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Evolving Dementia

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My mother spent most of her life supporting families dealing with cancer, but now Alzheimer’s is becoming a comparable epidemic. In 2012, estimates held that nearly 5.4 million Americans had the disease in some stage. The neurological characteristics of the disease include formation of protein plaques in the cranial fluid, which start to develop as much as thirty years before the onset of dementia. In the final stages of the disease, proteins in the neurons themselves begin to tangle, killing the cells and leading inexorably to loss of muscle control and death.

My mother had recorded a Nova special on the efforts of drug companies to develop treatment for the disease. The resources dedicated to the research are impressive – the special focused on three companies running drug trials costing up to $1 billion. The treatments attempt to mobilize the immune system to harvest and break down the proteins that form plaques. Early treatments caused dangerous swelling of the brain. The current generation of treatments avoid that side-effect, but while the special heralded that breakthroughs were possible, to the scientist, the justification for that hope appears incomplete.

The researchers do not hope to reverse the progress of the disease, but hold forth the possibility that treatments may slow the formation of plaques. This hope is inspired by three-year studies that demonstrated that early-stage patients showed 30% less cognitive degradation than observed in patients that did not receive the drug. But Alzheimer’s evolves over decades, and we have no way of knowing whether long-term treatment won’t result in complications that rival the disease itself. Nor, without expensive radiographic imaging of everyone’s brain around the age of thirty, do we have any way of knowing currently who requires the treatment.

Obviously, if we understood why the plaques form in the first place, we might be able to prevent the disease entirely. Given the expense of the research, however, it is obvious that some commercial profit must be generated to keep the work alive. As with diabetes and cancer, long-term drug treatments will generate that revenue.

But can it ever lead us to a cause?

One of the criteria for canonization is proof of a miracle. In the case of Pope John Paul II, one of those demonstrations was the miraculous healing of a nun with Parkinson’s disease, another degenerative nerve condition. Scientists hold that such demonstrations are simple fraud or chance correlation with spontaneous recovery. But if we take spirituality seriously, we might expect that the development of human intellect would create stresses in our physiology that it was never designed to sustain.

As I understand our intellect, the brain is an interface to the world of ideas. In sharing ideas, we build power in them. This power is not held by any one individual, but held in what Jung called humanity’s “collective unconscious.” No other creature had ever created this kind of repository, and so we would not have inherited from our animal predecessors any mechanisms that would protect our brain from direct exposure to such energies.

Consider, then, what might happen if we taught our children that thinking occurs in the brain. Every intense intellectual exercise would intuitively manifest as an attempt to take control of ideas, to force them into the interior of our brains where we can manipulate them most directly. But each thinker that wrestles with ideas struggles against the intentions of other thinkers, creating dissonance and stress in the tissues of the brain. Might this not result in damage to that delicate organ, an organ that never evolved to deal with such strain?

In my own case, when I began to take charge of my mind back in 2002, I had to struggle against corrupt residents. The strain expressed itself physically in my brain as pressure, sensations of heat, and in the most extreme occasion, sounds of the cranial bone cracking. The events that most frightened me, however, involved a sensation of burning in the nerves along my ribs that I found similar to the symptoms of shingles in its early stages. When I realized this, I turned inwards, considering the structure of my mind, and traced the problem to an over-heated section of my brain in the back of my skull. Realizing that my mind was passing energy through tissues not designed to process it, I tried to shift the flow outwards, into the soul that blooms all around me. I felt of shifting of spiritual structures, and over the next few days, the symptoms disappeared.

My belief, therefore, is that even if we figure out how to stave off the onset of Alzheimer’s using drug therapy, our medical science, with its focus on proteins and genomes, will never touch the root cause of our evolving epidemic of dementia. Our subconscious struggle for the control of ideas will simply intensify, and manifest in other forms of disease. No, it is the idea that the brain is the mind that is at fault. Only when we begin teaching people how to manage the part of their mind that resides in the soul will we be able to prevent dementia.

fascia

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Mary Margaret’s installation down at Pomona College was amazing. I arrived a little late for the reception, and wandered around the rooms wondering which contained her work. When I entered the last room and encountered “fascia” as the exhibit title, I immediately thought of the beginner’s class offered at Full Contact Improv late last year. In it, we were taught how to project our intention without forcing its manifestation. The trick is to move the skin until the fascia – the connective fibers that tie our body parts together – reaches its elastic limit and begins to tug on the bone. If you get to that point, your partner isn’t willing to come with you, and alternatives need to be found.

