Sebastian Chedal

Blog moved

2008-12-15T07:06:00.002+01:00

Hello everyone,

I've had a problem moving my blog to my own server; which I am currently working on.

In the meantime, my old blog is still available here as an archive.

For all new blog entries, please visit my new website.

http://chedal.org

Thanks!

Understanding the economy

2008-12-04T20:52:00.004+01:00

Here is an immensely insightful article on the (US) economy:

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=10697

And here is an article that explains why the oil prices are currently in grave fluctuation:

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/4672

Despite campaign promises to the contrary, promising a cabinet of non-lobbyists with regulations to prevent corporate ties to government, here is just one of many articles I have read recently that raise big questions as to the potential for 'change' in Obama that we were once hoping for:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/04/us/politics/04emanuel.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

recycled fashion show:

2008-12-03T02:31:00.001+01:00

here is a nice photo reel of a recent recycled fashion show I went to a few weeks ago.

100% re-used materials! and some very pretty executions...
;)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/frankofotos/sets/72157609426997934/show

Sebastian

starting a new year...

2008-12-03T00:46:00.003+01:00

Right, I've thought about where I am and where I want to go, and here is my plan for next year:

step1: do a vipassana 10 day silent-meditation course. I've been meaning to now for years and it's time I do it. I'm aiming for February 2009.

step2: follow a permaculture-teacher-training course. Even though I am not sure how this will help me in the short term; it is a vital component to all of my more recent developments. My goal is to find a course that starts in March, April or May 2009.

I already have a very exciting idea of where to go next after these two steps; but I need a little more time to review and confirm.

the venus project

2008-12-01T09:59:00.011+01:00

"We're a crude form of life right now, in the evolutionary stages. Our civilization? Really we are not even civilized yet.

After the world joins together, and we are through with militarism, prisons, torture, hunger, poverty, deprivation; when that is gone, that will be the beginning of the civilized world."
-- Jacque Fresco

Some strong words; but he is so true. Very interesting ideas; solid.

Jacque Fresco is a Social Engineer and Industrial Designer who lays down the foundation for a more idealistic cultural community. So far it sounds like a mixture of Scientificism with 'gift economy' economic principles.

He describes the project thus:

"An attainable vision of what our world could be if we intelligently apply science and technology with environmental and human concern--a future where war, poverty and hunger could be but a distant memory."

His movie has sparked a deeper interest so I am going to pick up a book of his; as I am interested in seeing if I can resonate with his principles.

Highly recommended viewing:

Further information is available at his website:

http://thevenusproject.com/resource_eco.htm

political beard rubbing

2008-11-30T06:51:00.003+01:00

Well,

After further perplexion into the whole Obama afair, I can only safely say right now that I'm not seeing much 'change' in the group of people being collected into his cabinet. There is still a rotating-door taking place, and honestly near 50%+ of his staff is either part of the Clinton era, Clinton staff, advisers on different company boards, past lobbyists, and/or already part of government.

This is not to say we won't see some positive changes, but the potential for radical changes is looking slim. As I read more and more of his policies listed on change.gov I can see that we still have a problem with the system itself; and until we can remodel that system, it will be dificult to make real progress.

the cruise

2008-11-29T06:39:00.021+01:00

aaaah, this fabled classic. A movie which, if there were one I could recommend; it would surely be the Cruise by Bennet Miller.

You know those great moments when you feel that you can truly look upon your life; as if you looked upon it for the first time, and truly see the light?

Those are these

A tunnel, so long that all you see has no end? I can relate to the sentiments presented. And it is true art indeed when catalyst upon second seeing is doubly enfolded.

In each moment of life there seems to be this wave, arching between despair -- a weight which surveys no purpose, and salvation. Salvation always in a new form; a new idea, a separate slicing of thy clay.

That new block that comes upon the current one along your road and it settles.
A large thun.

A mold which breaks from the own patter of its feet. Running. As it looks behind her self.

Today, you re-recognize the undeniably truth that every moment, every smile, every tooth brushing, every heart broken, every plant watered has a purpose. And you feel that drop-drip like drip of remembering the importance of standing. Hoping, in this moment, that the feeling will not sway away beneath your feet, like the tide, faster that your mind looses loved one's at sea.

Open like a volcano, she tears a pain upon the side-side of my heart. So many possibilities; like your ancestors before you; like projections of physical flame you surround me with jets of energetic tumbling; like a school girl spinning in a tall bright summers day where your ears feel lifted to the tippy toes of blinding clouds and nothing could be wallower.

These testing times resting my physical strength seem unnecessarily cruel. Where is that radiant energy; that blossoming being? That beacon of hope, prosperity, of order in mind heart and function -- radiate reason, notre desire de vivre? (or too cliché to mention)

Fear

Like a mirror you challenge me to look even deeper into her eyes.

Diving head foot fool with my left leg I take you back to where your heart belongs. In that breath that knows no comprimise. With eyes shut, I remember: your name.

Like a warm form you breath spirals inside my body.

A whisp, a ghost like pulse that fills your heart from the inside; that you can't help but make the smallest smile.

In servitude to that sigh, I too pronounce only three words I know... :

I do not know

For those of you interested in "Cruising" and Speed Levitch, here is some nice further reading.

when the last oak leaves fall from the tree,

2008-11-25T06:02:00.005+01:00

This week I had friends over to share my sauna, thanksgiving is coming up soon and there will be lots of nice yummy food soon. Went out to a few parties and was reminded at just how many people I know in Portland already! It's quite amazing. It's really nice to have a supporting circle of friends here.

The biggest news however is that I broke up with Chelsea and severed the friendship - something I don't usually do, but it was necessary this time given how things unfolded.

In parallel I've been having much trouble with my back. Some friends here have been a great help, offering herbs, meals and ointments. I've been finding it really-really hard though to just lie in bed and do nothing at all for a day!

The plantsoft grant proposal was completed and we didn't get to the second round. Thanks to all of you who helped us! I feel zero dissapointment; The process was really insightful in terms of learning more about what i takes to initiate a business; as well as what our real strengths are -- things have crystalized further. At this point though it has left me in a position where I feel like I need to re-evaluate my direction, primarily because there are other gardening applications already out there that, while not exactly the similar to ours, change the market from 'emerging' to 'saturated'. My main reason for wanting to re-evaluate is because I want to make sure that where I put my energy is truly meaningful. No sense re-inventing the wheel as it were.

I came to portland with the intention of finding a place that was: "supportive and conductive to my being" -- and this is exactly what I have found. My home in particular is such a great place to live; I am very thankful. What I am applying myself to though could still be refined. If PlantSoft does fall off of the plate, there will soon be a replacement. There is potential that this will be art; or some other venture, or maybe even a fixed-position job at a company: if it's green- and of the mind-set that I resonate with. Time will tell.

In just a few weeks I will be going back to Europe. Spending time in London, Amsterdam and Israel. These 5 weeks will give me a good new perspective on things, and I'll also be able to re-evaluate my goals, dreams and future expectations.

In a previous post I made some ambitious goals for 2008, those were:

* massage cert. (at least 50% completed)
* permaculture teach trainer cert.
* horticultural software alpha
* book/card book idea developed
* native american focus (for burning man 2008 and/or by visiting a retreat in oregon/washington)
* new music live set completed in 2008 for nez live performances in 2008/2009
* at least 1 gallery expo in 2008 of my artwork in parrallel to attempts in portland to situate my art as a parallel focus (music is no longer my #1 focus and now holds place in parallel with 'art')
* develop new art ideas relatd to expo (traditional, photographic, installations and multimedia [audio-video] interactive displays)
* get an eco job; or a job i beleive in (only do what you believe)
* develop my lecture topic for BM08; probably related to my deck/book idea.
* add lighting techniques to my photography skills/knowledge so i can start making my own photosessions for artwork (live model/fashion integration)
* save enough money in 2008 to meet my personal savings/year target so that i can eventually buy land (at an as yet unknown future sapce time-location)

Of these, I can say that I accomplised the following:

* horticultural software [grant proposal/biz plan]
* 2 gallery expos in portland
* develop new art ideas relatd to expo [but not completed]
* financially in 2008 I cut even, no savings -- and with all this talk of a US economic depression on the horizon; I'm not sure where I'll be in 2009.

There are various reasons why the other goals didn't materialize.

2008 was the the wish for:

"a productive year, where I would find a place that was supportive and condussive to my dreams and ambitions"

This fully came true. So far every year has not only come true, but there has also been a moral that came with it. This year unquestionably that lesson is: "sacrifice".

I've learned that in order to do what you want to do, you need to make some very dificult choices. I've also been learning to trust my intuition even more unquestionably; even though sometimes it can seem to take me days, weeks, months or even years to make up my mind about certain things.

As a human the unknown is often scary; and choosing for something that feels better that what you have/are presented with -- even though you have no idea what that will be, is daunting. It's like choosing 'emptiness' over 'something'.

To just arrive in Portland it required long thought out sacrifices, and many tough decisions, broken hearts and unchosen paths. It's made me learn yet more about love and relationships and really turned the table over twice further.

For next year, I am still not sure what the wish will be, I'm juggling between a wish that further enforces the productivity wish; or changing gears and going for something more growth/paradym/trancendental instead. I have this feeling that I want to take where I'm at, and move it up another 10 levels. Blow up into little sparkly bits as it were. So I want to keep on the thread of being ambitious. A vipassanan cource could end up being a good way to start January/February 2009.

Much love,

Sebastian.

Obama!!

2008-11-06T01:11:00.004+01:00

Man I am exalted!!!

This is the first president elected in the USA I can honestly say I actually 'wanted' to be president! Instead of just a better choice between two worse-case scenarios.

The comments from around the world are really interesting, and heart touching. There is so much hope, so much potential in us - the humans - on this world.

How was it where you live? Here in Oregon it was a parade in the streets! Cars beeping, drum sets, fireworks -- everyone is in disbelief, including myslf... is this a dream? I never thought I'd see an African American president elected, especially not after such a strong abhorable right-regime!

How is it in your part of the world? Were people also celebrating?

I really hope things can now take positive steps.
I think the best thing that Barak can do is to **EDUCATE** the people. Not by pointing the finger, but by looking at the causes of our problems, by redeveloping compassion, cohesion. We can make it happen; but it's going to take action to make that difference. Educating people as to the purpose of why policy changes are taking place is a long-term commitment towards creating a more capable populous.

"Awareness breeds understanding fosters solidarity births compassion"

I'm close to getting to a place where I can apply myself fully towards a higher/common goal. If no other wishes for next year materialize to better this one, it will be my full unrelenting application towards a heart-felt ideology.

Best regards to you all,

Sebastian.

Tiddle tiddles

2008-11-05T04:32:00.003+01:00

Hello folks, well hours away from final results of the new US president... and statistics would have it that Obama is set to win!!! Geesh, i can barely believe it! BUT, any weirdness can still happen [as past elections have shown] -- so I won't get too presumptuous...
:P

There is a big long term prediction I am making. If you look at all of the votes coming in, all the voters, even in heavily republican states, of voters aged 29 years of less: are democratic. From 30 to 59 its split and over 60 people tend to vote republican... So, what we are looking at is a surge of young voters who are more-and-more democratic. All other factors being equall, in the long term this can only lead to a gradual tidal-wave from the democratic party in years to come...

Nearly right after I made my past post regarding PlantSoft, Ken tipped us off on a potential grant application -- we were soooo busy for a week working on the proposal, and now its in:

http://tinyurl.com/6hnamf

Apparently the votes are important to the judges, though they probably look at a lot more than just that; we are hoping to get to the second round, so if you have the time to review our proposal and vote for us, we would be very thankful!

This intense week has made things more definite. Further research has made the proposal more solid, and Melissa has been a huge help in getting it all together [big thanks to Melissa!]. If anything, this has made me really evaluate things more deeply and, if anything, there will be good discussion as a result of all this.

It felt really good to focus so much energy on something I truely believed in. If anything, I hope to have that opportunity again soon; either on this project, or on another.

I've seen some pretty funny / cute videos lately.

Here is one about a Lion that was raised in captivity, then released into the wild and then 2 years later the original owners found him back with the help of a tracker! Quite an amazing story [assuming it is true!]

And here is a link to a really funny "what if" Sara Palin site:

http://www.palinaspresident.us/

Hugs!

Sebastian.

Psychic Dreams

2008-10-25T06:53:00.011+02:00

--crater lake, OR, USA, 2008-10, S. Chedal
see all of Sebastian's new photos of crater lake

You know those mornings when you wake up and you just feel like you have been dreaming in a good place? Mine right now are full of psychic action, super powers and ambition.

(A siren stirs drifting questions)

Fall has properly come to us now. The trees are all lighting up in explosions of red, yellow, orange and gold. The air has a chill to it, its fresh and still very dry - despite what everyone tells me I should be experiencing, my face still does not bare any droplets of moisture. - sun beams brightly, in wooden textures of buttery gold. Rainbows scatter among our plants where I sip warm licorice.

From many waking-dreams: medical non-profit coverage, an art-game-collaborative idea with my friend Ullika, making art, making music and PlantSoft, things seem to be narrowing down further and further.

Every essence of me wants one of these to succeed more than any other; and that's PlantSoft [our gardening software project]. It's the only goal in my life right now where I can see the potential for my work to make a difference - but to get us to where we need to go, which is now clearly funding, this requires a new impetus of effort; and that is taking time, and sadly - though this is the way it is - my other projects are freezing like the first ice crystals of winter well before the ice caps of our beloved Mt. Hood extend their domain hither.

Writing a business plan is a new experience for me; and it's teaching me what marketing is really about: Not the "icky"-marketing I always associated with the term, but the good kind: knowing people's needs, projecting costs to expenditures, making market projections... all of these things so that your idea has the best chance of success and also to ensure that what you make is indeed something that people want.

Now I've never written a PHD, but writing a business plan feels like one! It's now 30 pages long and I still need to do a ton of research to support the ideas, claims, finances and financial projections I am proposing! And I'm sure it will at least double in size before it is done...

Ultimately I hope this work is fruitful. Nothing would please me more than to know that the work I am doing is fully towards something I am not only good at, but something I can believe in.

I need to keep two words in my mind:

* Passion *

* Perseverance *

The world, and friend's like Ada have shown me that's the only two things you really need.

This is where my vision is narrowed. All else seems to fall to the way side right now as I hone in on my purpose.

And a hawk picks off the swift.

Beyond this (to where the squirrels race past my windows every morning with a new batch of chestnuts) it is a newness for me to be in a stable relationship. It is a goodness, it feels nice to have that consistent love in my life.

Like the migrant geese who triangulate over our tall spaghetti city bridges, I just bought my plane tickets for December. I am flying to London, Amsterdam and Tel Aviv between the 19th of December and the 19th of January. I don't know what to expect from my journey but I do feel like it will be challenging, fun, trans-formative, educational, sad and joyous all at once - if not more.

My routine is getting better. It is a joy to be in a good home now, but I notice that I've reverted again to being a hermit. It is odd how I fluctuate through the years between the socially-minded-outdoor-adventure-traveler and then the introverted-computer-typing-creative; but perhaps this is just my nature.

My blessings go out to my mother, who is back in Amsterdam - but still strugling to find a place to live. I hope you can find a stable home soon, and root again into peace - as you deserve.

With kindness,

Sebastian.

--crater late, Oregon, USA, 2008-10, S. Chedal

September renditions

2008-09-24T19:56:00.006+02:00

Hello everyone, time has been passing again and there has been little from me on this blog for some time. There has been much growth and many experiences lately, so let me try and recapture some of them...

Up until September the summer was packed with many festivals, lots of work, lots of socializing and a beautiful romantic development with a very special woman named Chelsea, whom I've been getting to know more since the last 2 or 3 months:

Then Burning man came up, but I had just gotten back from Shambala [festival in Canada] and I didn't feel like it made sense to go; even though I was doubting myself. The last two years I had spent the time making art projects for the event, and going empty handed felt really wrong; I also didn't feel like I had much personal growth space potential there this year. So I stayed in Portland.

September was a different story though, a difficult month for me; after months of being on high-energy, super-social, super-working and super-productive mode I kinda crashed out and burned a little...

Things started to stress me out, as it felt like many aspects of my life were faltering. Like all my precious artwork that was sent in the mail from France to me, took forever to get here [leading me to think it might have been lost], dentist diagnosis's of 4,500$ {which led me to do second opinions form other dentists...}, lost a check which needed to get canceled, my mother's situation has been very difficult though still progressing positively overall [she is now back in Holland!], not getting much work in September meant that I was dipping back into savings to survive {though I didn't look for work either}

My current house was starting to get to me: hyper-dirty, meat eating and too much TV and, was also been concerned about my love life: wanting to do the right thing, for me and for others; while also wanting to give myself enough time to make decisions so that I know they are based on rational and not emotional factors: but this has proven to be difficult. And finally, to top it off I wanted to work in September on my own projects; like my horticultural software, but progress was slow.

In a string of fortune, like clouds that pass for sunshine when you just wait long enough, most of these things have turned around...

