in every way to others has developed.

Salvador Dalí considered himself different from the rest, his work demonstrated this during his career as an artist and after his death.

62. Where is the real? Every appearance is fallacious, the visible surface is deceptive. I look at my hand. They are nerves, muscles, bones. Let's go deeper: they are molecules and acids.

What we really are as individuals is not visible to the naked eye, the person we are as a whole is much more complicated to understand. Another of Salvador Dalí's great phrases.

63. The pleasure of the flesh can only be satisfied if a particular dimension is created, a kind of stereoscopic phenomenon, an imaginary hologram as real as reality is.

Dalí tells us in this quote about interpersonal relationships and how they need an environment conducive to their proper development.

64. I can project myself in my little internal cinema. I free myself through a secret escape from attempts to besiege my own soul.

Our thoughts can lead us to the search for the person we really are through our mind.

65. Murder is closer to heaven, because after becoming "memories of our conscience," you pray, heaven opens, and the angels say: Good morning!

Salvador Dalí's peculiar personality allowed him to obtain a unique point of view of things that happened to him or surrounded him.

66. I think I am a better writer than a painter, and in this, I agreed with my father. The important thing about my writing is not the style, nor the syntax, nor the discursive resources. The important thing about my writing is simply what I say, and the day will come when that will be accepted.

Dalí was aware that he was a genius perhaps outside of his time, that over time his work would be understood and valued even more than they did at that time.

67. Eroticism, hallucinogenic drugs, nuclear science, Gothic architecture of Gaudí, my love for gold ... there is a common denominator in all that: God is present in everything. The same magic is at the heart of all things, and all paths lead to the same revelation: we are the children of God, and the whole universe tends towards the perfection of humanity.

Dalí had a particular way of understanding the concept of God that also reflected in some of his works.

68. Now sexual obsessions are the basis of artistic creation. The accumulated frustration leads to what Freud calls the sublimation process. Anything that does not take place erotically is sublimated in the work of art.

Eroticism has always been a source of inspiration for numerous artists and a way of expressing their most primitive ideas or thoughts.

69. I tried sex once with a woman and that woman was Gala. It was overrated. I tried sex once with a man and that man was the famous minstrel Federico García Lorca (the Spanish surrealist poet). It was very painful.

Dalí, throughout his life, experimented with everything he thought he had to explore and that led him to live all kinds of experiences.

70. The true painter is one who is capable of painting extraordinary scenes in the middle of an empty desert. The true painter is one who can patiently paint a pear surrounded by the tumults of history.

The painter who manages to stand out for his works is one who achieves a particular point of view that differentiates him from the rest of the people.

71. Today, the taste for defect is such that only imperfections and especially ugliness seem great. When a Venus looks like a toad, the pseudo contemporary esthetes exclaim: It's strong, it's human!

During the twentieth century art changed with respect to what was considered art long ago, and Dalí did not feel represented by the way of understanding the art of the time in which he was.

72. Every time I lose a bit of sperm I am totally convinced that I have wasted it. I always feel guilty after ... Since, for starters, I'm not so helpless.

Dalí in quotes like this shows that he reflected on absolutely everything that happened to him, his mind never stopped working.

73. I need all these sudden images that are presented to me from my past and that form the factory of what my whole life is.

Dalí's inspiration was often given by memories of his life that later embodied in his works.

74. I am surrealism.

Undoubtedly Dalí was one of the greatest exponents of surrealism, without his figure this genre would never have reached the high levels of popularity it reached.

75. I categorically refuse to consider that surrealism is another literary artistic group. I think they were able to free man from the tyranny of the "practical and rational" world.

Dalí's particular vision of surrealism is something that always characterized his work and that he understood as a genre without rational barriers.

76. Surrealism served as a demonstration that total sterility and attempts at automation have gone too far and have led to a totalitarian system.

In this quote, Dalí tells us about surrealism and how it is outside the limits of conventional art.