My intuition was confirmed when I found a brief summary of the exhibits. What did surprise me was the complexity of the conception. Mary Margaret uses words like “ontological.” With a clearer understanding of the installation’s evocative goal, I returned to the room for deeper immersion.

As I didn’t take photos, I’ll start with an analogy. It was like walking into a 3-D Picasso executed with the energy of Jackson Pollack (if Pollack had been a woman). The materials appear to be sailcloth tinted and spattered with diluted acrylic. The panels – some forty or fifty of them, principally pale blue or hues of red and yellow – are cut into irregular shapes and sewn together with black thread. The central mass, roughly eight feet in diameter, depicts recognizable body parts in a jumble of cut-outs and overlays. From there the construction spreads pseudopods that fall flat on the floor and arc overhead to form ample tunnels. A large panel on the right, perhaps ten by ten, is evocative of pathology cultures, but cut through by a pale blue channel that descends on the right into a hand. Finally, two chest-sized pods hang in the air, with a third pod blocking the middle of the floor.

The black thread manifests a variety of methods for tying the panels together. Some pieces appear to have been sewn together with a machine, and indeed some panels are pleated subtly with this method. Others are held together with large, irregularly spaced hand stitching. Finally, in some places the panels do not join at all, but are pulled together across holes as large as eight inches across. Here the thread aligns to suggest a direction of tension – though spare strands, yet relaxed, may loop through the taut fibers.

The entire mass is suspended from anchors on the ceiling with transparent nylon thread. The nylon is extravagant in its allocation, the free ends hanging in long spirals that refract and reflect light. In the center of the display a nylon spool is captured in one of the larger weaves of black thread – a hint that we should consider this element as a part of the artist’s expression.

In her pamphlet, Mary Margaret offers this motivation:

Western culture often views connection as something that is made, but I think it is more appropriate to view connection as something that is manifest. I have often found that attempting to accomplish connection actually gets in the way of allowing the connection that already exists to flow through our bodies.

The artist has provided a rich set of interpretative elements to guide our consideration of this theme. The three-dimensional structure involves us physically in interaction with the work. While we were invited to step on it, most tip-toed cautiously through and over. When considered closely, the lyrical style of the rendering caresses the eyes, mostly with warm tones that are cut incongruously by the blue panels. The pods have deep folds, hinting at seeds within. And then we have the thread, its two types and different modes of employ.

I found myself fascinated by the interplay between exterior and interior imagery. If we pay attention to the sensation of our bodies – the sensation that Mary Margaret asks us to consider, when we move our muscles and bones we also move our organs. Sometimes that’s a shifting, but in other cases it can manifest as a delayed settling.

The most profound urge to connection is the procreative urge, represented in the pods but also matter-of-factly in the jumble of limbs, where a man’s pale-blue legs, spread and crossed at the ankles, are capped by a stylized and erect phallus. And the panel by the back wall descends into a rent that spills a brownish-red flow onto the floor.

The looping pseudopods reminded me that no matter how we connect, the connection lingers, stretching across space and time, influencing us in ways that are often difficult to analyze.

And then we have the glistening nylon thread descending from the ceiling. I interpreted this from a religious perspective, but that is merely a layering on the universal experience of spiritual connection.

As I finished my ruminations, Mary Margaret returned to the room, and interrupted her pamphlet folding to thank me for coming and offer a gentle embrace. I didn’t stay for the performance studies – I had already projected my admiration into the room, and didn’t want to interfere with her expression. As described, the performance includes recorded reflections on the struggles her peers have experienced in seeking fulfilling intimacy, as well as her own meditations. (When I asked about this, she said that it was a “little wonky”, but didn’t clarify.) It also includes movement, which she invites others to enter with her. I think that she would have enjoyed it if I had stayed, rolled up my sleeves, and helped her demonstrate how alive we become when we relate through dance. But it may also have blown everybody’s minds. Many of the students appeared overwhelmed to begin with.

I’ve always wondered why Mary Margaret uses so many syllables to announce herself to the world, and for some reason it makes me think of Mary and Martha, the two sisters in Luke. The first sits at Jesus’s feet as he preaches, while the second rushes about complaining that the house preparations have been left to her. Jesus admonishes Martha, pointing out that Mary has chosen the better part. But in considering this display I wonder whether the Lord wouldn’t have done better to suggest that if they integrated their two tendencies, they could do powerful good in helping people to organize and heal their souls.