I've found an amazing new place to live, moving in between the 1st and 15th of October with beautiful people, vegetarians, out door bathtub, banana tress and veggie garden, shared sauna and beautiful hardwood floors + a private basement space I can use for office/art work! Youpie!

All my art finally arrived, intact, which means I can immediately work on getting gallery expositions whenever I want. Dentist diagnosis was sort-of resolved by getting a second opinion [which was the extreme opposite of: nothing to do for 6 months... go figure]. Work is coming back in full force with 3 or 4 new projects starting/continuing again; and I haven't even spent any effort looking for new work. Lastly concerning Chelsea and I, there has been good discussion, I've been learning, seeing things more clearly, opening up. There has been some good resolution, I'm very much in love.

This weekend a friend Ole and Chelsea and I are going camping in the desert for 3 days + 1 day at a hot spring/massage retreat in the mountains. The leaves are starting to turn colors, its a beautiful time, you can feel winter coming on, the days are colder, the sky more gray, there has been a trickle of rain here and there...

There is a possibility I will have an art show at a technology-arts exhibit; show casing this geometric 2 player game I am inventing/developing; but I am still unaware if it's realistic that I will be done in time, the amount of code I still need to write is daunting!

Got more art supplies recently too, like a nice drafting table and new technical pens. Also got a great 10$ large sliding door that will work perfectly as a canvas; I still plan on working on some larger pieces through out the winter to have ready for next year.

PlantSoft, my horticultural software project, has been moving forward again; we now officially have a lawyer on the team and she has been good at getting me/us organized enough to put together an official business plan - it's a monster of a task!!

Sorry to all of you I have not been in more contact, it's been a general thing and not at all specific.

There are a few new photo albums to see, album 2 was updated with new pictures.

Love,

Sebastian.

the Panama Deception

2008-08-13T21:26:00.003+02:00

Hello,

this is a documentary from 1992; a little dated, perhaps? Well maybe, this documentary covers papa bush's invasion of Panama; and it does it in an extremely effective manner, one of the best documentaries of its type I have ever seen; and worthy of watching for sure - even if it does boil some hairs on your chest...

Furthermore, a friend just passed me a link to a website that stocks a large list of other documentaries; click "view movie" when seeing a trailer to watch it in full"

http://www.freedocumentaries.org

more from me soon, busy popping around all kinds of festivals at the moment!

hugs,

sebastian.

Global peace day

2008-07-31T20:20:00.001+02:00

Coming up soon in September:

The Fluoride deception

2008-07-25T02:39:00.003+02:00

Still using fluoride?

Part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3:

(re)using plastic containers?

2008-07-15T18:34:00.004+02:00

Hi folks, some general information which is important to know:

On all plastic bottles / containers, you have a number. This number indicates the type of plastic that was used.

Some plastic is meant to be re-used safely, others are not. The two most common side-effects caused by plastic is hormonal disruption and cancer.

Here is a short guideline:

PET numbers 2, 4 and 5 are generally safe to wash and re-use.

PET 1 should only be used once and then recycled / trashed, if used again it will leach.

PET 3 and 6 contains study proven hormone disrupting chemicals (styrene) and carcinogens and should be avoided entirely [so don't even drink from it the first time around].

As a general guideline, if you can taste the plastic, you are eating it.
Always avoid having plastic containers in the sun as this increases the rate of leaching on all numbers.

{information courtesy of the AMPS Society}

reconnecting in the woods of music

2008-07-15T03:11:00.006+02:00

Here I am, back from a week filled with camping at two different rivers in two different states and another 4 days at the Oregon Country Fair (OCF) festival.

It's been a very full week filled with beautiful nature-moments, skinny dipping in rivers, camp fires, hikes, beautiful waterfalls, trees, mountain views... getting back into the urban life is odd, but I've had such a good return-to-center experience : thanks to the Oregon Country Fair : that I am eager now to set things straight in my life.

Things have been so full-on lately that there has been little time between one experience and the next that there has been little time to really reflect on my actions and choices, I remember feeling a few days ago as well how it is interesting how on the one hand life could not be any better; with things in Portland materializing effortlessly, and yet simultaneously at the same time things for my mother could not be any more difficult. There have been other parallels in my life that echo this paradox. A few days ago in my journal I wrote:

"It is interesting that sometimes the most beautiful moments in our life can also be the most painful."

On a side note, 'pain' is an interesting experience in and of itself. While I am no where near an expert on "pain", as I know others can attest to its spiritual nature, the thought occurred to me lately that pain can perhaps also be seen, from the perspective of your body as it: "loving you so much, that it doesn't want you to leave it, so it makes you feel pain so that you [your soul] stay close to it [the living body], and healthy." Where the 'body' can also be extended to 'material-affection'; where 'material' means 'material-existence'.

While camping at the OCF, I found that my mind had a hard time to relax, it took quite a time to really wind down, but one technique I found that worked for me is:

"Listen to the zen of the body, and the mind will follow"

By this I mean, if the body wants to stretch, then stretch, if it wants to walk, then walk, if it wants to lie down on its belly, then do this too, when you walk, walk with the gracefulness that your feet would have you walk if you are fully present in just this task. Breath with purpose.

Other interesting thoughts I had include:

"All the life that you see in the world exists because it lives in harmony"

In regards to my own harmony, this was a good time to realize what changes I needed to make to re-achieve that harmony in my life. The mind ponders many possibilities, projecting what-if scenarios which rapidly form behavior altering fears. In response to this thread of thought, I wrote:

"The way I think the universe works: A continuous thread of choice you face at every present-moment, is whether to be true to yourself. Love, kindness, gratitude, generosity, happiness, contentment, peace... these, and more, all flow from here"

OCF was a really interesting place, I heard and saw so many special heart moving musical & theatrical moments. A mixture of burning man (BM) and the dutch elvish theme park: the eebeling. Every year the art that is present increases instead of being burned like it is at BM. And whereas at BM money is banned, here it is the money derived from the 3 'open days' that fuels the economy for the artists / community lovers who work to construct it. Its a totally different angle, with different values. A village built into a forest of trees that is submerged most of the year under water and then rebuilt every year again in time for the yearly summer festival. Its been going on since the 1980's; so its quite an old-school event for sure!

The forest it takes place in is very special, the bird song in the mornings was incredible, a growing chant which begins with a distant echoing chorus and mounts in numbers into the hundreds. At this point it also ocured to me that most birds on the planet sing at sunrise, and since there is always a sunrise somewhere, there is in fact a band of birdsong which follows the sun continuously around the planet all the time, 24h a day [yes, there are gaps in the song caused by oceans, but its still very pervasive].

The song had a deep mantra chanting sound to it, I listened carefully to the layers, it sounded like hundreds of birds, close and far, were singing a main phrase which consisted of 3 notes repeated in 4 steps and then a pause: Mid, low, mid, high, pause [repeat]. Between which some birds would launch little sparkles, phrases or spiral chirps, but overall, all the birds were uniting into this one over-arching chorus of unity.

This led me to reflect on the function of sight to sound. And how at some point in the past there was one living creature that felt the need when it "saw" light to utter "sound". The participation of the birds in the song felt like an acknowledgment to the one, to their species and to the world, one would say: a religious experience for them, as well as an acknowledgment to [between the birds] of their presence. I couldn't imagine that a bird could hold back from the chant without negatively affecting its place within the other birds. No song: no location. No location: no contact with others and no territory. No territory or no community: no sustenance.

The bird thus is the epitamy of the exemplification of the throat chakra. Highly expressive, communicating over vast distances, with acute sight and the freedom of flight. I sat and listened and tried to imagine that day when the first creature on the earth spoke in reverence to the morning light... that simple daily miracle of the returning sun.

July 4th: Flower-works

2008-07-08T07:33:00.003+02:00

I've just uploaded some nice photos of flowers from my camping trip to the hood river.
:)

Delicious bookmarks: by the people for the people

2008-07-04T20:55:00.004+02:00

many years ago i thought it would be great if you could meta tag and rate your bookmarks and then share those bookmarks with others on the internet publicly.

Now someone has finally done just that very thing, I just found this site and immediately I found far better search results with it than with Google. The problem with Google is that if you are looking for things you often just find sites that want to sell you things. For example: if I type in 'free textures' I get sites where I get 'free previews of textures', and rarely are they actually any good when they are in fact free... and then I have to pay to see it...

Since http://del.icio.us/ lists bookmarks by people who thought that the textures were free, they probably really are. The first 10 hits were all exactly what I was looking for...

So, maybe you will also find this site useful. Combined with my RSS netvibes, I now have two really good sites now for general information collecting and sorting...
:P

Seb.

A Moments Reflection

2008-06-28T18:11:00.009+02:00

So, it's been a while, it's been a hurricane. There hasn't been a proper blog report from me in ages. I'm sorry.

Life has been chalk-full of engaging experience. I've been applying myself to manifest my world the way I want it to unfold, and this has taken a lot of my focus.

Portland feels like a warm welcoming human-home. Or a human-womb. That loving comfortable feeling you get in the woods or in your favorite nature spot: except here it's a human-equivalent. An ethereal sanctuary. I've got a balance of exceptional nature, great friends in an ever growing circle of wonderful people, a very active romantic life and absolutely no shortage of fun work.

For the past month or two I've been trying to strike the balance between art-work and play. These coming months are going to be intense as I focus primarily on work and some well placed shorter trips around Oregon and Washington to go hiking, camping, river swimming and festival-loungin-n-dancin.

Portland is a crazy place in many ways, just in the last few weeks I've gone strawberry picking, riding firetrucks through the city, swimming in crystal cool rivers, made a 7 course meal dinner for friends, went to a coconut party, saw more than 2,000 naked cyclists riding in the city center, watched an amazing dual-occurrence sunrise-moonrise and lot's more I can't remember right now.

I'm working on one person's astrology chart right now, which is fun to get back into. Work is going well, I'm busy with about 9 projects all at the same time. Art was really a big part of my life in the first month I was here, but now I've put it on hold again. I think for the summer between my programming+design work and outdoor plans I have very little time left over to do much else.

Recently I learned that according to this system called: Humand Design System I'm classified as a Reflector. Apparently only 0.9% of the population are Reflectors and it's been interesting hearing what the advocates of this system think I am all about... when I hear their description and then review what kind of life I have had, it does seem to make sense, although often the short passages I do find about it on the net either seem to not describe me well, or only one little aspect of it. I got a far better explanation that I found fitting when I talked with a few of the main practitioners of the system here in Portland. I hesitate to post it, cause it is self-praise positioned in a different melon, but perhaps it has value to share what I was told so here you go:

"As a Reflector none of your energy / chakra centers are active, so you are highly mutable and automatically modify yourself to suit your situation. The people you meet activate you with their energies, you become them. You are like an open channel that all life can pass through. A Reflector's life, if free to do so, will have continual bounces, twists and changes in their life. More so than most people, your experience is more of one of an observer, looking onto varied human life as all experience washes over without ever really affecting you. Thus in a way, you are invisible. You can become any of the other types [Manifestors, Generators, Projectors] based on different needs and situations but be aware of the risk of influence, for your adaptability can also mean you can be led astray from your path as you lack inherent self-manifestation. Your lack of self manifestation can also lead to failure because your power is often externally generated rather than internal, so be aware of the risk of disappointment. If a Reflector can reach awareness, they are able to see that all the different beliefs and ideas that surround us are just the current fashion, they see the underlying truths. Reflectors are either lost in the wave of it all, unable to take hold of their lives or they are like the forward scouts of humanity, experiencing and detecting our future and sampling from all of broad human existence. A part of human life, and yet somehow separate, those who meet a reflector will often see only themselves: a mirror."

In some way all this information has made me more aware of myself, and its made me that much more aware of the importance there is to listen to my inner-voice, the one that seems to always know what is right for you - AND - the other/group all at the same time; like everyone, it's a daily challenge, it's something I feel I'm getting much better at, but still not perfect at following.

Other than a few talks though, I'm not really that into this system, primarily because it all seems very complicated, so I would need time to understand and abstract it (aka grok it), and I am content at the moment focusing on other things.

Next week is a lot of work deadlines and then I'm going to a river-lodge with about 10 friends for the weekend and then [hopefully] I'll be off camping for a week until the 11th when it will be time to go to the Oregon Country Fair - supposedly the 'Burning Man' of Oregon. Day-night passes are very hard to come by, some call them 'gold-cards', as most people have to leave at night and its at night that supposedly all the fun begins... my dearest friend Ulika seems to have worked some magic for me though and apparently I'm going to have full play access.
:D

Meanwhile my mother in France is struggling, she is now back at home and walking again with only one crutch, but financially her situation is not balancing out - the French system simply doesn't accommodate to my mother's earnings [cause they look back to 2006 instead of at her present situation when awarding aid + other reasons]. Christen feels like she should return back to the Netherlands, and now she is working on finding transportation and a place to go to again... how strange! I would have never expected such a turn of events. She is going through quite a challenging time right now, I hope things are only going to get better for her.

Much love to you all,

Sebastian.

Gas, Trash and Bicyles

2008-06-06T21:58:00.004+02:00

Did you know that in the middle of the Pacific there is a big huge ball of plastic & garbage that is spinning, ever growing in size and currently the size of Texas??

I sure didn't, how horrible! You can see where it is spinning via this link:

spinning garbage pile in the pacific ocean

In parallel I just found out that in order to generate 1 gallon of gasoline it would take you cycling on your bike non-stop for 1,800 hours! That's the equivalent of working 8h a day [riding your bike!] for 12 months!!

That same gallon of gasoline takes about 98 tons of plant material to produce, which is the equivalent of loading several dozen logging trucks!

If you think this is bad, the energy efficiency between car and bike is further reinforced by comparing the most ecological-compact car on the market to date with the bicycle. In order to pull that eco car at its cruise speed, it would take 3,000 bicycles all in tow! That's the equivalent to 15 rows of bicycles pulling the car fender-to-fender for 10 city US blocks!

... geesh

So really what we need is more bike paths... and a total ban on any non bio-degradable or non bio-edible plastics. petitions and boycotts anyone?

future scenarios

2008-05-30T22:43:00.001+02:00

speaking of which, here is a website that goes into future scenarios. Interesting for anyone thinking about that vague land called tomorrow...
;)

future scenarios

In the future...

2008-05-24T05:04:00.003+02:00

In the not so distant future, people will be marketing devices, and especially electronic/computer related ones for entirely different qualities than they do today.

A typical computer will be something that you buy for its craftsmanship, something that you know was built to last 20 to 50 years or more, even if you throw it around or drop it. Where every part in it is proudly replaceable and independently upgradeable. A device that requires a low amount of energy to run.

This might seem like fantasy, but its actually inevitable. As resources slowly run out and power prices increase, "natural forces" will impose themselves upon our human systems just like they do on all other (natural) systems on the planet.

We soon won't be able to afford a product if we know it won't last longer than a few years, and we certainly won't buy something if the parts aren't replaceable, that would be just plain silly! As for power, well slowly but surely there will be far less of it around, so necessity is, without a doubt the mother of invention.

Our work today, both in the realm of actual forefront construction or passive idea dissemination [like this post] is the equivalent to collective-conscious-foresight. Seeds of awareness to a shift in paradigm that is open to us because it has been imagined. And once you can imagine something, it's as solid as life can be.

Spinning energetic spheres

2008-05-21T10:14:00.002+02:00

Where will the spinning stop when it has begun?
A concoction of stress and joy, the thrill of the dive.

Spinning 4 plates or more, pauses to consider, no room to falter - the ship flies too fast to spare a moment carefree - or can we still see?

The blind are busy fixing our key.

Watch a Fabulously artistic video about a white animated man who moves across the city walls using motion capture still repeat frame photography.

Primary manifestiations

2008-05-18T13:08:00.002+02:00

Man, it's been excellent these last days, but also really intense. I'm managing to do a lot of good things, though there is also a great deal of learning and growth that is ocurring simultaneously.

I've managed to get kicked out of a party for being rude when I was trying to be funny, learned a great deal more again about myself, seen people who "wrestle" as a way to get to know each other, drummed like mad in a cave with a dozen other drummers, relaxed in my most favorite place in the world deep in the forest by trees, a lake & waterfall in warm thermal pools, put some of my art up at a local recycled art gallery, arranged some freelance work for a talented artist, friend and future-art collaborator: Joseph Mross, read the most amazing poem of my life, seen the most beautiful unicorn and peacock painting, arranged one new business venture with an utterly generous great new friend with an attic studio she is offering I can use - and much much more...

Every day is like a whole new story is being told.

Things are still difficult in other areas of life though, my mother is only now just back from the re-education center to her new home, so I really hope she is doing well and that she is able to now begin her new life in France.

So many more whippets twirl the essence of life to detail, and yet so limitless are these words to describe...

left-right brain video

2008-05-03T21:18:00.002+02:00

here is an interesting video about a brain scientist who has a stroke and then gives her person story on how those effects translate to her life and study.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UyyjU8fzEYU

20 min long, heart touching.