77. One might think that through ecstasy we enter a world far from reality and dreams. The disgusting become desirable, the affection in cruelty, the ugly in beautiful, etc.

The dream world in which Dalí often immersed himself showed him a different way of seeing the reality that surrounded him.

78. The daily life of a genius, his dream, his digestion, his nails, his colds, his blood, his life, and his death are essentially different from those of the rest of humanity.

Dalí understood that geniuses were people made of other pasta and that they showed it in all facets of life.

79. Youth need difficulties to get things done. If you receive some money for this, some money for that, everything becomes mediocre and collapses.

During our youth, it is positive to be able to fight to reach our goals because with that we learn to value what we achieve.

80. There is only one thing more exasperating than a wife who knows how to cook but does not, and that would be a wife who does not know how to cook but does.

Dalí as in all aspects of his life had a very special relationship with his wife and this is a quotation of how he saw that relationship.

81. I always carry with me a cigarette case adorned with jewels where, instead of tobacco, there are little Adolphe Menjou-style mustaches. I offer them but nobody dares to take one.

Salvador Dalí's sense of humor was always very peculiar.

82. The famous soft watches are nothing more than the tender, extravagant, lonely and paranoid-critical Camembert of time and space.

The way Dalí narrated one of his great works shows us his different way of thinking and understanding his own art.

83. I was never an average student. He seemed refractory to any teaching and seemed like he could be really dumb or that he could surprise with an amazing job.

The geniuses have always stood out in certain areas and have been disastrous in others, since the particular way of genius to understand what surrounds them involves this type of problem.

84. Before entering prison, I was nervous and anxious. I didn't know if I should paint or, perhaps, make a poem, go to the movies or go to the theater.

If we were to go to jail all the people could get nervous and Dalí did not know at that moment what to devote his last moments of freedom.

85. Dalí is a magnificent painter, but in real life, he is an amazing clown - usually more interesting for everyone.

Dalí stood out both for his work and for his person, his personality made this genius someone very dear and who we still marvel at.

#Blogger

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deannaoutten · 7 years

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Dreamcrusher & TRNSGNDR/VHS

In the pits of New York City, The Glove a small venue located in the heart of Bushwick, organized by the community’s D.I.Y. artist. Held an event on Thursday, August 10th, 2017 with performances by TRNSGNDR/VHS, Dreamcrusher, Shimmer, Grisel Lopez, and special DJing by Besharam. These performances took things to a whole new level: Giving the audience a new insight and never-before experiences, within an environment where it’s encouraged to be yourself. When first entering the building, I climbed my way up to a long case of stairs, in a broken hallway, which led me to the world of LGBTQ’s underground grunge scene. I was greeted by strobe lights and loud screams from the performance of the artist Dreamcrusher.

Dreamcrusher paced around the entire place with the mic in their hand screaming, on the top of their lungs. The effect of the strobe light made it hard to see where they were throughout the entire performance. The moment you thought they were in the right corner, they’d be on the left, then the next moment, right in front of you, shouting their lyrics with a microphone and flashlight in your face. Dreamcrusher gave such a powerful performance. They engaged the audience to join them in their rage, pushing and shoving people around–– provoking the feelings of discomfort and embarrassment throughout the crowd.

Dreamcrusher took one girl in the audience and screamed their entire set, dragging her by the shoulder around the room. The amount of uneasiness in the her face, reflected how most people would’ve reacted. Being surrounded in a dark room full of strangers, not knowing what to expect from the spontaneous artist–– surfaced this sense of nervousness during their performance. The feeling in itself led me to question, why were we so afraid to have them yell in our face, if we all knew it was just the role they were playing as a part of their act?

Most shows don’t engage their audience the way that Dreamcrusher does. Usually when attending a show, you would never expect to be a part of it. The surprise element to their performance surfaced this feeling of the unknown. Therefore, keeping us all entertained with the anticipation of possibly being put in the spotlight.