Which is probably the best insight to offer in concluding my exploration of the work of a brilliant, generous, gentle and courageous spirit as she seeks to birth her purpose into the world.

Path of Least Resistance

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My friend Meng Chen, atheist and purveyor of Daoist philosophy, is the only person that I am aware of wrestling seriously with the writing out at everdeepening.org. After reading The Soul Comes First, he began working his way through the New Testament during his slack hours at work. He was pretty scandalized by it – all the blood and suffering. What elicited umbrage in him, however, was the obscurity of the parables. The Parable of the Unjust Servant [Luke 1:12] was particularly offensive. In this, an embezzler is called before his manager, and made aware that he will be fired the next day. To curry favor with prospective employers, the servant trades their indebtedness for a fraction of the amount owed. When apprised of this the next day, the manager praises the resourcefulness of the servant, although warning that the servant’s concern for things of this world will cost him eternal riches.

Now this seems to communicate a terrible precedent. But it is of a type with many of the parables. Jesus sets up a recognizable human situation (such as the decadent son), elaborates depraved behavior (the son squandering his inheritance), and then contradicts all of our expectations for human justice by an award of forgiveness (the father dressing the repentant son in his own robe). The brilliance of the method is to situate the hearer in dilemmas that they understand, dilemmas that they may confront every day. From there, he is led into the most despicable of choices – choices that are probably close to his own heart and mind, but that are easy to condemn. And then the paradox: condemnation is not delivered, but forgiveness and celebration. Obviously, the master and father are not people we would recognize. Rather, they are God, the God of Genesis that similarly forgave Cain.

The virtue of parables is that they resonate differently in the minds of the hearer depending upon his specific concerns. Jesus may have offered the Parable of the Unjust Servant to his disciples, and a meaningful message is to be found for them. But among those disciples would also have been the Temple spies, and in their ears this story would have had a different focus. For was not the priesthood God’s accounting firm? Did they not accept money for sin sacrifice in the temple? To them, Jesus was suggesting “Forgive the debts you have recorded. Doubly: cast aside the profits you gather in the settlement of sin. The Father will admire and reward your generosity.”

In this teaching, we hear the incredible mercy of Jesus reaching out even to those that he knows will destroy him. He recognizes their frailty in the face of the enormous burden they are required to carry, made more difficult in their age by the power of the state that allowed mere men to behave as though they were gods.

In terms recognized in the modern era, the nature of this danger was first made explicit to me when reading A General Theory of Love (Lewis, Amini and Landon). Written by three psychotherapists, the book begins with a survey of the nature of human psychological experience – our relationships, neurophysiology and neurochemistry. Then at the end of chapter three, the authors take the trolley off the tracks. They state (I paraphrase): “We will now describe the psychotherapeutic process. In therapy, the therapist enters into the experience of trauma with the patient, and as the moment is reached, suggests to them: ‘Not that way. Go this way instead.’ In this intimacy, the success of the treatment is entirely dependent upon the moral clarity and courage of the therapist. If either of them fails, the therapist becomes trapped in the patient’s trauma.”

Here at WordPress, I have encountered a number of therapists that decry the Diagnostic Standards Manual and its emphasis on pharmacology. They perceive that our society is failing its most sensitive members, those that empathize with suffering but lack the power to change the circumstances that cause it. Much of their behavior is an attempt to anaesthetize or redirect their suffering. But many therapists in training are not prepared to confront such psychic agony. They are trained to a mechanical model of mind, learning theory and practice in sterile lecture-hall settings, and so are unprepared to confront agony when they encounter it. Their response is to withdraw and write a prescription that suppresses the outward signs of trauma.

In effect, this is the same response taken by the temple priests: rather than dealing with the trauma of sin, they transferred the cost to other beings – innocent animals sacrificed in atonement. The goal was to keep the people pure. What Jesus came to point out was that this did not solve the problem of sin – it merely shifted it away temporarily, allowing it to gather to assault the sacred community again and again and again. The only way to solve the problem of sin was for the strong to shoulder the burden for the weak.