I love it

2008-04-27T11:21:00.005+02:00

Hi Folks,

Just a short update to let you all know that I am in Portland now. I've been here just over a week and already in this time much has happened.

I've re-built an old speed bike to my taste, re-kindled my old friendships and made many new ones. My housemates are very sweet and I've been to a farm, hiking in the gorge, seen some of my local waterfalls, helped with kitchen work, done yoga, been very busy gardening, learned about the different types of mushrooms there are, met with local artists, been interviewed on the Oregon public radio station on my thoughts concerning politics, bought basic furniture, registered to vote, surveyed the job market, ordered a new laptop, delighted in the plethora of flowering trees [many-many sakura - cherry blossom trees!], watched a wonderful movie called "the cruise" which I would highly recommend, sat around many camp fires [its legal here to have a camp fire in your backyard!], done a 6 mile bike ride up a very steep road, received 2 massages and exchanged numbers with a third person interested in exchanges, visited a local democratic party rally, developed my plan for what art work I want to produce, bought a new book on computer programming/SE engineering, seen children and friends stilt walking, flaming fire whips and fire spinners for the first time and much-much-much more...

It's strange, living in Portland feels like living permanently at burning man...

I REALLY love it here, and I am so incredibly happy to be in Portland! I'm only just starting to realize that I live here, I think things will become much more concrete once I get a job [or any source of income for that mater]; but I am confident this will come with time...
:)

It looks as if there are also good opportunities to make an income from art here as no one needs a license to sell at the bi monthly art-fairs.

For the most part I am focussed on making the right choices that will manifest the best outcome. One's initial reactions, actions, choices are SO important when you start anything. And like any relationship, how one interacts with a new country/city is most vital in the initial stages because it is from this initial base that all roots will be sown.

This is a very exciting time to be in, more from me soon!

Seb.

p.s. here is a photo of my new speed bike! This picture was taken before I added new fenders, bike rack, changed a break cable and did some other minor tweaks like adding a nice bell...
:)

personal: Unexpected deviations

2008-04-07T10:46:00.003+02:00

Well, I had many other things to post about. Personal developments, leaving Amsterdam and how that felt, further thoughts from the last posts about "Patterns" etc.

But instead I have bad news to tell.

My mother fell this weekend, breaking her her femur above the knee. Hospitalized, minimum recovery time 1.5 months, operation was yesterday and that went well. Hopefully she will regain well, especially her mobility and knee flexibility.

I'm left to deal with all her paper work to enter the French system, sort out medical costs, take care of cats/fishes while she is in re-education, receive/arrange all her household boxes from Amsterdam etc.

My flight to the states is in question and I may loose the room I have found there, really not sure.

Staying here long enough to sort my mother' situation will imply sorting myself out here too, as I have no income, no med. insurance either etc.

It was never my plan to be in France, and I really wanted to get to the states well before the summer [festival] season.

This whole situation puts everything back in question [again] and has left me frustrated. It's already been 5 months that I have been helping my mother to move from Amsterdam to France and I thought I was at the end of that. Before that I was traveling since August 2006 - so it's been a very long time since I have been rooted, productive, working - and I really wanted to get my roots going somewhere again! But not here.

This also brings up a longstanding balancing issue:

on the one side: my sense of responsibility, integrity. And on the other: my sense of autonomy, personal freedom. At the moment this exact issue is being pressured to the very hilt! I'm close to breaking point.

Hope things are all good for you,

Much love,

Sebastian.

Awareness power pack

2008-03-22T01:12:00.011+01:00

The stimulation of awareness is, in my belief, the single most fundamentally important aspect of ourselves we need to develop.

Through awareness we ask questions, we learn, we develop our own thoughts, we become educated - wise even. The lack of awareness is the root from which all problems arise. War, environmental problems, disease, suffering, fear... all of these negative aspects of our existence can all be solved, resolved or at least understood [and thus accepted and healed] through the knowledge that awareness implies.

In 2005 when I mapped out all the things I could possibly work towards accomplishing, all of it had awareness at its core. This left me in a dual condition. On the one hand: happy, cause I found a single common core-pattern in all of my life's ambitions which implied a single [higher] goal, but also confused because I had no idea how to really stimulate "general" awareness in others.

Awareness is so abstract a thing, I was left thinking "how does one make others become more generally aware?". What I thought I knew, was that the desire to be aware must come from within, you can't make someone aware - or can you?

Some things you can learn, call them "building blocks", or "guiding principles". With these guiding principles you then can filter and extract new information. In terms of awareness this implies:

following your own path

keep asking questions

keep learning

evaluate all sides

pay attention

With these building blocks, further knowledge can be obtained. Clearly parallel sets of building blocks would make sense in many other areas such as ethics, truth, rights etc.

Awareness also intimately dances with general wisdom, as the two are intertwined. At some point I will cover wisdom [in a post], when it has matured sufficiently.

After these thoughts I had on purpose I went on my trip around the world, and again later I was once more confronted with purpose. I thought a lot about having a higher purpose, and was back to trying to pick a single focus [something I've really never been a specialist at].

Not having "anything" to do for months except traveling, meeting people, seeing beautiful places and enjoying life leaves you just desperate to get a shovel in your hand, and have that feeling again like you are productive, useful, active, creative... after 6 months of doing nothing I was so eager to "work" I can't understand why anyone would think that we even need to have laws that say people "have" to work - unless of course the reason you have those laws is because you want to have people do things they don't want to do... hmmmmm...

Anyways, back in the present here in 2008, a year which I have resolved to make into a year focussed especially on this very thing: "productivity" the year is turning in ways I had not expected - and this is keeping things rather interesting.

Since the beginning of this year I have been striving to improve my blog by focusing more on the sharing of knowledge and information, and less on my own personal daily activities and psychology.

While this shift has been very beneficial to me [and hopefully for you too], I feel now that an insight into this process is now necessary for fruit.

In a few weeks time I shall be returning to the U.S. of A. - and if you were surprised to hear this was my decision, I can also tell you that I myself am still surprised I am going back there. Initially I felt an intuitive pulse, something that told me "this is where you need to go next" - and I followed that voice, primarily because I felt that there was "something" which I was going to learn/grow or become from this next phase that could only be found in this place - though at the time this internal message was conveyed to you [and myself on the conscious level] as simply "intuition" or a "hunch".

Recently though I felt a need to rationally map out the reasons why it makes sense to go there, and at that moment I really felt the power of "post rationalization", so to speak.

Let me just say that my opinion on the subject of "rational thinking" has been maturing to quite a degree over the last time since I wrote my previous blog entry on the subject: a primer in rational thinking. We make decisions based on what we think we should do; either because of a choice [or "lack of choice"] in our patterns, or because of a choice that breaks those patterns.

So a list that objectively states all the pros and cons for why you should choose A over B is never going to be objective if you write it [and meaningless if anyone does it for you] because you already know what choice you want to take before you make the list... in other words, you will [unconsciously] skew the list purposefully to match your pre-made decision.

[btw I don't believe in a subconscious beyond your conscious anymore, but that's another post]

Psychological manipulation through "addiction methods", "priming" and "loss mechanisms" are real - and I agree with that - but only awareness will help you to break out of that cycle, awareness and conviction to break a pattern, break the hypnotism - which, I do admit, does require strength, as well as continual questioning...

So I am still confused as to why I am repeating my past pattern of bouncing between the States and Europe... is it itchy feet? an unbreakable pattern? or a higher mission? or some other reason? I disagree with the political state of the country so strongly - why on earth am i going there?

I do have faith that my personal path is leading me the way it is meant to go, but sometimes I really gotta wonder...

Thom Hartmann was right when he said in his book: the last hours of ancient sunlight that we need to adopt the culture of civilizations that have already existed sustainably for the last 200,000 years on earth - just as Steve McIntosh is right when he said in his book: integral consciousness and the future of evolution that we need to adopt all the positives of all levels of previous cultures. But more important than looking for pieces of culture in the history books, more essential than all of that is: knowledge.

I believe that a simple, universal "human" quality exists. When it comes to fundamental truths, words are here to divide as we define, not to unify. A universal "integrity of being" that is "spiritual" to the "spiritual", "logical" to the "mechanist", and "divine" to the "religious" etc.

Discovering this universal truth is a two step process - with both feet stepping - we need to unravel the false alternatives while refining the commonalities of this common essence we call "existence".

We live in an amazing time, a time where there is both amazing potential, and incredible danger. The world is facing serious problems, and the possibility of massive wars, famines and social-regression is very-very real. But there is also a growing wave of amazing consciousnesses-awareness here, we also are living at a point where true fundamental improvements can revolutionize how we live on this earth. The 'problems' we face are also 'opertunities' for us to change, to grow, to learn. And for that, the human psyche has one important tool at its disposal that can guide our future away from danger, something as simple as: education.

If oil prices went up and then your government said it was "some other countries fault" you would probably believe them - that is, unless you knew for a fact that oil prices were going up because there is simply less oil around... in which case they can't dupe you. This simple piece of knowledge would could then potentially shift public opinion to support green technologies and oil reduction instead of war and oil conquest [yes, it is more complicated than this, but every storm starts with a drop, see below].

This was an awfully long preface to a single link I wish you share with you. But every word I have spoken here tonight was within me for some time.

Without further ado, here is a link to a rather controversial documentary titled: zeitgeist*. There are three strong parts to this video plus a final conclusion which ties all three together very effectively.

Please watch and pass it on to those you know. Even if this whole video discusses facts which are fake [which I am nearly 100% certain it is not], the scenario it outlines in the end as our future needs to be publicly discussed precisely to make sure it never happens! If after watching this video you suddenly hear of such a plan... are you honestly going to volunteer?

No, you are not.

"Awareness", case in point.

* zeitgeist = "the general intellectual, moral, and cultural climate of an era"

Animal lore: an introduction to the Birds of Paradise

2008-03-21T14:47:00.012+01:00

Not sure how many of you know, but in pau pau new guinea, there are a group of birds which have had a very easy going time for quite an eon. They are called the birds of paradise [wiki reference] for a reason. They live with an excess of food options in a perfect climate and they have no predators to speak of. They live in what we would call "Paradise".

So, what happens to a species when they reach the peak, live in 'paradise' and don't even have to spend any time looking for food?

simple, they develop lavish, excessive, complicated culture.
;)

[sound familiar?]

The birds of paradise are perhaps some of the most bizarre creatures on the planet [well, next to the shaved monkeys that is]. Some of them are fanatic cleaners who scrub branches with sticks and fabricate brooms to "sweep" the floors, and remove all the leaves from their homes. Other's have evolved vastly complicated and flamboyant plumage which looks more like the 60s clashing with the 80s in a circus tent than a bird.

Others developed dances, complete with performance publics, some moon walk, most do pre-preparations, curtsying, and head plumage which they move by rotating their heads round and round...

Video of the birds of paradise that do dance choreography [notice he gets a little excited at the end and can't help but help himself to one of the girls in the audience...]

some of them also form their wings into the image of a black mask and prance around, while others push their heads into their shoulders and their heads vertical to form long cones of brushes... this may all sound crazy, cause it really is. You can also view a short excerpt of a program that was all about them on the BBC:

Here is a video of many of the birds of paradise, but especially the ones that form the amazing black masks

Dancing doesn't stop there though, cause here is a video of another species of birds of paradise that do "moon walks" [complete with Michael Jackson music]

We also have the worlds most amazing mimic, the lyre bird [wiki reference].

The lyre bird is so good at imitating sounds, that it can imitate camera shutters, camera zoom, chainsaws, car alarms, saws + all the other birds around it so completely that human and other animal alike are all fooled by its calls. Disturbingly though, the sounds of chainsaws and saws are actually the sounds of its eminent destruction as poor local populations are lured by the export profits of wood and chop down their own national treasure + these birds homes for short term profits...

watch a video of the lyre bird.

It's little glimpses of other worlds like these that help to remind us to be humble.

Some more photos I found for your pleasure:

online art expo, links & updates

2008-03-13T14:24:00.004+01:00

hello everyone!

Well, in 3 weeks I'll be moving out of Amsterdam, moving my mother to the south of France - and I will be in Portland Oregon at or around the 15th of April! So now I'm also in a total vortex of rapidly moving water, so much to organize! Crazy times.

In parallel to all this, a good friend of mine [Cory] has organized a showing of my art work at a festival in Canada! You can view the information on the festival here:

Kognitive festival

And you can also secretly view the slide show presentation I will be displaying at the festival, online, from this link:

view slide show presentation

On a more practical note, you may already have a great RSS/news reader, but if not, I just discovered www.netvibes.com, and I'm sold on their system, it's made collecting and reading up on news and updates to different websites a lot easier!

That's all from me for now, more again soon!

Sebastian.

book review: Integral Consciousnes and the future of evolution by Steve McIntosh

2008-03-06T17:45:00.023+01:00

For quite some time I have been interested in theories that discuss the balancing between right and left brain thinking, and the translation of ideas from one field to another.

Ken Wilber's book [my review] opened up a new domain of philosophical thinking. Through this interest I have heard a great deal mentioned recently about Steve McIntosh's model of cultural evolution - so I ordered a copy and sat down for a good read.

Overall the content to page ration in this book is low, and I have a lot of criticism regarding the presentation and content of the material.

All is not lost however, because with some filtering, these good topics emerge:

1. Stages of cultural consciousness
2. Global governance
3. Structures of the human mind
4. Directions of evolution
5. Artifacts as extensions of the mind

1. Stages of cultural consciousness

In a fashion similar to K. Wilber, Mr. McIntosh divides human cultural evolution into layers:

A) Tribal
B) Warrior
C) Traditional
D) Modern
E) Postmodern
F) Integral

Steve Argues that each developmental stage coincides with external pressures and internal development. In his model, cultures evolve in reaction to the negative aspects [the pathologies] of the previous stage's development. Furthermore, according to McIntosh each stage oscillates between a focus on the collective, or on the individual.

Steve illustrates this visually using a spiral, where items on the left of the spiral are collective-focussed, and items on the right are individual-focussed:

The properties and historical events he links between each of these stages is best illustrated in a table*:

stage	Tribal	Warrior	Traditional	Modern	Postmodern
positive values	Family, community	Freedom, personal autonomy	Decency, honesty, morality, respect for traditions	Progress, prosperity, economic development	multiculturalism, environmentalism, egalitarian
negative values	Limitation	Egocentric	Dogmatic, intolerance, fundamentalism	Materialism, greed, selfishness	Regression, denial of relative worth, excessive plurality
technological / economic level	Foraging	Horticultural	Agrarian	Industrial	Informational
guiding ideology	Mysticism	Power	Religion	Science	Plurality
organizational level	tribes	villages	empires	nation powers	global powers
current percentage of world population	5%	20%	55%	15%	<5%

According to S. McIntosh, as each stage of cultural consciousness develops, it is in reaction to the preceding stage's negative values [pathologies]. As the new stage unfolds, it eventually creates its own negative which in turn implies a need for a new cultural consciousness, and the cycle perpetuates:

-> positive: Family -> negative: Limitation -> positive: Personal autonomy -> negative: egocentric -> positive: respect -> negative: intolerance -> positive: prosperity -> negative: greed -> positive: egalitarian -> negative: excessive pluraility -> ...

Steve McIntosh also makes the parallel between human psychology and cultural-conscious levels, stating that an individual may relate more closely to one or more levels than another. Countries also have general weights at one or more levels of consciousness and he refers to an extensive test done on the American population some time in the late last century which showed that 50% of the American people fit the Traditional, 25% the Modernist and 25% fit the Postmodernist archetype descriptions above.

One of the main purposes of this book is to present Steve McIntosh's idea for 'The next cultural-consciousness level'. From the get-go Steve is certain it is what he coins: 'Integral Consciousness'. Which he defines as a [cultural] consciousness which does not deny but rather includes the 'best of' of all previous levels of cultural consciousness:

Values of: family/community, autonomy/freedom, tradition/respect, prosperity/wealth and equality/relative value.

My feelings on this are divided.

One the one hand, I believe that wisdom is the synthesis of all positive aspects from different life-perspectives. It is this drive to understand and then include as many diverse perspectives of life/the world which assists the increase in individual [and thus collective] consciousness. This is a drive which has been present for at least as long as humans have been able to contemplate consciousness itself, and is thus in no way a new ideal of the 21st century.

The idea that our entire culture may be moving towards an integral view is very heart warming, but it is to me not as predestined as it is presented. First of all, human development is as much an internal process of will as it is an external process of adaption. Rapidly changing factors, most of which are unpredictable, will result in a totally different set of conditions which require a different set of cultural-ethics for survival. Steve's model for cultural evolution may indeed be correct in the sand-box, but it is only correct because it is a model of the path that our culture has taken - not because it is the path that all culture must follow.

Our future may be the gradual shift from post modern views to integrated world-thinking, but it could also involve a momentary anarchic period where known cultural systems collapse/revert to previous stages before re-organizing themselves into new [a] model[s] which no one had previously anticipated [or which had laid dormant/suppressed in the present].