The crowd was full of people that came with the expectation of acceptance among like-minded individuals. This could only mean crowd goers came with the intent of giving themselves an experience, unlike the experiences they’ve had in more conventional settings.

The interaction between the crowd and the performer didn’t end there. Shortly after Dreamcrusher’s set, TRNSGNDR/VHS gave us a performance that could never be forgotten. During her performance, she played nature sound music gravitating our subconscious minds; asking a never-been-asked-before question. The question was, “Because our scenes thrive on cultural individualism, and individualism is essential to free market capitalism, how are our scenes, subcultures, and etc. beneficial to the communities that facilitate them under capitalism, through austerity, class-ism, racism, gentrification etc?”, she then followed up by saying “If anyone in this room could answer me that question, without the use of any pronouns, meaning the words I, me, we, us cause this is about y’all. I will leave here the mic”.

She stepped away from the microphone with her arms crossed behind her back, patiently waiting for a response. The room was dead silent for a moment, until a few short minutes, a woman of color finally decided to go up. After the ice had been broken, more people began to go up and answer the question. Including those who performed. Meanwhile, other members of the audience began to exit the building. Most of which were white males. The audience became smaller and smaller. Until eventually, everyone who was in the room answered her question.

During the set, TRNSGNDR requested to have more people come answer the question, “And I know that I am breaking the rules of the game”, she said. “But I created the game, I have yet to see any responses from a white cis-gendered male. Would any white cis-gendered men like to come up to answer?”, the lead singer of the band “Show Me The Body”, Julian Cashwan Pratt (who performed with Dreamcrusher that night) decided to go up and answer. After his response was given, TRNSGNDR continues to invite people on stage.

She requested that the curators of the venue come up and give a response, “Anyone from the staff at The Glove like to come answer the question? Because I know that this venue was created by a group of white kids from, -if not upper higher-class, middle-class backgrounds”. Two male members of the staff ran up to answer. The overall responses of that night came to the conclusion, it’s important that we come together within our own communities.

The dynamic between a performer and its audience was manipulated in its traditional sense. When everyone in the room becomes a performer it creates this sense of togetherness. No one came with the expectation to connect among one another, only to connect with the artist.

TRNSGNDR’s work cuts through this illusion and has certainly made us feel that this tradition has become outdated. It made me realize, how we never take the time to connect with the people around us, yet we live in a time where communication has become so easily accessible. TRNSGNDR’s question only created more questions. I couldn’t help but ask was this discomfort felt within the room as a result of being surrounded by white males? The entirety of that experience definitely had a major influence on everyone in the room. Both artist certainly gave us a work of art. It was as if this experience was some kind of social experiment.

Noise music has a predominantly white fan base, but both Dreamcrusher and TRNSGNDR/VHS are black members of the LGBTQ community. It was funny to see what the transition of noise music to the discussion of an important issue could do to a primarily white audience.

After most of the crowd had left, an Asian, the few POC who attended the event, and the very few white people who decided to stay were mostly women. From my understanding, The Glove is a venue created in making a safe place for the artist within the LGBTQ community. Spaces like these are necessary because of the oppression that this community has to face within an industry that treats them unjustly. The Glove allows them to work in a setting amongst a crowd that places us within their space–– with this awareness, we are expected to know what this space represents. Much like entering someone else’s home. That is the exact kind of feeling The Glove gave off, that of a home.

Going back to my original thought, It was interesting to see that even though we are being given permission through this arranged environment to feel comfortable, there was still this feeling of anxiety during Dreamcrusher’s set. In any situation contrary to the environment and its policies–– that reaction typically would have been the appropriate response. Given that the environment was created with the intention to make us all feel comfortable, it was interesting to see that, those feelings of discomfort was still felt for some.

#new york #new york city #noise music #uderground #lgbtq #blacklivesmatter #grunge #writer

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jaleeanimation · 5 years

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Animating

I found animating rather challenging as I it took a lot of time and patience, but also knowledge to understanding the right amount of movements and positioning for each keyframe, as if this was not done right it could effect the whole animation.