The Garden of Eden describes a community that obtained that strength through direct relation with God. When we chose to partake of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, we lost that protection. Our religions and social sciences are institutions created in our search as a species for methods to organize resources sufficient to overcome the psychological trauma of the violent processes of Darwinian evolution. That strength was not inherent in us. It had to be created in us through our own effort.

Prior to the modern era, it was on the Rabbis and Priests and Gurus that responsibility was settled for delivering on all of God’s magnificent promises. We know them “Every tear will be wiped. Every fear will be banished.” How could we expect our religious leaders to possess such means, when if they did the era of paradise would be manifested in an instant? And so they broke – and continue to break – under the weight of their burden.

And so here I am to announce: that is not justice. It is no person’s place to stand in evidence of love in our hearts. No person can wash away the wounds of trauma, for they all seek refuge in God from their own trauma. Each person must find their healing in the open chambers of their own heart, with God.

The history of religious tolerance was marked by revolutions against the hypocrisy of religious authority. But that in itself is hypocrisy: no man stands between you and God, only your own fear that love is insufficient to deliver healing. Paradise enters the world when we stop shifting our burdens onto those we establish as idols, whether in temples or churches, and surrender ourselves to God’s ministry.

Jesus did not write a Gospel because no words can describe that feeling: the feeling of infinite compassion and mercy encountered in the heart that receives God. When it is felt, we cease to rail against our idols. Rather, we offer “Thank-you for your service. I am sorry that I placed my burdens on you. Let me give you rest and ease, as I have found rest and ease in Christ.”

And for those with ears to hear: This is how you will know him when he returns. Your hearts will shout with joy.

Balke, Principal of Uncertainty

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After seven-and-a-half years of working with ancient technology at my current employer, I began putting my resume around in February. The process has been discouraging. I was truly excited about a start-up in San Francisco that was looking to help self-generators maximize the return on their excess electricity, but the HR manager wasn’t interested in organizing a plane flight up from Los Angeles. The hiring manager broke off contact with “Let me know when you’ve got yourself relocated to San Francisco.” I’ve also looked for opportunities in the motion control industry, applying to half-a-dozen positions. I didn’t even get a call back.

The real action is in Java and cloud services, but when I began to work on updating my skills in these areas, I came down really sick in the beginning of March with symptoms that hung on until just this week. Not wanting to be taking interviews while sick, I put the job search on hold. But it might be deeper than that. My brother is also looking for work, and calls me occasionally to share experience. The last time I found myself saying “I don’t know, Ben. I think that I’m getting messages from the world that I’ve been investing my energy in the wrong places.”

With some extra time on my hands, I decided to take up the charge placed on me by John Zande, who insisted that I should try to drum up support for my ideas on fundamental physics. His recommendation was to focus on the Templeton Foundation and its awardees. So I went out to the Foundation’s site and discovered the Fundamental Questions Institute. The mission of the institute seems sympathetic to my goals, but when I contacted the academics that dominate its board, their responses were “I can’t participate in this.” I didn’t even see any hits on my New Physics page.

I understand the reticence of these men: they probably deal with a lot of cranks. But I led my invitations with a list of serious deficiencies in the standard model that should have demonstrated that I am a serious commentator. You would have thought that they would have at least been curious. Of course, I can invest in developing a presence out on their forums, hoping to establish myself in their community, but the conversation seems to be dominated by philosophers rather than physicists, and – dammit – I’ve got a full-time job already.

As this was unfolding, I met with a life coach named Jamie Wozny down in the little garden next to the contributors’ steps at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Still wobbly with my illness, I chased her down standing next to the parking elevator facing a sign that said “Tired of Waiting?” Feeling frustrated with life, I just let it all hang out, telling her a lot of things that I’ve never shared with anyone else, culminating with the laughing observation “You know, the angels love me. If people don’t want me here, why shouldn’t I just wander off to be with them?”

Jamie’s advice was to get myself registered as a minister (thank-you, Universal Life Church), purchase some insurance, and hang up my shingle as a minister at Weebly or one of the other free web-site hosting services. “Your tribe will find you,” she assured me. Remembering the excitement I felt when I designed my t-shirt, the “Love Returns” theme came to mind. I spent my spare time over the next two weeks learning HTML5 animation syntax to build an introductory page, and outlining the content for the rest of the site. Today, I’ll be heading down to a workshop run by Jamie and her partner in Santa Monica where they rent out space in a healer’s studio. That might be a good place to hang up my shingle. While it’s a little distant from home, it’s close to the community centered in Culver City that I’ve been dancing with over the last ten years.