Post modernism may coalesce and converge into one world view, a new 'belief' system may sweep across the world, or a new technological advance/discovery may usher in new thinking which seeds new philosophy and beliefs. Conversely, energy shortage could lead to further polarities in modernism... the potential divergences are staggering.

Drawing conclusions from the observation of patterns is what humans love to do, we are good at that. but in this case I think the focus should be on spreading the values of integration in and of itself, not the advocacy of integration being the next phase of human development; it is too early for that. Integral thinking is just another fancy word for being 'wise'. Knowing that every story has two sides to it, realizing the intrinsic value of all things. Respecting one's self, others and the earth and so forth. These are values that are present in all levels of cultural consciousness: tribal, traditional and beyond - and these are not unique features of a as-yet-unprecedented-age.

Personally, integral psychology/consciousness is a fascinating field because it expands my understanding of universal patterns/laws. This greater understanding assists my rational capacity to grasp paradoxical/fundamental concepts.

2. Global government

To my surprise S. McIntosh expands the discussion further to include his ideas for a global government, an entity which would help to uphold laws that restrict/monitor/control the negative aspects of our modernist culture by providing a structure for executing the values of the postmodernist.

Unfortunately not many details are covered here except for arguments on why this would be a good thing.

While I myself am for the idea of the globalization of human rights [a subject I've been wanting to blog/document properly for at least 2 years], my preference is to do this in concert with a bill of international rights which would extend far further than we currently afford an individual their basic rights of self and responsibility.

3. Structures of the human mind

Various studies of the mind are discussed which support the idea of distinct separate lines of intelligence, and McIntosh's proposition that the individual is divided into three main domains: Will, Thought and Feeling. Where these 3 intercept, he calls this the 'self':

This model to me makes sense if I interpret it to be that thought is 'left' brain functioning and 'emotion' is 'right' side functioning since in evolutionary terms 'emotional' functions were present before 'cognitive' functions arose in the neocortex:

Left brain functions	Right brain functions
sequential	simultaneous
analytical	holistic
verbal	imagistic
logical	intuitive
linear algorithmic processing	holistic algorithmic processing
mathematics: perception of counting/measurement	mathematics: perception of shapes/motions
present and past	present and future
language: grammar/vocabulary, literal	language: intonation/accentuation, prosody, pragmatic, contextual

{ref: WikiPedia}

In evolutionary terms 'intellect' [neocortex] came after 'emotional' [lymbic-system]:

4. Directions of evolution

In and of itself, this evolution of cultural layering is only "interesting" until S. McIntosh adds material relating the evolution's perpetual pattern.

If one analyzes the lineage of evolution we see three forces at play:

* the drive to diversify = increased complexity
* the drive to unify = increased unity
* increasing consciousness

We can see this pattern in all forms of life, the more complex an organism, the more unity it also expresses, and the more conscious faculty it possess.

A multi-celled organism is more complex than a single one, because it involves a cooperation of cells that each become specialists in a different domain [some cells become propellers to move the group, others become sensors to see etc.], but it also creates unity because the entire group functions as a whole. A rat is even more complex because it involves staggering quantities of these multi-celled cooperations which are themselves also grouped into even larger units and eventually into the mouse itself. Each part of the mouse, each organ, has one specific unified purpose which sums up to the mouse itself as its own individual self. A mouse is also more 'aware' than a multi celled organism as it expresses a greater degree of consciousness.

Steve then makes the parallel between individual sphere's, and those of the collective. Pointing out that the same evolutionary drives of unity, complexity and consciousness are also present on the cultural level:

(col-self = "collective identity")

This parallel implies that more recent cultural expressions, which are unarguably more complex and more unified, also embody greater 'consciousness', since the three are linked at the hip. McIntosh backs this idea by giving cognitive difference examples between people from Tribal and other cultural back grounds to modern groups.

The taboo topic of talking about some people as being 'more evolved than others' is open for discussion here, and Steve is quick to refer to the need for all levels of consciousness to exist because all individuals go through all phases of consciousness development as they reach their potentials.

New born humans go through all previous phases of life that have occurred in order to 'catch up' to current human levels of evolution. This is true for all life forms [that don't employ cloning]. As a new human, we go from embryo to single celled to multi-celled, to simple organism, to reptilian, to mammal to baby human. And then as a child we develop in clearly definable stages of consciousness which Ken Wilber identified as:

Level	Undifferentiated	Sensiophysical	Phantasmic	Representational mind	Cognitive operational	Formal reflectivisim
Age	0 months	4 months	15-24 months	7 months - 7 years	7 - 11 years	11 - 15 years
Facility	Fused physical, unexpressed identity	Differentiated physical	Differentiated emotions	conceptual self	Concrete operations	Thought on thought

Ken Wilber then discusses higher levels of psychological development which move from Centauric [existential] on up to more and more spiritual levels.

What S. McIntosh's does, is he places his cultural levels next to K. Wilber's by stating that as an individual progresses psychologically internally, they also develop cultural psychological levels externally and move through phases of tribal [mom is my world] to warrior [rejection of family], to traditional [disciplined structure] up to modern [career focussed] and post modern [philosophical] and beyond.

5. Artifacts as extensions of the mind

One of the last appendixes discusses human artifacts. Human artifacts are all the objects we make, or use. Real one's and abstract ones like words, tools, trains, books and computers.

Steve argues that human artifacts are literally extensions of the mind, external manifestations of cultural-consciousness evolution that fulfill what traditionally was done in life in biological terms. New words in a language capture new ideas. New blueprints for a durable construction replace previous biological durability adaptation. These external evolutionary extensions thus allow the human race to evolve at a rate which is no longer limited by biological evolutionary terms. S. McIntosh also goes one step further by stating that these external extensions of culture actually function directly to facilitate our individual evolution of consciousness. Take away our artifacts, and you remove a significant advancement of our faculties! A daring conclusion to draw, but I share his views and think he is right.

All in all I'd recommend someone skip S. McIntosh's book unless they already are familiar with much of K. Wilber's work, and are looking for further depth to K. Wilber's ideas. There are great passages here, and parts really worth reading, its just that too much of S. McIntosh's book reads like a memo intended for K. Wilber or a tedious history lesson, a book written to himself, and too little of it discusses new or varied concepts - it literally feels like half the book is just empty space. The writing style is also to be desired... I prefer it when authors stick to valuable content and limit their enthusiasm of their own opinions to their conclusions [or better yet, their reader's own conclusions].

These short comings aside though, I benefited from my reading, a good book is also one that triggers one to extend an authors ideas or to ingrain your own. I hope this synopsis has been interesting. If I do keep reading up on integral theories, I feel that it will either be a pick from S. McIntosh's bibliography, or another one of K. Wilber's books; but at the moment my focus in on proto-biology.

With kindness,

Sebastian.

* some terms added, removed and/or modified by Sebastian Chedal to fit space and/or concepts above as written.

A primer in rational thought

2008-02-13T12:11:00.003+01:00

Just watched an interesting BBC Horizon program on rational thought.

Highlights of the program include:

* Loss complex
* Post-decision rationalization
* Priming
* Precognition

* Loss complex:

Apparently if you take the same situation, but present it as a loss, time-and-time again you can prove that humans will choose more risky, daring [often irrational] choices than if you present the same situation as a potential gain.

The example they give is with gambling. If you give someone 20€ and then tell them they can gamble that money to win 50€ most people will take the 20€ and leave.

But if you give someone 50€ and then take 30€ out of their hand and say that to keep that 30€ they are going to have to gamble to get it, most people will gamble.

This well studied effect, called "the loss complex" is stimulated by our emotional brain centers. People who are able to resist the gambling effect are shown under cat scans to have frontal lobe activity which controls the emotional centers of our brain.

Advise?

If you are faced with a loss situation, and need to make a decision, be aware that we [humans] tend to over react when choosing what is the best course of action. Conversely, if things are going well, we tend to under-react when making decisions that would further our current situation.

Rationalization of the situation [as opposed to reacting from the feeling of loss, gain] will help to make better decisions.

* Post-decision rationalization

Another well studied effect is that we tend to post-rationalize our decisions. So it doesn't matter whether you make a good or a bad decision, once you've made your decision, you justify it, even if its wrong, and even if reality contradicts the result you anticipated. The effect is so strong that memory itself can be altered.

Being aware of this common psychological disposition that we all have is important when analyzing the results of our choices, especially in the identification of wrong ones.

* Priming

Amazingly, another well studied effect is called 'priming'. If you are stimulated by something positive or negative prior to making a decision, your choice is strongly affected by that prior experience.

The example they give is disturbing. People are asked to hold a hot or cold beverage 6 to 8 minutes before they need to make a decision; unaware that its the fact that they were asked to hold a beverage in their hands that is being measured [they don't drink it, just hold it]. In this example warmth is associated with warm positive feelings, and cold with negative feelings.

The results are consistent, people who hold the warm drink react far more positively than those who cold the cold drink. The task at hand was to decide if someone interviewed should be hired, and in all 6 cases they showed, the 3 people who held the warm drink thought the person should be hired, and the 3 people who held the cold drink thought he shouldn't.

The same works if you prime someone with concepts like 'heroism', 'fear' etc. countless studies have been done, and the effect is very measurable...

Advice?

Realize that how you make decisions is often determined by how you 'feel' rather than what you 'think'. How you feel is unfortunately not rational but environmental. So if you are experiencing something negative, any choices you would then need to make in the ensuing time period after such an event would seem negative even if they were not. We make automatic internal-external associations which are not context dependent.

* Precognition

Another well studied effect is pre-cognition. You may have heard of this test, because the first time I heard of it was in the 80s. If you study the emotional response of someone who sees random images on the screen, people will somehow 'know' what image is going to appear before it arrives because their emotional response always begins before the image is on the screen. The images shown have been internationally recognized as good images for psychological studies and each image has an associated emotional response to it that is common through out most people, so the pre-responce of a person to the image also fits a pattern between all studies.

This precognition is approximately 3 seconds in duration, meaning that we know what will happen [at least] 3 seconds before it does, on some level.

How this pre-cognition can be used is debatable and open to much speculation. Proponents on the multi-dimensional space/time theories would state that this is bleed in effect from the fact that time is not linear. Or that decisions are not only made based on the past but also are influenced by the future.

* Random gratification

This effect was not in this program, but another I had seen years back but I include it here because it is relevant.

Random gratification is an effect that is well documented in humans, rats and other animals. Random gratification is the source of many addictions, or patterns in our [illogical] behavior.

If you give a rat a button which they have to press to get food, they only press it when they are hungry. If you make the button work only when it is pressed 10 times, the rat will press it 10 times exactly when its hungry and still be healthy and of normal weight.

But if you change it so that the button gives the rat food randomly, meaning after a random number of presses, then the rat will spend its entire day, pressing the button continually and it will eat excessively and become fat.

This is how gambling [slot machines] work, but in more subtle ways this is also present in all our lives.

For example I realized a few years ago that I was infatuated to women who would perpetually remain uncertain [with moments of gratification and then followed by rejection] as to whether they liked/loved me in return, but if they person either did or did not like me then the situation would resolve itself far more quickly, rationally and less emotionally.

Knowing the allure of random-gratification is vital to avoiding another aspect of the emotional center over-ruling cognitive abilities.

Rational thinking advice:

The program also went into effective tools for rational thinking:

* the 5 why's
* pros cons with 1-10 weighting
* abstracting and structuring of options
* look for past patterns to make estimates instead of current contexts
* consider the opposite

* the 5 why's

When faced with a decision, asking yourself 'why?' 5 times in a row is usually sufficient to get to the root of why you want to make a certain choice.

For example:

"i want to leave my job"
"why?"
"because I am not happy there"
"why?"
"because i am not challenged enough"
"why?"
"because i want to do something important in my life"
"why?"
"because life is too short and I want to give something back to the world"

Knowing this 5th deeper motivation will then assist you in deciding what to do 'when you leave the job' - where as if you just 'left your job' but didn't bring the reason to the 'conscious' level, you might not take the decision you really wanted to.

* pros cons with 1-10 weighting

Most of us know about this, to make good decisions one method is to list all the pros and cons about this choice, and to then weight each pro and con with a value from 1-10. When you are done, just add up all the pros and cons, the side with the highest number is the decision you should take.

* abstracting and structuring of options

Another common fact about human's is that we are very good at making choices between two things, but bad at making complex choices. To resolve this short-coming of our minds, one solution is to use abstraction. If you are faced with lots of choices, try and group them into categories of choices, and then decide first on the group that is better than the other [using pros cons for example] and then on the members of each group afterwards in multiple steps.

for example, if you are faced with an illness and dozens of different treatments, you might first group them into two groups: "surgery" or "drug-based medication" or "medical" vs "holistic" and then decide first between these two poles as you break the choice down into smaller and smaller one vs. another

* look for past patterns to make estimates instead of current contexts

another phenomena is that our predictions about outcome are far more accurate if we evaluate things out-of context than in context.

The example they give is that if we try and make a prediction on how well we will do on a test our estimates will be very inaccurate if we just base it on current factors: how much i think i know, how much time i can study etc.

If instead we look at all past tests, people's average scores and also our past behavior and scores, our predictions will be far more accurate.

Basically my interpretation here is to do sufficient research into the patterns so that you know where the 'weight' of the outcome is tilting. Knowing this can help you to place more 'counter effort' to break the pattern [if you want the opposite effect]

* consider the opposite

This is related to the post-rationalization, but basically we tend to filter information so that it fits with our beliefs. If you think someone is a criminal, everything they do will seem to confirm that belief. Considering the opposite in all important decisions will allow you to weigh the pros/cons of a decision much more effectively.

new home page! art talk, and some personal updates

2008-02-09T16:42:00.000+01:00

Hello!

Well, long silence just then from me. Things have either been shifting so quickly, week-to-week to really pin down a blog report, or I've just been very busy working on things!

Because of necessity [mothering invention], I finally got my www.chedal.org website back up!

It's a very simple page, nothing fancy, but it serves my purposes just fine at the moment and gives a good front end to my artwork.

Which brings me to art. I've been working on rescanning and photographing my art with the intent of putting a selection of it on image kind so that you can buy art prints of my work! It's a simple system, all print-on-demand, so they take care of all the printing and shipping, leaving me time to just make more artwork.
:)

In the mean time I've also been casually looking for a space to expose my work, as it is a major objective of this year, but I am not sure right now if it's going to squeeze into the schedule.

Personally now, there have been a lot of varying directions. Two potential women with whom I could have forged a relationship - but didn't, alternative plans to Portland considered and pulling me in different directions, my mothers move from Amsterdam to France taking longer than expected and a lot of time spent on my horticultural software development.

I'm very much just going with the flow right now, and honestly still not sure where life is going to take me this year. I feel right now more like a leaf on a calm river than an arrow aiming for a target. My days are spent at home, working on projects, or helping my mother - costs are low, but there is no income to speak of - so there are eventual limits to this phase.

In a few days I leave again for France, this time we are going to Montpelier, I've visited there before - some 8 or 9 years ago with two friends: Ruby and Chimed - and loved it. So I think it will be a good place for my mother to settle... warm Mediterranean sea, mountains and forest close at hand, lots of art, music, concerts, theater, good weather, nice people... it sounds good to me.

Hope you are all having a good year, mine has been filled already with the symbology of Mars, ideals of work ethics, environmental work, programming and art work.

Bye again for now, hope you like the new home page + art work.
:)

With kind,

Sebastian.

The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight - book review

2008-01-11T16:38:00.001+01:00

Another book, another accolade.

"The last hours of ancient sunlight" by Thom Hartmann, is an excellent book.

Amazingly every book I pick up lately has immense value.

Where as Ken Wilber's book focussed on the evolution of our culture in the last 6,000 years to modern day differentiation of "man over nature" or the "ascended/descended" principle, Thom Hartmann takes another approach and compares "modern" man to ancient man. What he calls the "New Cultures" from the last 6,000 years and the "Old cultures" which have existed [and still do today] since [at least] the last 200,000 years.

The comparative is exhaustive and elaborates in solid-crack-free logic the reasons for our world/environmental crisis.

The book is divided into three parts, the first of which details the current world problems, the second details our cultural problems, and the third provides solutions - most of which are purely cultural.

Thom tackles head-on all of the common arguments people use when defining our world situation, including:

* "It's man nature to be dominant/destroy/be greedy" etc.
* "A solution will come/be invented to resolve things"
* "Modern civilized life is much better than uncivilized life"
* "If we are taking over the planet and "replacing" Older cultures [only 1% of the population today still practices Old Culture ways] it is because we are 'superior' or it is natural-evolution"

Thom also chronologically describes our New Culture as a deviation from Older cultures effectively and maps out the values and moral codes of Old Cultures around the world from Native Americans to African, Latin American & Asia.

From his wide experiences with these different Old Cultures he has come up with a wide array of differences between their culture, which has been ours for the last 200,000 years [minus the 0 to 6,000 years date at which point it was subdued into the "new culture"], and ours.