After a few attempts I started to get a feel for what to do with the keyframes, but as my animation was long, it took a while to animate.

As well as showing the narrative, something I wanted to explore through my animation was different ways I could create movement for this character. I explored this in a few ways which can be seen in the final animation, looking at jumping, running on all fours and walking on two legs. This helped me to learn the kind of movement that goes into all character animation as I came to realise that each movement actually involved moving different areas of the body in different ways. For example when the Orangutan was walking on the legs, I needed to move both legs in different directions with the hips moving forward in each step. Whereas when the character is moving on all fours, both the back to legs move together and the front two in unison as well, both the pairs moving in opposite directions.

Principles of Animation Research:

youtube

The 12 principles of animation are key techniques used in animating in order to create a realistic, compelling motion for your characters that make sense to the audience.

The 12 Principles are:

1. SQUASH AND STRETCH

This action gives the illusion of weight and volume to a character as it moves. Also squash and stretch is useful in animating dialogue and doing facial expressions.

2. ANTICIPATION

This movement prepares the audience for a major action the character is about to perform, such as, starting to run, jump or change expression. A dancer does not just leap off the floor. A backwards motion occurs before the forward action is executed. The backward motion is the anticipation.

3. STAGING

A pose or action should clearly communicate to the audience the attitude, mood, reaction or idea of the character as it relates to the story and continuity of the story line. The effective use of long, medium, or close up shots, as well as camera angles also helps in telling the story. There is a limited amount of time in a film, so each sequence, scene and frame of film must relate to the overall story.

4. STRAIGHT AHEAD AND POSE TO POSE ANIMATION

Straight ahead animation starts at the first drawing and works drawing to drawing to the end of a scene. You can lose size, volume, and proportions with this method, but it does have spontaneity and freshness. Fast, wild action scenes are done this way. Pose to Pose is more planned out and charted with key drawings done at intervals throughout the scene.

5. FOLLOW THROUGH AND OVERLAPPING ACTION

When the main body of the character stops all other parts continue to catch up to the main mass of the character, such as arms, long hair, clothing, coat tails or a dress, floppy ears or a long tail (these follow the path of action). Nothing stops all at once. This is follow through. Overlapping action is when the character changes direction while his clothes or hair continues forward.

6. SLOW-OUT AND SLOW-IN

As action starts, we have more drawings near the starting pose, one or two in the middle, and more drawings near the next pose. Fewer drawings make the action faster and more drawings make the action slower. Slow-ins and slow-outs soften the action, making it more life-like.

7. ARCS

All actions, with few exceptions (such as the animation of a mechanical device), follow an arc or slightly circular path. This is especially true of the human figure and the action of animals. Arcs give animation a more natural action and better flow.

8. SECONDARY ACTION

This action adds to and enriches the main action and adds more dimension to the character animation, supplementing and/or re-enforcing the main action. Example: A character is angrily walking toward another character. The walk is forceful, aggressive, and forward leaning. The leg action is just short of a stomping walk. The secondary action is a few strong gestures of the arms working with the walk.

9. TIMING

Expertise in timing comes best with experience and personal experimentation, using the trial and error method in refining technique. The basics are: more drawings between poses slow and smooth the action. Fewer drawings make the action faster and crisper. A variety of slow and fast timing within a scene adds texture and interest to the movement.

10. EXAGGERATION

Exaggeration is not extreme distortion of a drawing or extremely broad, violent action all the time. Its like a caricature of facial features, expressions, poses, attitudes and actions. Action traced from live action film can be accurate, but stiff and mechanical. In feature animation, a character must move more broadly to look natural.

11. SOLID DRAWING

The basic principles of drawing form, weight, volume solidity and the illusion of three dimension apply to animation as it does to academic drawing. The way you draw cartoons, you draw in the classical sense, using pencil sketches and drawings for reproduction of life.