I got another push in this direction from Ataseia, co-organizer of LA Ecstatic Dance, when I told him that I was probably going to be relocating in the near future. He looked at me seriously and said “That’s going to be a real loss to our community.” It was the tone that gave me pause. Robin and he have always made a point of thanking me for my presence, but I had always assumed that was just because I come to all the events.Nobody had ever explicitly recognized the energy and love that I share on the dance floor, except the rare participant that comes up to tell me “thank-you” (and those that do I usually never see again). But at last week’s event, the staff went out of their way to honor my presence among them.

So I’ve been trying to shift my perspective regarding that community, wondering how to introduce myself as a commentator on science and theology with the goal of encouraging people to interact with me. It’s not easy – one of the few people to have read Ma told me that there were very few authors that could write the gamut from the intimately personal, expanding into broad social concerns and beyond to the eternal. There is just so much to say. And so maybe the right way to start is with “I love you all. I express that love through dance and touch, but it’s rooted deeply in my understanding of science and theology. I think that it’s time to share that understanding with the world. If you’d like to hear what I have to say, or know of a forum that would be receptive, let’s talk.”

Then on Thursday morning I came out to check the site stats and discovered that I had almost two hundred hits overnight. When I checked my e-mail, I found a note from Jeffrey Nash that he had printed out all of the essays listed in my “New Physics” and “Faith” pages. We’ve been chatting about quantum mechanics and the basis of spiritually at his Awakening Process sessions and before the Improv Jam on Sundays. He tracks a number of researchers, and wanted to meet with me to discuss my ideas. When that was delayed due to upcoming travel, he said that he would print out some of my writing and read it to prime the conversation. His obvious enthusiasm is deeply flattering. Jeff is a profound healing presence for the people that gather around him.

Among those are a number of young ladies that have strong and expressive bodies. I’ve generated some confusion among them, which I finally addressed while cuddling after an exhausting duet. The woman began to ask probing questions, and I found myself saying “Well, one of the things that an older man can do for a young lady is to encourage her to recognize just how precious she is.” After we broke up, I danced with a few more people, but having already spent three hours on the floor at Ecstatic Dance, I began to cramp up and creak in the knees. Looking to pack up and go, I wandering to the back of the room and found Sophie, a recent addition to the community, beckoning to me from the edge of the “squishy hug-fest” that forms towards the end of the dance. It turns out that she’s working on her Ph.D. in Jungian psychology. As the squishy mass rolled off, we stayed behind, she eventually allowing me to pillow my head on her belly, and talked about psychology and spirituality until the Jam rolled up at 9 PM. As we stood, she asked me about my Ph.D., and laughingly admitted that she didn’t know anything about particle physics. As I offered to explain it to her sometime, I realized that maybe I’d found another community of receptive people.

So here’s a summary of my life over the last two months:

PingPongBall

Don’t Blame Love

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In the final chapter of Love Works, the feminine personality of life, irritated by the disorder generated by the masculine personality of intellect, grabs him by the short hairs, prompting him to observe:

Choice is a bitch. Let’s hope the kids do better next time. Now, will you let go? (How does she make it hurt so much?)

It’s undeniable that the spread of life across the earth has been driven by primitive urges.

Life’s procreative greed causes ecosystems to become saturated, stunting evolutionary opportunity. The great extinction episodes of paleohistory terminated biological dead-ends, and were all followed by eras in which life took off in new directions.

Conversely, the ability to use tools requires a large brain and flexible digits, both of which limit the growth of organic armor (which traps heat) and organic weapons (which must be anchored to large bones). Thus creatures of intellect such as humans are biologically vulnerable, and so spread only when they can produce tools that overcome the weapons and armor of other animals.

Once those tools were available, however, fear and greed drove us to consume natural resources without restraint, bringing the globe today to the point of ecological collapse. Deflecting the force of these natural tendencies is the challenge we have laid at love’s door.

In the history of religion, that struggle began with the worship of the two polar opposites of procreation and death. With the rise of the hydrological civilizations, an intellectual class of priests began to envision gods with subtle ethical character. But it was really only about 3000 years ago (and only among the intellectual elite) that humanity dared to suppose the gods should be devoted to us, rather than the other way around.