These Older Cultures are sustainable by nature. Humans, for the last 200,000+ years have evolved fine-tuned cultural systems that have worked precisely because they are sustainable. So a sustainable mind-set is not something we have never had, a sustainable mind-set is something which we all come from. What has changed is a cultural "forgetting".

It would seem then that the "solution" to our current problem is to take the best of Older Cultures and to merge them with our current lives. If we are to survive, it is the re-integration of cultural value which will prevail.

I present some of them here in a table:

Older culture	New culture
Cooperative	Dominator
Leadership a duty	Leadership is power
Local	Large
Diverse and unique	Monoculture
Long term thinking	Short term thinking
Respective of environment and identity of others	Consumptive of environment and absorptive/destructive to other cultures
Conscious rituals	Passive ritualization
Sharing of resources	Ownership and control in the hoarding of goods and resources
See's war as vulgar and unnecessary	See's war as exciting, horrible and dramatic
Political independence	Political dependence
Food, water, shelter and energy self sufficiency	Food, water, shelter and energy dependancy
Promotes individual-spiritual-actualization	Prevents spiritual actualization

One of the most important items in this list is the second to last one: Self sufficiency. Before I had read this book, I still did not see clearly the importance of self sufficiency of basic necessities. However, now I see this very clearly. If you can provide your own food, shelter, clothing and energy - then you have basic safety and security. Our society, for all its flare and dazzle, provides neither of these - work is uncertain, homelessness real for many, pressure to work to pay rent is very pervasive... and yet the tribal-unit [Old Cultures] provide this for their members as a basic-building block. In fact, contrary to common-myth, Older Culture people actually end up having more free time - even after tackling their needs of food, clothing, shelter and energy - than Younger Cultures do. This pressure to continue to work to pay bills, this need to be dependant is paramount to the system's ability to survive. Human dependent capital ensures the dominator scheme can continue.

Independence from this dominant culture requires living independently... once you can ensure your basic needs, you no longer have a need to work at jobs you don't like, you don't have to do things you don't believe in, you don't even have to pay "taxes" if you don't think the money is going to the right places [actually I don't think taxes are necessary at all! as the majority of the Older Cultures has never had a concept of taxes in its 200,000 years of their existence and taxation has historically always been a means for feudal/fascist/royal New Culture systems to amalgamate wealth/power]. Instead communities care for every member in their group and projects which require larger man-power are things which the community then band together to achieve. So everything that taxes are supposed to do: pay for schools, build roads, health care" etc. are all things which are dealt with easily by a functioning tribe/community of people.

* "It's man nature to be dominant/destroy/be greedy" etc.

Thom states that this has not always been the case, in fact, for the last 200,000 years it's only in the last 16,000 or so that there has been any fluctuation. Previously it was such that if another person in a tribe were to become greedy or dominant that they would eventually lead their tribe to its own self-destruction. In fact, this has been the case with our "New Culture" repeatedly in the past as well. The Romans, the Chinese [two dynasties], the Incas, the Sumarians, the Babylonians, the Egyptians... and on and on. "New Cultures" are not sustainable because of their cultural ehtos. Put simply, "to dominate another is to destroy yourself" - it's just that the effects are not immediate to us as they often span generations; but the cycle is very clear.

This view of "human's are inherently corruptible/bad/evil etc." or "this planet will probably be better off without us" mentality is actually a view-point from our Younger Culture and precisely one of the cultural problems. This negative standpoint is what permits negative behavior to continue, and what makes it seemingly impossible for anything else to ocure.

There are countless stories from all Older Cultures all around the world that echo identical patterns as they were approached by New Cultures. The most common response in the Pacific, Africa and the America's to "conversion" to Christianity was a perplexion to the concept of "man being innately evil/sinful". They would respond with confusion and say: "how can that be true"?

Thom is very careful to state that the problem is not in the people, its in the culture. It's our 'story' we tell ourselves about something that affects the way we see the world and the way we behave.

As the New Culture has spread throughout the world it offered Older Cultures very little in the ways of options. Whereas Old Cultures are inherently respective of other cultures [they respect and promote diversity], New Cultures are absorptive. You either adapt to our culture [by becoming "civilized"] or you are destroyed. We can see this in history, and today, everywhere - the options an Older Culture has are few they can:

- Give in
[and be absorbed/enslaved as the Haitians, Africans and millions of others have been]
- Fight back
[which fails because they adopt the same tactics as their enemy and essentially adopt younger culture views in the process]
- Run away
[which works as long as there is somewhere to run to]

* "A solution will come/be invented to resolve things"

While a solution may come to replace oil, to help agriculture move away from pollutants and in other areas, none of this will solve the core of the problem. The core of the problem is cultural - and I completely agree with Thom on this point. Until we stop living consumptively, the problem will only persist and get worse before it gets better.

This "New Culture" attitude also has a "someone else" will fix it mantra [or "some god will fix it"] - as long as we keep this attitude, no change will occur. It's a fixative belief that keeps the culture from shifting by promoting apathy.

* "Modern civilized life is much better than uncivilized life"

Well, I've already gone into this above, but basically we work more for less free time, and we have no or little security. So less free time, and less security in exchange for... more things. But what is the value of things? A roof and enough food to eat will make me happy, but a new ipod and a fancy new dress will only make me momentarily happy if I am still unsure about whether my job will be here tomorrow or if i can pay all my bills.

It is also possible to combine our ideals. We can live in a world where we value the individual and still retain all the good things that come with modern life. All the values I hold from modern life are transferable and technology itself [often cited as the thing we don't want to loose] is not dependent on a globalized or dominant culture. On the contrary, if I had more free time because basic needs are full-filled it would allow me, and many others, to pursue more areas of intellectual interest - such as: technological/artistic/musical/philosophical developments...

* "If we are taking over the planet and "replacing" Older cultures [only 1% of the population today still practices Old Culture ways] it is because we are 'superior' or it is natural-evolution"

First of all, there is no way to say that our culture is more suitable to life on earth than another until we are far enough down the line of time that we can look back and ask ourselves if one culture outlived another. Frankly the way we are going there is so much environmental pressure from our culture that it seems impossible to imagine that this "better" culture will survive the test of time unless it dramatically shifts its way of thinking.

Secondly, just because one culture is willing to kill [either literally or culturally] another to absorb them, doesn't mean it is 'superior'. If I walk into a room with a gun and shoot and kill 20 other people we all know [i hope] that this does not that mean I am superior to them. And yet our culture spreads around the world very much like cancer does in the body. Our culture replicates itself and when it comes into contact with another it offers it very limited options [join ours or be destroyed] - if anything, our culture is "sick" not "superior". A "superior" culture, in my mind, would be one that valued others, didn't build weapons of war [because it understood that even developing weapons of war is robbing the future of resources and always destroys, financially or literally, the civilization it comes from], and was in balance with its environment.

I can't really discuss these issues any better than Thom Hartmann can, so if you want to get into this subject and learn a whole lot about what problems we are facing, why we have cultural problems, and what we can do about it, I urge you to grab from the library a copy of this book! You won't regret it.

I hope my summary has proven insightful.

[next post I will go into my own personal decisions and directions]

With kind,

Sebastian.

The Story Of Stuff:

2008-01-11T00:22:00.000+01:00

Hello!

More from me soon, its been quite simply because there has been so much going on that I can't keep up with my blog lately!

But to keep you warm, here is an excellent online info-story I would recommend as essential viewing:

http://www.storyofstuff.com/

Make sure you pass this link on to anyone you think needs a wake-up!

post year end

2007-12-29T16:15:00.000+01:00

greetings, happy holidays!!!!

well in the last weeks much has happened. I went to Antwerp, Belgium to see Ada and had a great time drinking Belgian beer, meeting her friends, getting into fashion [thanks to ada's obsession] and eating incredibly good foreign food.

after that it was back to Amsterdam to work on packing with my mom so that she can be ready for january 4th and having a wonderful Christmas dinner with Simon - who managed to convert me fully into itunes library functions, cover art work features etc.... what a huge administrative processes to update though! but it is fun.
:)

at the moment I am considering still the option of london over portland - an unexpected moment of second reflection - to determine what is best i'm trying to compare my goals with those offered by both locations - along with other factors. i feel like either option will be good, so its just a question of really finding out what is best for me at the moment. i'll be in london between january 4th and the 7th to this effect.

i feel very rational right now, its as if everything i did this year has purged my soul of a need to ractify emotional disbalance and the result is that I feel terribly left-brain focussed now. 2008 shall be a practical year, a year where my creative dreams realize themselves into reality and they are met with positive recognition. a year where i am able to earn my money from activities that i believe in. A year with my sleves roled up - as it were- getting down to business now. this is what i feel is necessary now in my on going development: pure passionate plathoric output.

having focussed so strongly on philisophical and emotional issues related to truth, love, reality etc. has made me reach a point where i cant see any further development at the moment - things are all coming full circle; the knowledge i have learned basically denies while proving itself - thus providing no further progress. it is like trying to resolve a paradox to itself.

Whenever i reach a point where no progress is possible, i generally seek to shift direction into another avenue where progress is possible - taking with me all i just learned - this does have disadvantages as it does imply a lack of dedication to one specific topic; but thus far the benefits have been significant; its a long term benefit though, not short term, as the continual shifting of focus makes it much harder to obtain results in any one field.

Although at the moment I am not that focussed on astrology, like i was in 2005, a friend of mine passed me this link to the 'mood' for 2008 - which coincidentally is the exact mood which i wish to enter: a year of strong Capricorn [practical] influences. these influences are for all of us, so if you are into astrology, give it a read, its pretty good:

http://www.starpathways.com/current.htm

Truths of love in a sea left of wonder.

2007-12-18T12:50:00.000+01:00

i had a really nice time in spain with Josiane. We rented a car - drove around costa brava, visited beautiful beaches, the mountains and even the little commercial petrol-shopping enclave of Andorra. So much love, a really special person, beautiful times.

Photos from our trip [first week uploaded, second week still needs to be uploaded as I find time to do so]:

Seb's Photo album ONE

Speaking photos, I also scanned an older art journal of mine, from 2004/5, you can find that album on my art site:

2004 / 5 Journal [year Of elves and saturn]

in looking back at 2007 I can say already that the majority of my dreams/vision board items have evolved, come true or taken form.

I am no longer allergic to coconut, and I can now drink coffee in moderation without ailments - my health is excellent. Youpie!

Financially I am doing fine, and within my long term limits I set for myself, its been interesting this year working only a few months in the summer and then just living by as little as possible the rest of the time.

Most people assume that traveling takes up a lot of money, but given that you don't have to pay rent [which can easily be in the range of 300 to 1,200€ for different people/places]. The real costs of traveling are simply the hostels and forms of transportation you choose. Fortunately I have been able to find people with open homes here and there to mitigate those costs for quite some months. Camping or buying a vehicle to sleep in make you suddenly self reliant low-cost-worthy.

At this point though I am more than ready to get down to rolling my sleeves up. I have my wish/theme eagerly ready for 2008.

This 2007 year's wish was all focussed on the theme of "love". Since this has been an underlying focus, I have spent some significant amount of attention on this subject and learned so-so much.

There are so many different forms of love, and lately I have also been considering the limitations of truth and words in dealing with nearly any subject.

I learned this year that wishes happen even when you don't make wishes. The subconscious wish, a thought of suggestion, is enough to manifest reality. I have seen this occur now time and time again ever since I have started paying attention to my passing thoughts [positive or negative].

I learned a lot this year about the mind-creationist perspective to life - that all your life is formed by your own thoughts - call it attraction or manifestation.

On the flip-side, I've read powerful ideas regarding seeing system thinking and creationist approaches as simply diametrical concepts in a matrix of inner-outer and collective-subjective experiences.

I've seen the pattern of differentiation and then integration reflected in different ideas -be it in the flower of life, ken wilbers concepts of holons / holarchachy, or in my further understanding of love.

for love is in these terms really the release that allows freedom that allows creation.
We love something, and then ultimately our true test of that love is when we can let it go. Whether its loving your children, your partner or a friend - eventually a time will come when you must part each other. Either because of death, drifting or simply growing up.

We desire one-ness, or we come from one-nes [with childbirth] and then separation precludes growth. The saying goes: if you truly love someone/thing - you must set it free. This setting free process though is two fold. For by setting the other free - you set yourself free. And each time we let another person/thing free - we grow a little more, and a little bit more love lives on in this world.

This means that ultimately love is not about possession; but about profession. To "profess" love is to free yourself and others around you.

Krishnamurti has strong founded ideas on the subject; he states that there is only pain when we hold onto the memories of the past, or have fears of memories occurring in the future - but in the present, there is only the present, and only joy. This makes a lot of sense - we talk often about love in terms of commitment, or conditional vs. unconditional love; but there is also another deeper level of love, one which involves the freedom of mind from causal thought.

So love is both the force which draws two individuals to become one, and love is then the ability to allow two individuals to be unique. It is the becoming process as well as appreciation of the moment. Paradoxically it involves thus the absolution of time - as well as the process of time; but only the process of time in the sense that it is the 'becoming' - but not reflection of relative time itself. In other words, it is the result of time passing and one growing with time, but not the reflection of what things were [hopes and fears] or what will be [hopes and fears]. It is firmly bound to the ever evolving present.

In terms of truths, I have read a lot of material this year which makes sense, but is also contradicted by other philosophies. I find it fascinating that mind-creationist [seth/secret], holiarchical [k. wilber] and anti-athoritarian [krishnamurti] ideas can all make sense within their frame works, and yet still contradict each other.

The book "a stranger in a strangers land", a really good scifi book [I do recommend] that I just finished a few weeks ago, it too deals with its own realm of truths, which parallel and also contradict the other above mentioned alternative views - it touches very deeply on the ideas of love and life in its own way. Here again we see yet a different idea regarding the truth of reality, though the roots of the ideas have strong similarities.

Take for example the idea of aggression, action, change. You can call it what you like, but I am referring to the active principle here that manifests change. The male principle, or to the astrologist: the martian principles.

Change, action - is necessary to have life, to have thought, to have time. Without action, there would be stagnation. Seth's ideas state that aggression in the form of asserting boundaries is natural, an animal reacts if you step on its toe - a human should say something if they feel abused - where the issue resides is in the repression of that aggression because the reactions are more violent if repressed when finally expressed, and repression impedes growth - this is sound advice.

But then if you take krishnamurti's ideas, aggression in any form is unfounded, a negative - the logic is solid, though I can't summarize it yet because I am still half way through the book in which this concept is outlined.

These differences of truths is very possible in my mind-view, because I believe, for many years now, that every truth implies an opposite - equally valid truth, in fact, for any truth to exist, its opposite must be created to even allow a truth to be valid. You can't have light without dark, physical life without physical death, finite vs. infinite, oneness vs. individuality etc. etc.

Visually I see this every increasing breadth of truths forming as cells do, each new level of understanding is a split of cells from one into two. An idea expands by splitting into two new ideas, opposed and yet fundamentally identical.

If truth can't be absolute, if it is always context dependent, then it becomes very difficult to determine the value to any truth at all - because the context its self becomes meaningless - devoid of comparative worth to any fundamental baseline.

And yet there is a fundamental line of correctness, life is not random, there is a perpetual forward movement. There is not good and evil, there is simply good and that which seems evil in-order to en-richen the understanding of good. Just like there is no love vs. hate, there is only love and that which expresses hate because it desires love - but in essence there is only love.

So there is relative truth, since truth is deeply personal and context based: building a home for you may be bad for the birds that lived in the tree you cut down to make your home, but to you a home is also a home. And there is also relative truth in terms of values, what you learn has meaning because you are never what you were, you are always more, therefore what experiences [truths] you develop have relatively more value than those you held - even though from a different perspective both the present and past truths are equal, in your/our context they are relative. The two views contradict each other, because we are speaking of relative value while things have absolute identical value - but I think this contradiction only occurs when we forget to see that we are measuring truths in terms of time and personal value.

So to me it is very possible to say:

A = B
and yet A > B.

[this last bit was for the more math-orientated readers]

In my own process of ever evolving relative truths, my differentiation-integrations, in these last weeks of 2007 I feel that there is a complete separation now between my sense of self, my love for others [romantic or friendship], and my path.

I see now that friendship is an expression of the unconditional love. And that all so-called "good" relationships are based on this deep sense of everlasting friendships. And that this is independent of whether two people can and should live their lives together in parallel. The 'conditional' comes in when it involves the perpetuating of connection in physical/reality/practical-related terms.

This makes relationships now seem almost purely conceptual, as opposed to emotional. The two are separate now within me and operate in unison but they do not interfere [for the most part] which each other. I can "love" someone, and then decide that the best way for me/us/you to live is together, or separate - based on what is best for you/we/me - and this will in no way detract from that love, that 'friendship'.

I'm awed by how much I have learned, and I am left with amazement at the thought that I am only 31 years old now - so there is still so much more time to learn so many more things here... what will be the next new level of understanding I will achieve?

yes, I reside in that sea of awe and delightful everlasting loving wonder.