12. APPEAL

A live performer has charisma. An animated character has appeal. Appealing animation does not mean just being cute and cuddly. All characters have to have appeal whether they are heroic, villainous, comic or cute. Appeal, as you will use it, includes an easy to read design, clear drawing, and personality development that will capture and involve the audience’s interest.

My Thoughts

From viewing these different principles, I feel that I will be applying quite a few of them. The ones that I think I will really need to use to make my animation have reality attributes and help the scene look professional are;

ANTICIPATION- This is because the orangutan is a agile, quick animal that will be moving fast through the wild and will therefore be doing intense movements, meaning anticipation will be shown before the movement to prepare the audience. It can be created by doing a movement that sets up for the main action.

STAGING- I will use this to send a clear message of action, and quick movement through the use camera angles to make the movements have more impact.

ARCS- As my character may be jumping in the scene, arcs principle will show the realistic outcome.

SECONDARY ACTION- This will probably happen in the majority of the movements as the arms and legs may be moving at different times and ways whilst the body is moving. This is as there could be some quick action movements to get across whilst the Orangutan is running through nature.

EXAGGERATION- When doing the different movements, exaggeration will highlight each one making it clear to the audience and helping them to not miss it due to the speed.

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kajeeyearwithirene-blog · 5 years

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The 12 principles of animation

Squash and Stretch

Squash and stretch make an illusion of character's elasticity, volume and flexibility. Squash and stretch are also helpful in facial animation. The extent of squash and stretch depends on scene requirements and animation stylistics. More often squash and stretch are extremely strong in animation films and feeble in feature films when realistic characters are used. Squash and stretch are used in all kinds of character animation from bouncing the ball to moving person.

Anticipation

This motion prepares a viewer for the main action, which the character intends to do. For instance, starting to run, jump or make a dash. To jump up, first, you need to squat - this is preparation or anticipation. The comic effect can be achieved without preparation or anticipation after you used it several times. Virtually all real motions to a greater or lesser extent contain preparation or anticipation - a sweeping motion with the bandy before a strike, squat before a jump, swinging your arm back before throwing a stone, etc.

Staging

Poses and actions, the arrangement of cameras, background and stage elements shall clearly demonstrate the character's temper, reaction, character's attitude to a story and continuity of the plotline. Effective use of close-ups, medium shots and master shots, as well as camera angles, help to narrate the story. Film duration is limited therefore each succession, each scene, each film frame shall be relevant to the whole story. Do not confuse the viewer with too many simultaneous actions, use one clear action at a time to convey the idea. Exceptions are the cases when you really need to show the turmoil or confusion. Staginess directs the viewer’s attention toward the story being told. Chosen background shall neither distract the viewer from the story or a character nor attract his attention by too many details. Foreground, character and background shall complement each other and work as a whole in the course of storytelling.

Straight Ahead Action and Pose to Pose

Straight ahead animation starts with the first picture (in hand-drawn animation) or character pose (in 3D animation) and gradually picture by picture (or pose by pose) is brought to the end of the scene. Using this method you may lose the size, volume and proportions of the character. This method helps to achieve more spontaneity in animation but makes it difficult to control its duration. It is more often used in hand-drawn animation creating quick chaotic scenes.

Follow Through and Overlapping Action

The motion starts with a handle then passing to the middle part of the whip and afterwards to the end of the whip. These examples vividly demonstrate what an overlapping action is. Similar is follow-through motion.

Slow-in and Slow-out

Another name for it might speed up and slow down. Basically, nothing moves with constant speed. Imagine that you sat on a bicycle and all of a sudden you ride with a speed of 40 miles per hour. You arrived at your destination and at the same very moment, your speed from 40 miles per hour drops to 0 (zero) - a full stop.

Arcs

Motions of all living beings (people, animals, birds, fish, etc.) and many other objects do not happen in straight lines, but in arcs. Imagine a pendulum, its motion reflects an exact arc. The same applies to hands, legs, head and body as a whole. A perfect example is walking.