Monotheism is the culmination of this process, and led eventually to the declaration that God is love. This is common to all of the great religions.

But is it to our advantage? Given that we have free will, why should we feel constrained to draw only upon love when we face challenges? When our treasurer embezzles the retirement fund, do we just shrug our shoulders? Or do we get a noose? And when the hanging is done, can’t we justify the act with the assertiong that we are loving our spouse, children and/or co-workers?

The retort to this logic is that if you had really cared about your treasurer and paid attention to her psychological well-being, you would have seen the trouble long before it manifested. But, damn, that seems like a lot of work, and didn’t we pay them to do the right thing? So we keep the noose handy, and that means that the old deities of death get in through the back door of our religions. They stay alive there, and as ecological collapse sweeps across the globe, they will appear once again to grow in power.

But, fundamentally, they are the disease. Sexual indulgence and fear of death are what drove us to exploit the natural world. That love did not have a magic wand to drive them away is not its fault. So we need to stop blaming monotheistic religions for our refusal to hew to the dictates of love. Rather, we need to double down, even as fear sweeps over us, and invest in the love that creates the strength to resist the urge to exploit the world around us.

Presenting Ourselves

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When Parashakti runs her Dance of Liberation workshops down at LA Ecstatic Dance, she begins by facilitating the pairing of spirit buddies. While my first experience with her was pretty intense, more recently I’ve been working in service to others. That means that I am chosen, more often than choosing, when she finally says: “Look around and find a spirit buddy, someone close to you. Once you’ve found them, describe your intention for this dance.”

So I pivoted slowly and found myself hooked on the eyes of the really pretty woman, standing tall enough to almost cover my chin. Another gentleman tried to step between us, but she raised her hand to gesture to me.

I’ve never heard such a strongly worded statement of intention. It went on for nearly ten seconds as she spoke about preparing herself in this year to let love flow through her and into the world around her. I brought it to a close by holding my hands over her shoulders and then lowering them until they hovered over her chest, encouraging my angels to fill her heart to the brim. “Thank-you,” she murmured.

“That’s my intention.” Parashakti then told us to stand back-to-back. Feeling that I wasn’t quite connecting with my partner, I tilted my head back until it contacted her crown. She nestled in a little more closely.

I had been right behind her as we danced a circle earlier in the ritual, and had noticed her hands moving as though warding the space around her head. Asthe blindfolds went on, that image came back to me, and after the closing circle thirty minutes later, I told her that I had received something to share with her.

She was the object of a lot of masculine attention during the open dance, and I half expected her to avoid me. But forty minutes in she took a break for water, and gazed pointedly at me. I guided her into a corner, leaning in close to block the pressure of the music, and began, “Our culture projects a lot of ideas that negate a woman.”

“What?”

Not sure whether she was just buying time to process what I had said, I repeated myself. “When you were dancing next to me before the ritual, I noticed you doing a lot of work with your hands around your head, as though you were warding things away.” Stretching my right hand to touch the heavens, “We tend to look to each other for validation, but there is a source of eternal truth.” Hesitantly, I moved my hand closer to her crown, gauging her reaction. “I was offered a message from them: they want you to know that they are reaching out to you.” She just gazed at me, frozen. “When I went through this process, I had to surrender my thoughts and let my heart guide me.” I reached out with my left hand, palm upwards, and envisioned cupping her heart in it. “I had to let my heart energy rise until it merged with my mind.” Raising my left hand until it was just under her chin, I concluded “The heart guides the head, and the head protects the heart.”

I was shirtless and slimy with sweat, so she embraced the air around me, murmuring “Thank-you, thank-you so much,” fleeing and returning two or three times before returning to the floor.

She continued to be popular on the floor, mostly among the younger men that I can now only join briefly in frenzy. I worked the room in my usual manner, spreading joy and tenderness where it was accepted, but really wearing down at the end. As the afternoon drew to a close, I sat on the floor to down dinner, watching as she was intercepted by man after man. Getting up to change clothes for Contact Improv, I came back to sort through my backpack and offer my gratitude to Ataseia. She passed by and I caught her eye. “One more thing.”

She didn’t hesitate. “What you said earlier explained a lot to me about myself as a woman.”

Thinking of her confidence on the dance floor, “Yes, I could see that. But the challenge is hanging on to it. We have to stay focused on them. They have their own purpose, and if we fail in our devotion, they tend to wander away.”