Life bouncing

2007-11-25T21:25:00.000+01:00

Hello humans,

I've been back from France now for a few days, and I've already done another trip and back to Rotterdam in the mean time.

In France my mother and I did not find a permanent place for her to stay, but we did manage to find a temporary place for January which suits our plans amply enough to allow the process of my mothers move to continue.

On the last days in France, totally unexpected to me - I met a lady from Quebec named Josiane. Josiane is currently traveling through Spain on her way towards Morocco and Tunisia on a potentially long journey. She and I spent some nice times together at the hostel and by a beautiful lake. Since my return, we both decided to see each other again for longer. So this Tuesday I am off to meet up with her in Barcelona, Spain.

I'm excited and so very lucky indeed; this has been really quite the year for sure!

You can view photos of my stay in France on my first photo album:

http://picasaweb.google.com/schedal

Rotterdam was really nice, I had a really great time with Simon and other friends like Max, Leslie, Peter etc. Simon is such an inspiration in music. We saw a Múm live during the Icelandic music festival [we did some conning at the door to get in for free, as it was sold out...] and got a bit too drunk two nights in a row. Icelanders are very-very interesting people, just watching them between those far-too-many free schnapps shots was enough to fill the soul with new perspectives. All in all, Simon gave me loads of precious musical tips, and we had lots of really nice conversations.

I left Rotterdam with a more clear idea of how to focus my musical energies in the future, I'm drawn now to the idea of integrating acoustic and electronic methods together into a performance - not as a solo artist, but as a member within a band. I could see myself playing keyboards + electronic/acoustic percussives with my button bay more single-purposed to samples, editing effects and full-filling a role within a group performance... I'm definitely looking forward to the time when I will have a bit of location-stability so that i can continue to work on these musical ideas.

Flower of E8

2007-11-23T11:50:00.000+01:00

You may have heard of the "flower of life"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flower_of_life

The flower of life is basically a simple geometric pattern which allows for all geometric primary forms to be constructed. You can build in the geometry of "the flower of life" all 2d shapes [circles, triangles, lines] and all 3d shapes [cubes, pyramids, spheres etc.] and other shapes like octagons, pentagons etc. all just by connecting different points together. Sort of like a blue-print for all geometry.

The flower of life goes further though, in stating that all life 'builds' from increasing complexity of geometry within the flower of life. For example, an embryo starts as a point, then as two spheres [line] then as four then as a diamond [8 spheres in diamond 3D positions] etc. If you look at the flower of life, those are all the shapes covered in the 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th increments.

All kinds of other religions have based concepts and ideas around the flower of life, its motif is found everywhere and it is very old.

Another example: the Christians see creation as the 7 first geometries [spheres] of the flower of life, known as the "seed of life":

Well now there is the mathematical theory of a geometric structure which could actually embody "what our universe looks like". This structure is known to math heads as the E8.

The E8 is an 8 dimensional sphere with 248 points [vertexes].

If you classify in math the shapes and dimensions which can be transformed into symmetrical groups, ie dimensions or shapes which allow symmetrical translation, and you don't limit yourself to just 3 dimensions, you end up with 9 groups: 4 of them are infinite, 5 of them are finite.

Of the infinite, one of them is 3 dimensional space we live in. These 4 infinite groups have no bounding shape, meaning that their space has no limits. of the 5 finite groups, they are symmetrical, but only when bounded together by a fixed shape. Of the 5 exceptional ones, the largest/most complex possible mathematically is E8.

According to the math-heads, E8 is the largest possible symmetrical group you can create that is finite; kind of like saying its the 'largest primary number possible' - if it were possible for primary numbers to have a 'largest' limit.

E8's underlying math was only finally described in terms of a complete formula [mathematical representation] this year, so it's a new discovery in mathematics.

Being 8 dimensional, its kinda hard to visualize in 3D or 2D. This image is how it looks if flattened in 2D:

The logic to build it follows this little drawing:

This diagram gives a visual summary of the root structure. Each node of this diagram represents a simple root. There are 8 roots in E8, and from these 8 roots you can build the entire 248 set of points. A line joining two simple roots indicates that they are at an angle of 120° to each other. Two simple roots which are not joined by a line are orthogonal [at right angles to each other].

So basically all roots are either at 120 degrees or 90 degrees to each other. So either in fourths or thirds of a full rotation.

You can make a 3D model of the root points, if you do so, you end up with something like this:

What makes this geometric structure so exciting to the science-heads is that physical reality may result from different facets of the symmetries of E8.

If we take all the different forces and particles, they match up with the resulting points on E8. When you match all the points to all the known forces and particles, 20 of the points on the E8 are left unmatched, these "gaps" could, for example, represent particles which some physicists predict to be associated with gravity [but not yet detected].

Physicists have long puzzled over why elementary particles appear to belong to families, but if you look at the E8 model, this arises naturally from the geometry of E8. Furthermore, so far all the interactions predicted by the geometrical relationships inside E8 match with observations in the real world.

Proof or disproof will probably be achieved when the new particle accelerator in Switzerland opens.

At the moment many different theories are betting on them being right... will it be Standard model theories? String theories? M-plane theories? or this new E8 which make the accurate predictions?

If it does turn out to be the E8 which holds the flame, the implications are quite extra ordinary because it means that our entire universe's fundamental under workings and forces can all be described as a 248 point 8D geometric sphere... how weird would that be???

If this does turn out to be true, what relationships does this E8 have to the flower of life? Are the two related?

Wouldn't it be interesting that the most fundamental [finite] [micro] aspects of reality would be described by the most complex [finite] [macro] symmetrical object we know exists...?

If it is true that our reality can be described by an object which resides in the 8th dimension and which has a finite limit, how does that relate to our 3rd dimension? Is the 3rd dimension "bound" by the limits of the 8th? Or is the 3rd dimension unbounded but simply intercepts with the 8th dimension in local space-time? can this model be integrated with m-plane theory? Or is the theory of E8 and 11 dimensional membranes incompatible?

As always, new answers will mean new questions... isn't life good that way?
:)

The wiki page for the flower of life is:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flower_of_life

If you don't mind the tone of voice, you can find more about the E8 theory here:

telegraph article on E8 theory of everything

Impossibly difficult to understand for non-math heads information about the E8 specifically can be read at:

wikipedia's E8 page
and here:
http://aimath.org/E8/e8.html

.

Ken Wilber: A Brief History of Everything

2007-11-21T17:48:00.001+01:00

Just finished this book, wow - I've learned so many things; this book is truly a must read for everyone, no matter your area of interest or focus.

What comes after post-post modern?
What is the 'new' human perspective on life, the universe and everything?
Ken's got some vital part to play in those answers...

Some of the things I learned:

- Various ideas I had were verbalized by Ken in very clear terms, which has helped me to find greater clarity in my own ideas; while simultaneously helping me to see the limits of some of my current/older ideas.
- Patterns of evolution [of species and ideas] in terms of integration & transcendence [instead of just transcendence]
- Seeing reality as a mixture of 4 main domains of truth [instead of just "true" and "relative"]: objective, subjective, collective and systemic.
- Seeing system thinking as only a component within this 4 domains [instead of as the "new" truth beyond reductionism aka objective causality]
- Drawing parallels between psychological levels of development and human evolution of culture/thought
- Being able to see at once the absolute value of all things as well as relative value between all things [instead of one mode of thought denying the validity of the other]
- Seeing the parallel between psychologyical development and the development from egopesonal to transpersonal
- Seeing the link between psychological and spiritual development as simply two parts of the same chain
- Learning much about the previous history of philosophical development and its manifestation in cultural / anthropological manifestation
- Seeing limits I did not existed in the retrograde eco-centric philosophies present in many ecological movements
- Seeing that the thought -> creation approach to life [echoed in 'the secret', or 'seth speaks'] is only part of spiritual/evolutionary development because personal development is only one fourth of the picture: spirit manifests as self, collective and objective, so true spiritual evolution also includes [not excludes] the acknowledgment of other, of system, and objective realities of absolute and relative value.
- Seeing that meditation, spiritual paths, are also incomplete unless combined with left brain subjects and collective subjects [balance the right and left brain, collective & individual, the external & internal etc.]
- Seeing the dichotomy and link between rights and responsibilities in terms of holarcharchy [a term which Ken uses to describe a hieacrhy of holons, holons are both parts and wholes; both selves and parts, holons: according to Ken, make up everything in the universe].

My criticism of his book is:

- Sometimes too emotionally evolved which results in some meandering.
- Some ideas are repeated a bit too often, especially 4/5ths of the book on, fortunetly one can speed read over paragraphs that repeat and then pick things up further on - the last pages provide brilliant ideas in short and solid concepts just when one thought that he was done with new ideas and rambling.
- He can be a bit negative about current/previous modes of thinking; which leads to the emotional stances, which on the one hand challenges us to take action; but it also implies not seeing the value of evolutionary progression [even if incorrect] because, as Ken Wilber also states, no level of understanding final: each level has new understanding, but also new problems.
- Not enough pages are devoted to solutions, and the description of the 'problems' are wordy and repetative at times.
- Some information is implied but not given, like what are the other 15 properties of holons he refers to? [he wants us to read his other book where they are listed]
- Some points he makes could do with more referencing to data/sources he implies but does not state.

but regardless of these criticisms, the sheer quantity of new keys and perspectives from this book are so profound and numerous, I would be a fool to give it anything but 5 stars and best book of the year award - hands down.

Inside lost and found journals we now find...

2007-11-21T16:56:00.000+01:00

Flowing the spirals of time. Nitched and locked in the golden line.
Peace in the unlimited bareness of open being.
No layers to hide, an open heart.
Memorized by gratitude & grace.
Your calls spring in the wind.
A time for place. A time for space.

When your being lets down its final fight - you will absolve your last fright.
Naked you cloth the sky in layers of arctulated care.

A hard turn, a calculated click. And life whirls a new trick.
Always more than before, forever changing when once there was nothing more.
Creation starts with a dream like thought.
Forging time concsious naught for bought.

Imagination will provide you with solstice, young flying farewell care free bee.
Be hearty now & laugh with glee; for all of this kingdom is for just you and me.

Free spirit weave your tale well - & remember to good care of your magic spell.
We salute you fare well.

2007-09-07
S. Chedal, Permaculture intensive course, Angel Camp, California, USA

Some new scans of artwork

2007-11-18T21:33:00.000+01:00

Hi following friends,

Some new pages in my journals were scanned today, apparently I had forgotten to scan the last 5 worthy pages; I was in Australia at the time I made these drawings.

Assuming you have already seen the other pages, start at this link and click 'next' till you hit the end of the album:

http://picasaweb.google.com/seb.chedal.art/2006TravelingJournal/photo#5134271561140035074

In parellel, I'm drawing again new stuff, this time though I seem to be going back to previous pages and working on them as I work on new pages... so while I am uploading these drawings, many of them are unfinished, or I thought they were finished and then I added something new to them again... so this is more of a 'current view' state of how they look today; as I alter them I supose I'll rescan and re-upload - maybe I'll even do some fancy before-after organization in the albums; we shall see.

Without further ado, some of my new work:

http://picasaweb.google.com/seb.chedal.art/2007ArtJournal

homes in france

2007-11-14T11:25:00.000+01:00

hello my friends,

here i am

waves crashing with speckles of dancers in their white curls
weathered tempered homes of elderly stones freckling mazes of mediteranian

my mother and i are in the sun again, in the south of france
its a time to spent together, a vaction, but also not
my mother is looking for a home here - drastic changes are in the air.

the wind has come, and to its call, little thought is placed; the wind guides us, movement beggets direction, direction preceeds reflection.

from these shores a wave is sweeping across my life, and the life of my mother. amsterdam is rapidly becoming a place of different perspectives. by next year neither myself or my mother will be calling it 'home' any longer.

with any change comes nostalgia, fears and the excitement of the unknown; magical little experiences along each day that are unleached from the bounds of the routine. guides, miracles, distractions, trials and triumps.

change brings growth, i becon this manifestation; and pray that change will not preceed regression. evolution, becoming - this is every person's calling; to become more than they once were - through experience we are; and never are what we once were - and yet we all still are (if you can read this, you exsist).

personally ive been pilling on new trials of self disciplin; in parallel to each other and other developments in my life. its interesting to note that if you try and accomplish too many changes in parallel you run the risk of messing up on one routine of disciplin; which can cascade instantly and make you fail on other trials of self disciplin... the challenge is to not only limit how fast you try and make the self grow/change; but also in the seperation of different levels of growth from each other... its all too easy to fail at one thing and then give up defacto on others in that same instant - at least, i can observe this potential.

as this year continues, the year which i themed the year of 'love'; back in december 2006, i can observe a whole string of different perspectives, questions and self-trials that have occured - as i quest to obtain an even deeper understanding of the nature of the matter.

i'm nearly done with ken wilbers book, and i can really say that the ideas here have made my underestanding move beyond previous levels of understanding so rapidly - i'm already at a point now where i feel that i am 'beyond' permaculture. beyond in the sense that i can see how system thinking fits into an even larger realm of integral psychology/philosophy. none of this is going to alter my ideal to get certified as a Permaculture Instructor - i decided a few weeks ago to take such a course in Portland in 2008; if anything, this even larger view integrates things even further into the realms of value-systems.

This all ties into my philosophy project; ive completed a rough mind-map of all my ideas - its looking very likely that i will complete my chapter (card/deck) outline by the end of 2007; right on schedule.

other news: phillip pullmans: 'his dark materials': book 1: 'the golden compass' movie is coming out in december! im sooo excited! magically i have a press pass!

some other goals for 2008 include:

* massage cert. (at least 50% completed)
* permaculture teach trainer cert.
* horticultural software alpha
* book/card book idea developed
* native american focus (for burning man 2008 and/or by visiting a retreat in oregon/washington)
* new music live set completed in 2008 for nez live performances in 2008/2009
* at least 1 gallery expo in 2008 of my artwork in parrallel to attempts in portland to situate my art as a parallel focus (music is no longer my #1 focus and now holds place in parallel with 'art')
* develop new art ideas relatd to expo (traditional, photographic, installations and multimedia [audio-video] interactive displays)
* get an eco job; or a job i beleive in (only do what you believe)
* develop my lecture topic for BM08; probably related to my deck/book idea.
* add lighting techniques to my photography skills/knowledge so i can start making my own photosessions for artwork (live model/fashion integration)
* save enough money in 2008 to meet my personal savings/year target so that i can eventually buy land (at an as yet unknown future sapce time-location)

this might seem a lot for 2008; but i'm sure i can achieve at least 80% of these goals; that seems to be my general trend.

more to follow on my years theme of love at year end, plus a 'best of' 2007 review concerning music, ideas, art i have seen.

from the surfing lands of southern france, i toast my croissant to you.

Dance Monkey Dance!

2007-11-07T00:03:00.000+01:00

the BEST internet movie clip I have EVER seen is BACK! After more than a year of being 'no where to be found' on the internet.

This really is a MUST see!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a15KgyXBX24

;)

Enjoy!

Seb.

washington/portland photos

2007-11-06T12:11:00.000+01:00

hello yawl,

new photos uploaded to my album:

http://picasaweb.google.com/schedal

Silverfalls: a 10 water fall trail in the Oregon forest-mountains
Portland pt.1: some photos of friends in the first couple of weeks I stayed there
Multanoma falls: Aprille and I on our first day traveling around Oregon
Smith rock: Aprille and I on our second day traveling around Oregon
Washington state road trip: Various photos over a period of 6 days traveling around Washington state on my own by car and tent.
Portland pt. 2: photos from the last week after my return from Washington + some photos from other friends of mine.
Hoh rain forest: Photos from a temperate rain forest in Washington state.

Hope you like them.

Seb.

Into the rabbit hole,

2007-11-05T18:56:00.000+01:00

Dearest friends all across this blue world,

This is a scary post to be writing, somehow.

These last few months I was eagerly awaiting a 'hunch' - some kind of intuitive feeling that told me that a certain place was calling me. This calling came from...

Are you sure you want to know where? Isn't this where we have a final commercial break?

Maybe you had better grab some tea or coffee, or go to the loo, and contemplate life for about 10 min, and then keep reading this post. That would make it read more like a good television program... [and give me time to do some final editing]
;)

Ok, ok, I'll tell you.

If you take the first letter of every word on wikipedia's subject of emethiologiums, and reverse it - you will get an anagram of prime numbers which translate to where I am moving to; minus the first two letters, which you will find in the first 2 posts on my blog hidden under the shadow of a water mark.

Not buying it? Hey! Don't get angry!!! I'm just playing!

I've decided to try my luck at living in Portland, Oregon.

Just kidding!

Ok, ok, no, I'm not kidding, yes: portland oregon!

A totally unexpected direction; especially since just a few months ago I thought I wouldn't be visiting / let alone living, in the USA any time soon.

It's impossible to say what life will be like, but from the short time I spent, I have a good feeling.

Well, why Portland?

Well for art, music, permaculture courses, massage courses, and spiritual pursuits this seems like a good place.