Secondary Action

Secondary actions are intended to complement and intensify the main action or with intent to distract or direct spectator's attention to other actions so enriching the animation and making it more appealing and solid. Imagine a student reaching for a test paper during an examination, he is viewing them with uncertainty, shifting from foot to foot in doubt, his eyes wondering - this is the main action.

Timing

This is a time or number of frames you use to demonstrate an action or motion. Use fewer frames and your motion will be sharp and quick, use more frames and your motion will be smooth and slow. For example, you are working on an animation of striking a ball.

Exaggeration

The animation is limitless and allows showing things as we want them to show different from reality. By means of exaggeration, we can achieve greater expression, precision, more dynamic poses and motions. Not only primary lines of a character can be exaggerated, but also his personal traits, his behaviour, condition, his motions, etc.

Solid Drawing and Solid Posing

Your character poses shall be clear and expressive, the silhouette easily read. Stick to clear shapes, watch the centre of gravity, weight should be evenly distributed. Poses shall clearly express thoughts, intentions, condition, wishes and feelings of a character.

Appeal

The appeal can be hard to quantify because everyone has a different standard. That said, you can give your character a better chance of being appealing by making them attractive to look at.

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sagebodisattva · 5 years

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Meta Awareness Itself

Henceforth, meta awareness.

So, humanity, as we call it, has only just recently been transitioning into the next phase of the evolution of consciousness, and is now beginning to become acquainted with meta awareness, a process that will unfold slowly and steadily; as, such developments always start out small, and escalate with existential utilization. One small rolling stone can create a giant landslide; as, with most things in illusion, inceptions can often be imperceptible, with subsequent developing changes occurring very gradually thereafter.

So meta awareness, as an upgraded operating system of sentience, in the context of this current dream story landscape, which we like to think of as some kind of external localized planetary solar system event, is a fairly new consideration for the experiential agency. And looking back on the so called “history” of the evolution of consciousness in this realm, we can see that we have already gone through two discernible phases in this development thus far. The phases of instinctual consciousness, and then self consciousness; in the evolution of consciousness

“Whoa Sage! Before you go any further, I gotta object to the way you using the word “evolution” here. Evolution of ‘consciousness’ you say? Everyone knows that it’s physicality that undergoes the evolution, and that consciousness, of the mind of the material creature, is just a byproduct of the physiological process.”

And understandable objection... from, a disconnected externalist; who so desperately wants sensory illusions to be the source of it’s agency; so that it doesn’t have to assume any responsibility for reality. I can appreciate your hangup, but I really think your effort to attempt to overcome this preoccupation is long overdue.

Please try to wake up, and break your obsessive fixation with the false description of reality; as defined as an objective medium independent of mind.

At the risk of sounding cliche... ah, I’m gonna go ahead and say it anyway: you are stuck in Plato’s cave; mesmerized by shadows on the cave wall. Point blank: the idea that objective aspects of physicality are the primary stimulus to evolutionary development, whether that be selection, mutation, migration, or random drift, is an externalization; for, it overlooks and bypasses the primary agency that gives context to such things as selection, mutation, migration, and random drift.

Overlooking the primary agency is the crucial error, always. Hence, since the theory of evolution gets the basic premise wrong, it, therefor, has the underlying explanation of the process, also wrong. Objective non-sentient materials, or chemicals, or however it is that you wanna classify these illusory aspects, that supposedly randomly combine to compose ‘forms’, that then materialize life essence, of which, is the only factor in all this that would constitute the criteria for a manifested life form, that which distinguishes turtle from a rock; do not produce the life essence.

See, this is why science is so far behind where it could be. This is why there are gaps and misconceptions in our understanding of evolution. And also why science is seemingly stymied, and reached it’s max capacity, within the old physical model.