She leaned into the frame of the closed doors, hands clasped before her. That wasn’t what she expected. But her lips offered a gentle bow of curiosity.

“You projected a great deal of positive energy into the room today, but when you began to dance with a man, it turned inwards. I could see you winding inwards, and the source of that energy was left adrift.”

She stopped to reflect, and voiced her agreement.

“If we want to hang on to them, we can’t do that. We have to present ourselves, and wait for the other person to open to us in turn. It’s not a winding into, it’s an expanding through.” She looked uncertain, so I reached out to cup understanding in my right hand, brushing it gently across her.

“I’m not sure that I understand.”

I stepped back. “I present myself. All of myself. And if you respond, I come closer, not directly, but slowly spiraling as my angels introduce themselves to your angels. It’s not always pleasant – some things really don’t belong together. But that’s what we do here. You danced with a lot of people today, as did I. We gently join our personalities, and then the magic happens. We go out into the world and draw upon our shared wisdom and energy.

“But we shouldn’t make too much of that. We need to stay devoted to ourselves, waiting for that encounter to which all of us announces ‘yes!'”

She raised her hand tentatively to demonstrate her understanding. Her eyes narrowed as my entourage resisted her, and I caught them sending “Not without our permission.”

We embrace twice, and she departed with a wistful “Maybe I’ll see you next time.”

“I look forward to it.”

Healing Time

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I’ve been working my way into the LA Full Contact Improv community since last November. The experience is markedly different from LA Ecstatic Dance, which is guided by facilitators and DJs. The Improv Jam is introduced by Jeffrey, the organizer, and occasionally accompanied by the astral strains of the resident guitarist, but the goal and tenor of the experience is open-ended. People glide, skip, spin and roll around the dance floor until they feel a connection. Between friends, that may advance immediately into an embrace, unfolding through a lift or tumble with bodies entwined. For those yet to be awarded that intimacy, there’s a slow inward spiraling that concludes with a gentle touch. For me, that induces a sudden stillness while muscles feel their poise, broken by a release into a caress or the playful exploration of flexibility and strength.

With another recent newcomer, I explained that the challenge I often face in managing this engagement is getting people to let it feel good. Rolling over one another can be like a mutual full-body massage. Having gotten into that space with another dancer, I stilled suddenly as I felt a tension release from deep within him, and I muttered into his ear, “There can be healing here.”

So when Jeffrey announced at last week’s closing circle that he would be offering a facilitated healing experience every Friday night at 8:30 and prior to the Jam on Sundays at 4, I was prepped to jump right in.

It turned out to be really rewarding.

For the last fifteen years, I’ve been interpreting my spiritual experience through a model of physics that leads me to the conclusion that we have three kinds of experience available to us:

  • an experience of “life” that binds spirit to body, allowing us to wrestle with selfishness,
  • existence in pure spirit that frees us from the constraints of space and time, but limits our capacity for growth, and
  • release into a realm of unconditional love that seeks only to facilitate and safe-guard our relation.

So imagine my reaction when Jeffrey explained last night that we live in a material reality in which we struggle with our “me”-ness, navigate slowly into an astral realm of pure knowledge, and finally surrender the pursuit of goals to experience godhead.

This wisdom, offered in what seemed to be a Vedantic framework, came with a set of practices. They are unusually constrained: rather than engaging the deeply rooted powers of the Chakras, we began by opening the meridian gateways at our fingers and toes. Jeff then asked the group to offer whatever insights arose. We listened in witness as we “time traveled” with the speaker, offering our shared energy as support. Jeff asked whether the speaker could see that the emotion of the experience was itself the gateway to healing.

A young man last night, struggling with his conditioning, led us into an analysis of self-actualization and karma. Jeff shared his past frustration in trying to create outcomes through his practice (which allowed us to time travel with him – that was nice!), before realizing that he was forcing his experience to conform to his ideas, rather than the other way around. Subtle wisdom, and it didn’t sink in immediately, so I offered:

The reason that we suffer with each other in this life is because we are missing parts. Trapped here in our bodies, we can’t reach the source, so we try to steal them from each other. When we surrender our self-concern and focus on healing another, we are able to serve as a conduit for missing parts. True power and freedom arrives as we become accepted as a trustworthy provider of parts.