There are a large percentage of green jobs around, so I'm hoping that I can also find some work I believe in.

People and community are very strong, as you have all probably ascertained, I've met lots of people already there; so this is one factor that is already sorted [I don't have to wonder what kind of friends/people I will meet there cause I already know many people].

Culturally there is also something I quite like about the way people think and interact.

Nature access is great; mountains, forests, beach and hot springs; all fairly close to the city.

The negative points of Portland are, as far as I can see: Rain's half the year, people drive lots of cars, it's in the USA, it's further from my mother than England.

Well, England and Holland also get lots of rain, and the weather in NZ in the winter is also not that great; so really this is a bit moot. I was just there in the rainy season, and I felt that people's moods were not negatively affected; actually, people seemed to be social and creative with the rain coming in, so this makes me feel less apprehensive. The good news is, just a few hours away you can generally find sunshine.

Car's: well, you can get around the city no problem on a bike, so that reserves car's for just trips. I can live with that.

Its the USA: well, thats a much tougher one. Politics of war, consumerism, capitalism, petroleum, ignorance and abuse of the poor. All i can say is that as long as i can find a way to make a difference on this level, then I am doing my part to make a positive difference in a situation that needs help, not avoidance.

I can't say yet how I plan on making a difference here, but what ever means I select, it will be a way that I feel is mutually beneficial.

One idea is to visit a native American reservation for a few weeks [at some point in 2008]; I'm keen on learning and living with the land's ancestors.

Art is such a big thing in Portland, and as an artist there is quite a few options/entries, so I also plan on putting a lot of energy into my artwork while I am there - a reprioritization of sorts.

The 'further from my mother than England' bit is a tough one. I've considered this point so much already I'm not even sure where to start on the subject. All I can say is that I hope the balance between my personal goals and my responsibilities is functioning properly. I hope I am doing the right thing.

Oh and I'll be heading there in Feb. 2008 - that gives me just enough time to do my taxes here for 2007 and close off things with Holland + move my mother - if she indeed does chose to relocate to France.

the Happy Chrysalis phase

2007-10-29T12:58:00.000+01:00

so, what a long flight that was! More than 26 hours traveling and not 3, but 4 planes! Ouch! Gladly I had a bag of books to read. I started and nearly finished Ken Wilber's book: 'a brief history of everything' - this is quite an interesting book, apparently it's a summary of his other book: "sex, ecology and evolution". I think I'll eventually be getting a copy of this title since I would like more depth to the information that is in this book.

*****
Book review: "A brief history of everything" - Ken Wilber
*****

Ken's work combines different belief systems: from east, west, science, holisim, psychology, ecology, politics, theology, philosophy and religeon into a combined vision. Ken is really good at looking for patterns and extracting commonalities.

Ken is a data collector, abstractor, simplifyer. I really like that his ideas are a process of data collection and abstraction - and then not from one disciplin, but all disciplines that are.

I have still a few more pages to go, but in general he covers so far 3 main concepts/areas:

* From the big bang to now: whats the pattern? how does the universe organize its self in terms of information, ideas, physical reality etc.
* What is the commonality of all our different modes of thought/belief. How has our ideas evolved? What is the pattern in that development? What natural groupings of ideas occur?
* What are the commonalities in psychology? How do human's evolve from early years into adulthood? How are ideas of the self and spiritual subjects related to human psychology? What commonalities can be seen in all spiritual belief systems and what is the pattern that all information supports?

*****
the happy chrysalis phase
*****

So, here I am back in Amsterdam. In the last days of Portland, I was happy I got to see a few friends again in the last days - and then quite sad to be going away. The first half of my trip in the plane was somber; although by the time I had to sleep 6 hours on a bench in front of a check in booth, my mood was more neutral than anything! That will cure any emotional state!

Arriving in Amsterdam was strange. 7am, pitch black darkness, the sun kind of rises; it doesn't breaks this dense gray moosh; its cold, it's shades of undefined gray. And somehow, none of this makes a dent on me. Happy; that's all I was; and several days later, that's all I am. I'm excited. I'm in the moment, enjoying the company of friendships and my mother here - I know this place is just temporary - and I know I have the power to alter my reality as needed, I don't feel trapped like I have felt here before.

Ihor my friend from Australia was here for two days before he left again back to the underworld; it was really nice hanging out with him; even if brief.

I'm thankful, and I feel very blessed. Both for the past, my present, and my immanent future.

I believe I've made my decision regarding where I am moving to; but I am going to wait still another week to make sure my decision is not entirely impulsive. So sorry for the suspense! But an end to this Chrysalis phase is near at hand... What I do know, is that I am in Amsterdam now until approximately February 2008; this will give me time to sort out things here, and also assist my mother with her possible life changes.

So yes, within me a bright fire is burning, and nothing external seems to be affecting that light. It was a bit sad leaving Portland, but that melancholy has passed again, and in its place a peace grows.

Its the considered creationist,

2007-10-24T22:07:00.000+02:00

Well, here I am, a few hours away from my horrendously long trip back home [3 planes, 6 hour stop over in LAX, more than 20 hours flying - ug!]

I've got a bag of different books to read, a new art journal I am filling with new inspiration, and a place to record my thoughts; so I should be good durring my trip back to Amsterdam.
:)

I've had a lot of things to consider lately.

EGS [positive-living] principles and then seeking out information that challenges my ability to remain EGS [see post on tangetal history].

Then this last weekend at the party I had such a strong venus-like experience; oh I should mention that Venus was out and burning brighter in the sky than I had ever seen in my entire life on that night; it broke through the clouds and left a small shinning hallow and a radiant twinkle - quite surreal.

This exprience; along with a few others lately, has made me ponder of subjects related to sexuality, relationships, connection, pleasure, fears and self-gratification.

It's possibly the newest area for me to work on; now that I have broken out of the previous cycle, I see that the new one I am about to uncover and break this year now is related to my lunar position. At the symbiossis festival we went through all the moons; and the one danger of having a moon in Libra really struck a chord in me that I could relate to. Apparently, people with their moon in Libra tend to be very good and active at balancing the needs of others; but ion the process, Libra-moons tend to forget to balance their own needs in the equation.

I can tell from the internal thought processes I observe in me, that the balance between self-gratification vs. selfishness is not quite formed yet. Some people start from the side of being too selfish, and need to learn to be more generous; for it me it feels like I am disbalanced on the other side of things - and need to get more in the middle.

I'm definately interested in learning more about [tantric] forms of 'sex-drive' control; or rather: re-incorporation; as I think this also links directly into using male energy to create instead of to destroy.

I've had several major art breakthroughs in the last two days.

The most important new one's are:

1. The law of negative inversion
2. The applied eternal principle of the flower of life
3. Balanced creation and destruction cycles: with creation as completion.

Like anything I learn, its cross-applicable to all fields of life - and I am sure these laws just came from some really important new thoughts I've had in relation to procreation.

1. The law of negative inversion

Every element on the page can be viewed in at least two ways.
By making each element serve a minimum of two purposes, breadth opens up in the drawing and every line, form and direction takes purpose. These can be different reflections at the same scale; different connections between different colors/textures, or different meanings to the same line when viewed at different scales [close observation, mid distance, far observation]

2. The applied eternal principle of the flower of life

Every element on the page is alive. Rooted firmly in the [previously learned] art law of "there is no such thing as a 'mistake'", this principle takes the idea of no mistakes and pushes it even further to say that in every line, shape or form some world, life, picture, place, face, state can, will, and is taking form. the artist's job then is to simply uncover this form; to allow it to be expressed by refining it. But to create, one must destroy... which brings me to the next law:

3. Balanced creation and destruction cycles: with creation as completion.

To create something, you have to destroy something. The page starts white; anything you add is a destruction to that purity. Now until now one could say this processes was present; but unconscious. Unconscious in the sense that I didn't observe the pattern of moving between destruction-creation before. If I take a marker and make wide marks without cause or reason, I am seeding the page with potential; by destroying something - then if I go back into the wide marks and then pull-out forms [what I call 'carving'] I am then creating; creating not by interfeering with what was just done; but by accentuating what is dormant within the previously just enacted destruction.

So this connects me back to the male-sexual energies. All too often I've heard: male is destruction/change, female is creation/form. BUT I'd like to challenge this. Each energy also has its opposite manifestation.

Imagine a male energy focused on creation. The trust then is of change, and the drive is forming realty instead of in-jesting it. If I may draw a parallel: This is the male energy that isn't outwardly releasing sperms into the void hoping that one will make it [the pessimistic approach]; this is the male energy that withholds its resources and actively plants its seeds in the places that make the most positive difference to induce growth in a vision that is refined for greater purposes.

I suppose you could call it, a balanced male-female energetic principle. I'm sure the same reversal of energies is possible in female principles; but I'll need a bit more time to formulate that one as my current mental focus was on the masculine.

So back to the art; destruction:creation, and a natural pendulum between them. Now we all know that an art peice isn;'t done until it 'feels' done; but when is that? I believe now that art looks/feels done when every last bit of 'potential-impetus' has been activated. 'Potential-impetus' is what I create when I manifest destruction on the page; I seed it with potential. But until those potentials are finalized by refining each section into its creationist state; it is incomplete.

This is EGS applied to art; its taking reality, and making sure that the way you leave it, is better and more beautiful than [ever] before. It's the considered creationist.

love releasing in the wind...

2007-10-22T22:21:00.000+02:00

Well, if you made it to the end of that last blog entry, you probably deserve a medal! That was some serious length and subject typing going on there!

In the last few days I've been to 4 different gatherings / parties and didn't even get to sleep on Sunday at all.

Leaving here in a few days feels so strange, potentially even painful. Every week I just keep meeting more and more wonderful people here, sigh... but thus is life, at this point my path is forward. I trust in that.

So friday I went to a live fiddle, strings, flute jam that kinda sounds folkish, rythmic - with singing but no percussions. People here were in costumes of various sorts, you know: a girl in blue in a box, a guy wearing a penis outfit... nothing out of the ordinary! I had on my semi oriental prince gettup with my silken flowing pants and double button shirt.

I had here a very interesting conversation about the psychology of spiders with a girl with blue hair [Tiffany]. We discussed how a spider has to deal with the fact that every time it catches a meal; it must kill it to live, even though it is helpless and in theory the spider could free it at any time - balanced by the fact that a spider must die to have sex [male eaten by female] or die in the process of birth [female dies when egss are released from her back]. A sort of mercy or closure to the cycle of helplessness as the male comes to terms with his own fate for love - and the female who eats her man; his last gift of sustenance which ensures the woman enough food to give birth - a joint [if slightly delayed] dualistic-joint-procreation-death. For her: birth is her sacrifice. But for the captured; at a certain point the pray must give into the experience of dieing and accept its fate. Only once the captured prey's being accepts its destiny to be eaten [or that it IS being eaten] will it then be able to transcend...
:P

Then we left this party to go for the dub jam session [the same place i was at for the last few weeks]. Naturalist sauna with chanting, beat boxing, singing. Cold outdoor rain, icy pools, outdoor showers; then back into the sauna room for more heat, meditation and peacefulness.

As with each time I've been, there seems to be a few permanent members, and then about half the people there seem to be new; or at least, infrequent visitors.

This time I met a few nice new people, in particular a girl named Kyrsten.

After a few hours of jamming on drums and with a little melodic percussive in a nice music circle, I took my leave and cycled home at about 5am.

Saturday was the big day, cause this was the burning man decompression. It started at 3pm and was set to end at 6am the next day! There was some good names on the line up like Bluetech and ELF.

So many things happened here, I guess the best way to summarize is with a bullet list:

* receiving a rose by a Russian lady
* getting glittered and a henna tattoo
* seeing many many friends of mine that I had met in all the preceding weeks, I now know a good percentage of the community here...
* participating in the monkey chant
* suffering [erotic?] stimulation on this bizarre electric chair which I did not feel comfortable totally letting myself go in [the women seemed generally much more into it, though some guys were really into it too... so its hard to say]
* sharing soup with a very elegant lady from the 1920's who had a painted moustach
* watching a girl do a short private strip tease for me in a booth
* getting my photo in the year book
* writing a love letter which got randomized into a mail box for someone else
* really good conversations about work ideology with a friend: Anna.
* hanging out with a nice stilt walker called jingle and a yellow pirate
* making a complete fool of myself with one girl by not acting when i should have, and then when i did make a move; doing it all incredibly wrong and awkwardly
* being naughty and making out with a girl in the exhibitionists corner
* nibbling off grapes being fed to me by two other girls outside after the party while they practiced tantric [orgasmic] breathing [this was quite the experience, I think one of the girls: Krianna and I will stay in contact]

Aprille was also there, it was really nice to see her again and spend some time together.

In between all this, I went to another concert of an amazing, I am soooo hooked reggae band called:

Groundation

The music was superb; real roots reggae; from the soul, pure message, just ripping - I was so into the music by the end; just dancing away like crazy, tooting at every silent music... it's time's like this that you know music is divine. If you don't know them yet, and you think you could like reggae, I highly recommend this band to anyone. I'm going to pick up "HEBRON GATE" since I heard from a friend that this album was particularly remarkable.

The concert was actually sold out! But some how... I managed to get it! What a blessing.

So yesterday, after a whole day of not really being able to sleep, and semi-down, I went out and bumped into Kyrsten in the street from Friday's dub session. We had a very nice talk in a dinner where she was chilling and we made a 'rendez vous' for tomorrow at 12; I'm looking forward to that. Only 2 more evenings and 2 more daytimes left before I go! How strange... especially since I just keep meeting more and more people here...

Anyways, enough of this talk; I'm going to head to a book store now and grab some titles people have been recommending; a spread of poetry, philosophically stimulating scifi/fantasy and some other more theoretical titles ranging from eco topics to the ancient principles of basic geometry and numbers. I'll need something to kill all that time at the airport on wednesday!!!

love,

Sebastian.

a tangent to tangental history

2007-10-19T22:07:00.000+02:00

after a few days leaving the farm, wet, and tired of camping - dreaming of a shower, a fireplace and a good book; i headed through Seattle for an afternoon [nice city, market, architecture, vibe cool] and landed back at Lindsay's house again a day early after a long night searching for camping spots and ending up between the trees along a random river. I expect to be here now for the next 5 days until I depart [by wheel or plane] for my return flight to Amsterdam. It's been great to rest here, take a warm shower, lie by the fire place, snuggle with the cat, shave, cook, i feel like a new man!

tomorrow is the burning man decompression party in Portland! That's going to be phat! I'm so happy to be back here, its amazing to think that I'll have spent nearly 3 weeks here! It's become a sort of second home to me [among many second homes I do decree].

It is also interesting because I feel quite happy to be returning to Amsterdam now - odd because just 10 days ago, I still didn't feel like going back at all [see procrastination blog entry]. The pressure of a return has forced my mind to solidify my state of affairs more clearly. But I'm perplexed in a way that things should be this difficult to decide.

In my journal, list after list is made; diagram after diagram - mapping my wishes, my priorities, my dreams - little bubbles with skills, ambitions are drawn, future scenarios in my head are played out; options are tested, turned, alternated; potential future selves reflect on decisions i never made and ask questions relating to other options never selected... All this, in a series of passing thoughts between the pages of other books, encounters, or a whizzing radio frequency chattering while i drive my car about the latest sale [only 9.95, buy now!], jesus christ's love, or your eternal damnation, war justification propaganda or just some scot's man competing with david letterman's life long rein of television for capitalistic endeavors... these are the days spent behind the wheel - my car on cruise control, the belly of my machine filled with iraqi oil, the windshield wipers polishing a view of the falling yellow autumn leaves, gray skies engulfing my 6 windows as reservoirs pass behind the corners of my eyes, my shoes set beneath the radiator to dry...

so yes, i've been reading a lot lately. Lindsay is such a librarian, we also have many great talks about many a wide topic - very philosophical; which is - if you haven't noticed, something I enjoy most thoroughly.

in the current clamoring of books, I'm reading - among other titles [simultaneously going back and forth]:

"the never ending story"
"a peoples history of the united states" pt 1 and 2 and,
"set speaks: the unknown reality" [book 3]

the never ending story is wonderful, the movie only goes about 2/5ths into the book, and changes a few important details, omits certain parts - it's a good read, a recommended titled, and I've been reading with a dedication these last days. There are lots of important messages here, one of the dozens of topics that echo my life is:

imagination [yeah, here it is again]: according to the author: if we do not value it, our lives end up becoming stifled, gray and meaningless - There is strong parallel in this book to my belief that: "imagination IS creation" - without imagination, life remains 'as-is' and change is impossible. You need imagination to create growth, change. The book goes directly into social problems in society and makes the parallel that when mankind rejects imagination, fairy-tales, stories and other forms of alternate realities: it in turn destroys itself, because it has lost all ability to recreate itself: to imagine change beyond the present: for by accepting only the 'known' you accept only the past; there can thus be no future. The people become locked into a reality which can not change because they have lost the ability to dream, and this in turn becomes a walking death... [ha-hum! deep for a kids book, eh?]