Quantum physics has certainly opened the doorway to many new staggering possibilities, but even these fertile grounds won’t produce any worthwhile fruit, if they are continually approached with the same old externalization mindset. This is the tendency to deal with sensory information assuming the imagined premise of objectivity, taken on with faith, which asserts that some kind of naturalistic outside factor produced all appearances in our perceptions, that we call ‘’materials’, while casting our own agency, the only sure thing, and the center, from which, any and all ideas of existence find their context, as a mere minor inconsequential byproduct of whatever it is that is responsible for it’s origins.

This stubborn insistence on clinging to a false hypothesis, is what prevents many giant steps forward in our scientific aspirations. There won’t be any time travel, teleportation, advanced space travel, or the unraveling and harnessing of secrets to electromagnetism, if we remain anchored to an incorrect premise, and an outdated scientific model.

If you can’t recognize the proper configuration; that identity and reality have their true origins in a meta mental context, of which the workings of the physical are but a functional tool, representing only the most gross densest aspect of reality, you won’t get very far as a scientist.

Now this doesn’t mean that I’m saying physicality is completely irrelevant, but only that, physicality is more of a primitive byproduct of an agency that is predominately ethereal. As I’ve referred to this in the past: physicality, the denser mental state.

This is a truth that unveils a universe that doesn’t have an actual external location in time and dimensional space. Sound crazy?

Well, an objectively existing universe is an idea that more begs the question. Which do you think is more cost effective and has less overhead?: constructing an actual entire universe, or merely provide the illusory experience of one.

It’s a no brainer.

The universe is a mental construct. Total awareness imagines this context; which eventually gives rise to the basic seeds of consciousness, which can come together spontaneously within a spark of imagination. The imagination can do this because it derives it’s potent abilities from pure potentiality, which has no laws or rules to govern it.

These basic principles, which are not an endorsement of an intelligent design by a supreme being, by the way, but are, rather, the result of a great impersonal scientific natural force, which I often like to refer to as pure potentiality, are even upheld and represented in the theory of the Big Bang itself; the prevailing cosmological model for the universe; which implies that an expanding universe can be traced back in time to an originating single point. Before this single point, we have to concede nothingness, the static unified field, the superposition, pure potentiality, that has no qualitative state, yet produces all possible states of quality.

This single point manifests outwards from within; a process that mimics, on a seemingly large scale, the fundamental truth of an awareness based inner source.

If all of reality came from a single point from within, and everything that’s expanding outwards from this center, was at one time whole and unified, wherein can any external origin be? It’s not even logically possible. If you subscribe to Big Bang, the origins of existence come from an internal source, not an external one. Your physical form is the outward expression of an internal source; so if there is anything external going on out here, relative to this inner source, it’s the manifestation of all physics; which are of a metaphysical origin.

So understand: you are in a realm of imagination, not in an actual solid fixed location called a universe. When you can finally appreciate this, through satori, or via your own firsthand insights into the fundamental nature of reality, you will then come to realize that, when it comes to the development of form within illusion, the only aspects that evolves is consciousness, and everything else follows suit.

Now you know what the driving force behind what’s called ‘evolution’ really is. Consciousness; which has it’s roots in total awareness.

This is the driving force that inspires selection, mutation, migration, and random drift.

This is the driving force that brings about the circumstances that allow for gene splicing and interspecies sex.

This is the driving force that, in response to the many different experiences, trials and tribulations of consciousness, inspires awareness to imagine and conjure up new innovations of existential embodiment, into being, from, nothing.

Now I know you feel automatically inclined to reject this; because it defies the conventions of your logic, reason and common sense; but this is only because you have accepted a false premise as a default, and therefor have no idea how pure potentiality operates.

Yes, pure potential can literally POP things into existence from thin air.

Something CAN come from nothing.

“No! That can’t be!”

Then what, pray tell, is your theory of the Big Bang? Is “something from nothing”, not the main underlying principle and subsequent conduit of manifestation to the materialization of the entire universe?