My intimates all complain that my writing is too abstract. I complain that they won’t open their hearts to me. I think that I’ve finally found a method for bridging the gap.

And even better, I left with ears full of the testimony of others that have found comfort and strength there. Come one, come all!

Being Atypical

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I met a new friend today who blogs as Anonymously Autistic. She writes honestly and openly about the challenges of adapting to the world of conventional interaction. I have had my own struggles in this regard. After listening to Amythest Schaber’s testimony of a life spent learning to love herself, the following experiences came to mind. I don’t know if they will resonate with those that are autistic, but I offer them in that hope.

When I went through the darkest part of my life, I went through six jobs in eight years. Job six was a bail-out from my scientific peers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. It required me to move away from my sons, which was difficult for me.

The interview was not attended by one of the program principals, who was away on travel. He actually drove down Interstate Five to my house (rather than flying) to converse with me. He said something unusual at the time – he said that I have “presence,” comparing me to the great singers that he had worked with as a member of the San Francisco choir. It was the first time anyone had been that direct with me.

The team I had joined worked with a community of information security specialists in the federal government. When the director brought her team out for a program review, we gathered at a winery so that they could meet me (I had not completed my security clearance, and so was not part of the review). When we had been introduced, we collected around the table and my friend, noticing the reactions of the team, suggested “One of the characteristics of autistic people is that they have trouble with personal boundaries.”

Both characterizations surprised the hell out of me. I have since recalled the young lady in college that, after our introduction, held on to my hand and laughed, “You are incredibly dense.” When I protested, she clarified, “No, not stupid, just – DENSE.” In fact, I didn’t encounter somebody that could roil my waters until after I was forty.

Amythest talks about dancing with her hands, and I think that I know what she is talking about. When I was in junior high school, at the dances I would enter into a trance-like state, dancing with an energy that the other students found hilarious if not disturbing. I have since learned to manage that focus. The way that I characterize it, to those that ask me how I dance as well as I do, is that my Higher Self is looking down on me. I actually don’t know what the heck I am doing, and could not possibly reproduce it later. But afterwards people go out of their way to tell me that I am a great dancer.

The point that I am working towards is that when I became aware of how much spiritual energy I was managing (that “density” mentioned by the coed), I spent a couple of years trying to organize it. I began to have burning pains in my sides (often reported by those with shingles) and burning at the base of my skull. When I focused on those side-effects, I realized that I was trying to channel spiritual energy through physical constructs that were simply incapable of handling the load. It was like trying to run 30 Amps of current through a wire rated for 20 Amps. In that instant, I simply shifted the flow out of my brain, and began to work directly with the spiritual structures that generated it.

Amethyst talks about the enormous depth of the love that she feels. My experience causes me to wonder if she isn’t an angel trying to squeeze herself into a representation that people can relate to. Part of that includes forcing her to engage them in the normal way. If she’s in any way like me, however, that’s just not going to work. There’s too much energy in her soul, and it overwhelms her physical apparatus. She needs to find things like ecosystems and cultural moires to channel it into.

The Brain is God

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Human beings can do really amazing things with their minds. For example, play short stop, which means fielding a ball reliably even when it’s never hit the same way twice. The complexity of that skill defies our understanding, so we just sit back and enjoy.

Less complex manifestations of the mind’s magic are treated as curiosities by the neuroscientists. There is, for example, the lady that dialed the time recording one day and was able to tell perfect time forever after. Oliver Sacks in The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat describes twins that could do prime factorization up to eight digit numbers, apparently by “seeing” the collection of numbers. This was a skill that vanished when they were separated. And we have stories of people that could hear radio broadcasts, purportedly through the antenna of their dental fillings.

In attempting to explain these phenomena, the neurophysiologist evokes the breathless complexity of the brain. For example, it has been said that the information encoding of our brains exceeds the number of particles in the universe. Of course, that’s not really terribly impressive, because those particles also have states, so the brain could never capture the state of the universe. But it’s a nice number, very large, which creates a fuzzy assurance that there’s so much to be learned about the brain that we’ll eventually be able to settle all its unexplained manifestations.

Well, we’ve hit a roadblock. Recent analysis indicates strongly that we’ll never be able to simulate the brain. This is really terribly frustrating. Now those of us carrying the labels “schizophrenic” and “delusional” will never be able to pin the scientific materialists to the mat, forcing them to recognize the existence of the soul.