How to survive huge near earth asteroids.

I just read an article titled "Reporter: Planetary Projection" in the April 2008 issue of SEED and it discussed NEOs (near earth objects) as still being a risk to humanity. It is certainly being overlooked and underfunded, as are all things that could save human lives and future culture.

A while back, discovery channel aired a documentary on the asteroid that hit northern siberia in 1908. Here is a wiki link on that blast. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunguska_event

Apparently according to the article the US funds the majority of the NEO research. Due to funding limitations (war funding takes precedent), NASA is being deprived funding, and a few key observatories are being shut down, thus putting the planet at greater risk of incident. That said, some experts speculate that if one is going to hit us, chances are very slim that we'll see it in time to act.

Other nations are continually stepping up their space programs, so maybe they will see that this does pose a risk to the continuity of governments, commerce, and (most importantly?) humanity as we currently know it.

So, what I'm really trying to get at here, is that this is another problem for us humans to solve. In order to solve it, there needs to be adequate funding and a dedicated international team pushing the initiative. The UN is out there for this purpose, but they are corrupt, broken, and have less funding that the US state of New Hampshire.

Maybe something new?
I'm a libertarian at heart, and the solutions are a problem for me, as it makes me struggle with my political belief system (BS). Governments need to be working towards the survival of the planet from just about all possible risks. What would the anarchist Chomsky have to say on this? Arrest the current political and war criminals, and hope that democracy works itself out? Maybe a new form on government that has yet to be tried in modern society?

Stan Grof and other philosophers like Ken Wilber suggest that in order to survive the current problems on earth, we will need to live differently and with a different awareness of who and what we are, and to understand our relation to others. We are all in this together.

Holotropic states initiated through breath work, spiritual practices, and through proper drug use can help us reach the understandings required to survive and to grow into more enriched beings.
This is one of the primary reasons I facilitate workshops. I feel like it initiates a positive change in people who participate. It helps clear old energy blocks, and some times helps people feel more connected to this spaceship earth that we all depend upon.

To cap of this rant I'd like to point you towards a lecture that Stan Grof did on April 29th. Here is the link. I hope you enjoy it.
http://tinyurl.com/5blr2e

Weekend trip to nyc - I went Saturday night and came back sunday night.

My first trip to the big city. It was big. For pictures of my trip, click here.

P.S. Times Square is like sensory overload if you try to take it all in at once. Try this, but not for too long.

My first float tank experience.

April 9, 2008

Showed up at 8:15pm. Got orientation, for a nice lady who showed us the tanks and how to work them from the inside. Very nice place. Kind of expensive, $60 for the 50 minute session.

This experience was analogous to meditation for me. It seemed to me like a meditation where I was much less bothered by body pains. I hoped to get into a deep meditative state. This didn't happen. My experience in the tank was very surface level. I moved around a lot trying to get comfortable, and couldn't really find a good balance.

I used ear plugs. The facility required this on their consent forms. Mike who I went with, didn't read that particular line, and didn’t use them. He had a couple complaints about not using them, but overall it didn’t seem like that big of a deal for him.

The experience started with me turning off the lights and fidgeting the music controls. My mind started going wild, and I kept trying to reign it back in unskillfully via mantra, or vipassana(awareness) techniques. I didn’t have enough will power to keep returning to the technique, so this didn’t work out too well. It was worth experimenting with, but I need to try harder next time if this is what I want to do.

At about 25 minutes I started to feel strange relaxation/soreness in my calves and other muscle groups. Hard to say if this was the salt acting, relaxation, or the sensory deprivation action at work.

After about what felt like 30 minutes in the tank I started experimenting with accelerated deep breathing through my mouth. This was interesting, tetani(misspelled) came on quickly. When I refer to tetani it is a mild to heavy pins and needles sensation occasionally felt all over the body when breathing is accelerated, it dissipates after a few minutes.

After I came down from the tetani, I kept moving around, because I couldn't get entirely comfortable.

Now I was able to really get into my head and think, to try and strategize about the rest of the time I had in the tank. My strategy was unsuccessful, my mind won…I turned my music on and off a few times to see what was better. I tried opening and closing my eyes to see what I could see. About 1 minute from when the lights came on automatically, I started seeing light/dark patterns with my eyes open, I couldn't see any real pattern I could put a name to.

The lights came on, I got out of the tank, showered, and had some nice green tea.

Very nice experience. Refreshing and relaxing after a really psychologically hard day of work. I need to experiment with it further at Driftaway spas. If I happen to be in the vicinity of another float tank facility, I’ll check that out as well.

http://driftawayspas.com/

http://www.floatation.com/wheretofloat.html

HR Geiger and Stan Grof

Last night I stayed up late looking through H.R. Geiger's Necronomicon. It is quite a body of work. Any artist would be proud and horrified of producing this. Geiger describes the process of creating his are as an exorcism.

While looking at the art, my thought process was to reconcile or practice the application of Dr Stanislav Grof's Birth Perinatal Matrices to the art. On a few occasions it was strikingly obvious that a lot of the images in the art were related to the matrices which apply to the peri-natal experiences. After about 20 minutes of looking at his art, I was positive that my dreams would revolve around some negative BPM related experiences. This was not the case. I was 'spared'. In retrospect I wish I was not spared, because these experiences tend to have a holotropic effect.

While I was at the Omega Institute last fall, I was able to listen to a "Darshan" of Dr. Grof's on Geiger's art as it relates to the BPMs as he calls them. This was truly fascinating and they started to come alive for me when looking at the art. The Geiger art is truly disturbing and grotesque, but at the same time beautiful and skillfully crafted. His lecture was done in a very interesting set and setting, because we had all been doing holotropic breathwork, and doing vipassana meditation for about 4 to 5 days at that point, and were really open.

What an experience. I suggest anyone interested in the BPM theory, do some cursory exploring of the theory, and then look at some Geiger art. You can find some lectures by Stan on the internet, so maybe also check those out. Stan also had a great slide show later on related to the political art aspect of BPMs. He said that people knew how to play on these complexes and matricies that we all (most of us) had laid upon us at birth. Octopus, closing in themes, etc.The Psychohistorian Lloyd deMause was a pundit of this idea. Stan discussed his collaboration with deMause at this later slide show presentation.

A member of the board of the Association of Holotropic Breathwork International told me once that Stan's real discovery for BPMs was the otological origin of Archetypes in the human consciousness. Put that in your pipe and smoke it. That smoked... I don't have enough experience or knowledge or archetypal patterns to say if this is accurate. It is a good theory and is worth looking into further.

CC Mixter

Hi Everyone,
I wanted to share with you this great music website that is totally free and legal.
It is run by the creative commons folks and I think CCMixter is a great project. People create share and openly mix each others work. Its very cross genre, and the editors pick section should be of interest to most people.

Check it out. I borrow songs from the site to use in all my podcasts and in some of my songs.  

Here is an interesting song on the site.
http://ccmixter.org/files/lazztunes07/14385

I just got a new dog. Its so nice

http://zip.4chan.org/an/src/1207187798472.jpg

http://zip.4chan.org/an/src/1207358495789.jpg

These are some funny photoshop jobs that were done on a dog. I thought I would share.

4chan.org is a site that Bill O'Reilly called a far left internet website providing "blank" to "blank".

Check out this image for the exact quote.

http://i14.tinypic.com/8ad5m9v.jpg