So now that we’ve cleared that up; coming back around to the main point, from which we sidetracked down a tangential alleyway, we come back to meta awareness.

Looking at the history of sentience, we can see that consciousness has already gone through two major stages of progression in it's evolutionary trajectory: instinct consciousness and then self consciousness.

Instinct consciousness is an operating system that involves innate behaviors performed without being based upon prior experiences, and the succeeding modifications of these behaviors, and the possibility of adapting new behaviors, based on very rudimentary learning experiences interacting with stimuli and other patterns in nature.

And then self consciousness, which is a considerably more complex operating system, involving advanced processes of varying cognitive applications and the development of self recognition. This distinction of consciousness is generally the dividing line used to distinguish animals from humans; and self consciousness has been the primary operating system for humans ever since the emergence of the humans, and remains so till this very day... until now. Enter meta awareness.

Meta awareness is when the source of attention moves beyond the confines of a self and gains a perspective of consciousness from the outside, revealing a no self. This is similar to what we call lucidity, which is elevated awareness during which the dreamer is aware of the dreaming. In a dream, this is akin to meta awareness, because the vantage point of elevated awareness is seen to not be situated in the dream character, the former assumed identity of the self. Therefor, the dream itself, which includes the character, is considered as a framework, while that which is doing the considering of the framework, is the true empty self, or the no self.

This is why it is often said in wisdom that, life is a dream, life is an illusion; a matrix of the mind. And also why we often hear grasshoppers say in response:

“Yeah. well, whether it's illusion or not, it doesn't matter. It won't change the way I receive my experience, or the fact that I am a creature with mundane needs. So whether it's real or not doesn't make a difference existentially.”

An understandable assertion. Unto which, I say: you are overthinking it, and you could stand to benefit from getting some space between your true self and the thinking mind; which is really just a spoiled immature overdemanding brat that, if allowed, will vacuum all the energy and power away from the true self, with it's constant excessive need for attention, high maintenance and pampering upkeep. That's why it seems to the thinking mind like there would be no difference existentially whether you approached life with the truth, or in delusion. It's all the, same same, no?

Actually, you wouldn't know that. This belief is the result of approaching the prospect of meta awareness with an externalization mindset. It still lacks the first hand understanding that we are NOT the ego. This is like a dream character saying that it knows lucidity because it understands the concept of it intellectually. It would also be like saying there's no difference between the operating systems of instinct and self consciousness. Of course there is a difference, but that difference is not gonna be fully appreciated from the myopic perspective.

So much of the ego's difficulty in realizing the truth is due to the attention's stubborn attachment to the identity as an ego. This is why the ego can't understand how delusion and the truth are any different existentially. Most of everything will change contextually, which will ultimately mean a shift in the whole basic approach. So shrugging off enlightenment due to an intellectual idea that it won't matter existentially, is not only erroneous, but a serious dereliction of responsibility. This is something one should approach again, that is, if they are truly interested in enlightenment, and are not just looking to play little games with the intellect.

Ultimately, meta awareness can be said to be the state of consciousness, post enlightenment. Does that mean divinity? No. Does this mean reaching a heavenly dimension? No. Enlightenment isn't a place, or an ideal embodiment. Enlightenment isn't about transforming your ego, or coming to be the right kind of ego. Enlightenment is the liberation from identifications with places and embodiments; when one has realized they are neither a place nor an embodiment. Enlightenment doesn't happen to a person, enlightenment is always from the person; so it's not about attaining anything that is lacking from your person. It's about coming to understand that you are not a person.

Understanding this, it becomes clear that the aim isn't to change illusion, but only to put the illusion in its proper context, and not to become deluded by it. Kind of like what the old zen proverb alludes:

Before enlightenment: chop wood, carry water.

After enlightenment: chop wood, carry water.

In other words, after enlightenment, all will be the same; except, you will no longer be in ignorance.

#meta awareness #metaphysics #metaphysical

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