"A peoples history of the united states" is a terribly interesting, yet painful read. It accounts the history of the united states not through the eyes of the government, politicians, common-press; but through the changes and histories of the people involved. The public; the 98% or so of the people who actually experienced the history, which we are often not told; but also of the people's affected BY the colonizing Americans. There are a lot of interesting strong points here; one of the first important ones is the re-accounting of the initial spanish [european] affairs with the indians [native americans]. I knew there was blood shed and atrocities; but the scale and sheer repugnant irony of it was thus unconnected. From between the genocides [over decades and centuries] you really feel that there is a few key underlying issues:

1. Man's belief that something can be "possessed" leads him to destroy that which he desires in an ever perpetuating cascade into darker and darker domains which seem unbreakable as the debt only increases and each preceding shame leads to deeper, shifting, destruction. [indian genocide [hate] -> slavery [racism] -> war's etc. etc.]

2. The more technologically advanced the weaponry of a civilization, the more extensive the level of control one can exert on their OWN people.

3. The poor and lower class citizens are time-and-time again both the one's who suffer the most from each and every event in history; and those who are the most easily manipulated because of their suffering.

4. The rich are generally unshifting, despite 'revolutions' or 'independence' [there is little to no movement between the classes over all of american history [and I can guess its the same globally]] - their political power struggles between themselves create historical events, manipulations, policy and propaganda that affects the laws, cultural norms, psychology and reality that ultimately feeds off of the livelihood of the poor for the direct benefit of the rich-man's coffer. The blood of the poor spills [literally] so that the rich can get richer.

This human obsession with "more", power, acquisition leads to the destruction of those beliefs that are sustainable, timeless, harmonious. It corrupts both itself, as well as those around it, and ultimately destroys both the beauty it sees; as well its own [beauty here defined as a metric of its internal-value]. And yet, it also perpetuates, expands - and like any creature on this earth - it shifts and adapts. It is perhaps as undying as any creature on the earth ["it" being the as-yet unformed knowledge of consciousness-aware living]. The night to humanities light. The tsunami that periodically removes the old so that new may grow. It, the less-desired-virtues-of-man, is not what we cherish most; but perhaps it is also not what we are when given a chance to be who we truly are.

Regarding racism, isn't it ironic that a group of people go off to another country, kill the men, women and children - enslave them, bring them back and make them serve them, torture, abuse, hang, burn and rape them, and then they hate them and think that they are superior? This is quite illogical! The only possible psychological explanation is that the guilt from the white-man's acts are so extreme, that the only [seeming] recourse for the psyche is to build an explanation around its actions retroactively. Otherwise, their system of beliefs would crumble - for all men want to think of themselves as good; and are unfortunately often un-self-forgiving. Responsibility for one's actions; admitting wrong when wrong: these are basic traits which seem lacking. Instead it's: "I killed you because you deserved it"; "i treat you badly because you needed it"... when will people learn the basic virtues of life?

The irony is that the virtues that these people [in this case: the white-america] need are actually contained within their religion; and in their laws - but in a mystifying feat of self-deception; an entire people live on with the guilt of self-perpetuated misgivings. A sad affair, still reflected, perpetuated and very well alive [though modified] in the 21st century.

It is a tough cycle to break; certainly from within. I sometimes wonder when facing the great wave, what can anyone do? how can anyone make a start; without loosing themselves under the wave [without making a mark and thus: an effort waisted]? Is this simply the cycle of vishnu [destruction-creation] - the cyclical processes of consciousness? Are we drawn to these times to come to terms with the unstoppable? Or is it our place to stand up and make a stand; even if they know it is in vain, to be swept in the wave; at any cost? certainly many before me have tried; many in vain - but not all - some had made a mark; many have made a difference, but it is always so small... at least, the impact seems so. The history, told from any side will always show that those who held virtues of greed, power at the expense of an other, and other less-valued beliefs, remain for the most either unaffected; or easily replaced. History, that is, as told by the western society: the perpetrators; but not all mankind has lived in this duality before; this duality need to be the norm...

The conclusion I had come to, back in 2001 - after about a year of continual internal debate regarding if I should become an activist [i was quite charged that year with all the ongoings in the USA], was that the best way I could make a difference was to focus on my self, those around me, and the spreading of a positive view; a positive world, as much as possible. My 'activism' lies within my immediate means. I still firmly stand behind this belief.

If I were to conjure a solution; I think what is needed is for people, and I mean now everyone: so all classes and creeds, to really have a vision for humanity. But what would make an even bigger difference, is the combination of not fearing death with a new set of morals which would encompass such things as:

[i brain storm now, so this list is not complete, nor final]

* a belief that we, you, i, humans are NOT superior to any thing, person or animal. We are a part of the world, not above it. We ALL deserve to live, we all deserve happiness, and there is always enough to share. We once thought the earth was flat, then we thought earth was at the center of the universe.. one day we will [re]realize that humans are not at the TOP of the food chain, we are simply a part of a food-web. We are not 'above' nature, we 'are' nature - we are our environment. This non-superiority is both internal: between each other human being, and external: between mankind and all other animals/creatures/things.

* a rejection of the idea of ownership. "things" should be shared, used, as needed. if things are shared as they are needed; everyone has what they need, no one has things they don't need, there is no suffering, and no greed: two primary causes for war, hatred, fears etc. This is not as far fetched as it seems since if you look at any sustainable civilization in the past: ie one that neither taxed nor destroyed its environment, these cultures all practiced forms of non-ownership - it is quite easy to have this cultural norm; one easy way that it takes hold is simply through cultural-social pressure. I regress: if you can IMAGINE it; it can [will] come true. It has already for thousands of years globally in recorded human history...

The Native Americans had some very interesting differences in terms of governance, and I'm curious to learn more about the details of this anthropology. There were seemingly a vast array of differences in how they viewed social organization. No land possession rights [i have read some beautiful quotes that state: "the land is our chapel, the sky is our roof"], there was no marriage that bound people together in terms of possession, women were equals and in some ways more better off than the men, they had no material possession rights [you shared what you had, surplus always divided, those who needed something used it within reason / respect], and they were anti-government, anti-taxes... to them, man was self ruling. Why would anyone pay money to another? No laws, no written rules, no prisons, no set rulers - people knew what was right from wrong; and if someone did something wrong; they would know it because of the reaction of their peers until everyone felt that they had regained their trust by deed or word. If a common goal needed to be achieved, they united together to enact that goal instead. And yet they lived in affluence at more than 25 million people, for years and years - a very large number for being non-industrialized, non-central government organized - before the arrival of the Europeans.

It seems to me that the only reason white man is 'superior' here in the history books, in our reality of the present [superior now in-terms of being: white society prevailed: dominated; Indian society declined] - is because white man relied on the lack of virtuous-virtues: deceit, corruption, hatred, murder, greed all at the expense of their own people [the whites using indentured servants / black slaves and the poor] to obtain more and more in a futile quest for acquisition of something which is fundamentally meaningless... It's the same scenario as with racism: "Our civilization kills yours; that makes us better; we are superior because... we can kill you and did". The reliance on negative social characteristics doesn't prove superiority; it only creates suffering - and this suffering will ultimately decay those [people, societies, cultures, nations] who wield it - a decay which broods from within, until reconciled. For it is not only the slave who suffers, but also the master; both are tied in a duality of suffering.

In the Alchemical view of transformation: every transformation we undertake in the world; changes both subject and observer. When I give love; I am love. When I kill, i kill myself. When I hate, i become hate. When I build a building, I build myself... and so forth...

Would it not make more sense for a people to quest for equality, freedom and stability; than for a people to strive to become powerful, monolithic and expansive while becoming ever more corrupt, deceitful and judgmental in the process? Frankly this idea that 'capitalism: the quest for personal-greed equates the best for all mankind' is the most ridiculous set of moral standard codes I think my being has ever laid eyes upon. Its truth so transparent I can only fathom it's this very transparency which has caught so many souls in its web...

There are many other areas to go into... science is an interesting subject; especially because it is so closely linked to three important modes of thinking:

- reductionism
- separation of subject from observer
- progress = solution

Which leads me in a tangent to another important key understanding to how reality works [geez this is turning into a real magmalian-posting!]

* in this reality [ie, earth-worldy place] to create anything, you must create its opposite*. Therefore every "truth" you can say, implies that an opposite truth also exists. The chair which is good for you to sit on; is bad for the tree you just killed [or the mushrooms that would have bred on the decaying log], the birds that used it and so forth. To have light, there must be darkness. To be alive, there must be death. But this also extends to concepts: to believe there must be a god is to imply that there can also be none. To imply that you can understand the world by observation, separation and reductionism [aka commonly accepted scientific principles of thought] is to imply that you can ALSO understand the world through subjective-experience, application and holistic thinking [system, integral, artisan processes].

*: (in all honesty any discussion about opposite [but one] "dualities of creation" is incomplete unless I also discuss trianary-binding principles; but this is an entirely different tangent which I hope to eventually cover here in a future post, or in my book/card/art project[s]]

If you only look at the world through science, you will never really have, in my opinion, a complete picture of the fundamentals of our universe/reality; though you may make great discoveries, and clearly will invent great things. The same applies to one who thinks only holistically and by doing so creates great meals, working systems and balanced social networks. Neither is superior, they are equivalent but oppositely expressed. We find this duality in other places, like the human brain: with left and right brain separation of function. Would you conclude that a man who thought only with this left brain, at the expense of the right, was truly a man of learned wisdom? The problem [if i can call it that, because i don't really believe in problems, i see it more like: 'potentials'] is that people currently think still that through science we will [eventually] understand "everything"... without even tackling the problem of knowing 'everything', there are are serious limits to scientific thinking... I can list dozens in many a field of thought... some of these include:

- the fact that something must be destroyed [example: dissected] to acquire knowledge. If you acquire knowledge by destroying something, you "kill" that which you are seeking to embody in the process... if we must kill to understand, will that not leave us alone in the universe? HOw can you understand the universe if you are destroying it in the process? To control something does not, in any way, imply that you understand it; rather its the opposite. If you tame a lion and observe it in a cage; you no longer know the lion. You have broken it; killed its spirit and eliminated something very real [yet not physical]: its culture, its honor, pride, its context...

- oberserver: participant split is a key issue in science. How do you 'know' what joy is? Do you define it, or experience it? What tests can you perform to understand joy? And if you never experience it, can you understand it? Clearly experience is just as much a form of valid knowledge as information is... and yet we devalue experience continually, claiming it is 'unverifiable'; qualitative judgments... but what is life then?

- science can't deal with anything that equates to infinity. And yet infinity is an important element of not only the world, but science itself. This is not an 'unknown' limit, scientists are well aware of these limits; but it glosses over this limit rather easily.

In fact, if any formula equates to infinity [or is divided by zero] they say: "well, this something which we can't understand, so something must be still wrong with the equation" - mathematics - and thus science, in this context, is limited to observable phenomena. Measurable-materia. Science, unlike holistic thinking, is unable to understand that 1+1 = 3. That the sum is often greater than the whole. That consciousness can exist when born of a collection of individual living cells. And yet in the world we constantly see this principle: the one of 1+1 = 3.

Despite entropy [the law of diminishing returns] the universe continually creates more and overflows with abundance - structure from structure. Chaordic evolution. Life on this small world fills every crack of every pore and teethes with fertility.

- science can't tackle any of the worlds most fundamental philosophical questions, and yet people [subconsciously?] treat science as if it was a philosophy or a path that leads to wisdom. Intelligence is NOT wisdom! Just because I have a gun, and you have a club doesn't mean I am WISER than you, maybe smarter; but intelligence without wisdom is but a child without guidance. But we are often guilty of this association... we equate 'progress' : having a bigger, faster, better weapons, planes, with evolutionary-wisdom.

'why are we here?', 'what is the meaning of life?', 'what is intuition?', 'what is life?', 'what is freewill?','what is time?', 'what is mater?' none of these questions have answers in science, although it is true that they have probed the effects and properties of such things, and yet many of these are topics fundamental questions that scientific-probeans ponder to answer already for many a time thus far told...

Progress is associated to science, there is this bizarre and yet so ingrained belief in the majority of all people that 'progress' really will solve things [later]. And yet if you look in anthropology, at the history of mankind, its precisely when we start making 'progress' that our cultures expand, and then collapse - the romans, the chinese [twice] the incas, the babylonians, the sumarians, the egyptians, they never sustain from a pursuit of 'better'; precisely the opposite results. 'Progress' implies something important: it implies that something new is put into the equation, in other words, it implies a change in equilibrium, disbalance. When the west invents an iphone; this doesn't help to create equality, rather it provides yet another device that people have to work [harder] for, increases the 'norm' in the western world, and the employment in the poor for less and less [currently in 3rd world countries]: it expands disbalance to the system and does not feed or cloth anyone in the process. A disbalanced equilibrium requires time to stabilize [assuming it is sustainable to being with]. It also takes far more time to reach an equilibrium than it does to destabilize a system.

There is a big difference between inventing something because of necessity and inventing something to create relative superiority.

"ethical-progress" would be one which worked to promote three ethics [which I borrow from permaculture theory]:

- care for the earth [ie what supports me, and all my co-exsisting neighbors]
- care for people [care for each other]
- redistribution of surplus

Progress should be measured not by what gadget we have, or how much bigger our bombs are, or fast our planes can now fly [as after all, the faster you move, the faster you run out of gas...] - true progress should be measured by how slow we can move and still arrive on time, by how well we have created equality - both within as well as without our culture. If our land is healthy, it means we are healthy [a concept from eco-psychology]. If our fellow animals and trees are living happily, it is a sure bet that we are too. The concepts of judgment, superiority [to anything], and ownership only lead to disbalance, suffering and eventual demise.

Which brings me full circle, back to the book [finally] because, as you may already have guessed, the american indians [native americans] had these ethics; as did the African's that America in-slaved [although to be fair both the American Indians as well as the African's had their share of cultural problems/historical misgivings: African's were known: for example, to also have practiced slavery between themselves - these ethical inacles are afterall universal, and not race, creed or culture specific - it is an eternal trial of man to be a man, to be what is right from what is wrong]...

Did you know that Holland was the largest trader/collector of slaves for the first phase of the slave trade the to America's? It still baffles me that the Dutch still celebrate 'Saint Nicolas' with his ship of slaves every year at Christmas time... and trot about claiming its 'not racist'?? When will the dutch realize their part in slavery?

BTW: Off topic now, but I recently found out that the children's toys produced by walt disney use child labor in 3rd world countries. I thought that was a particularly crazy twist of madness. Nothing could be more sick [=morally conflicting], in my mind, than being the CEO of that company... but that's another story.

On other fronts:

The e.g.s. [see past post] is at work, and i must say it not only works very well; but it also provides a bench mark for tracking my daily thoughts. I find that in general I only need to use the EGS about 1 to 3 times a day; and usually for just (half) a second. So far there has only been one day where I really needed it and it was harder to implement [but that was in the area of love/relationships - which, by any account, is probably a greater test of ones self than any...]

I'm starting a pro-biotic cure; since my stomach is still sensitive to acidic foods. My allergy to coconut is gone; I've been eating coconut now for months with no effect! I'm quite proud!

The pro-biotics cure might be necessary though because my stomach needs extra attention that the mind alone is not providing; a crutch so to speak. I've quite coffee again, I can't drink it without acidic backlash. I'm also interested in doing a form of a cure or fast [not a no-food fast, but rather a strict limited diet for a short 30 day period or so] - but i need to research this more before I start it. I'll be looking into a combined fermented foods diet cure with pro-biotic encouragement.

dream eagle out --->

!!!

:-D

Whip northbound, check potatos, slick southwards

2007-10-17T18:04:00.001+02:00

Elo, so instead of a gradual travel south, I've opted for a rental car from Portland to use to go up into Washington state / Border of Canada. At the moment I'm writing to you from the farm I wanted to stay at; I decided to visit the farm anyways because of all the great things I'd heard. It's nice here; and its served as a good reminder for how life was in NZ when I was also closer to the land [as it were].

There are new photos loaded, I've finally uploaded pictures from the Symbiosis festival + permaculture intensive. No pictures of Bianca, unfortunately, but I do have pictures of Emily [she's the first girl in the album]. There are lots of great new friends in here, Asaf, Lindsay, Jeff - to name but a few. I love meeting great new friends all over the place! It truly is a gift.

Photo album book 1

Ok, I must be off now, have to catch a ferry off this beautiful island in the morning rainy mist! It reminds me here of the sounds in NZ; or of the bay of islands in NZ, or of the archipelagos of islands near Stockholm.

Many blessings,

Sebastian.

Book ideas in new formation

2007-10-12T20:32:00.000+02:00

Elo, so I think I now have a new spin on the book idea I've been toying with. Instead of just writing a book, IO think it may become a combined book + art project + divination card deck. A combination of ideas; categorized into very thin chapters, summarized by a drawing, made in the form of a card, usable either as a deck that one can draw cards from; or as a book that one can read cover-to-cover - or just open a page to.

This would mean that the subject would branch from overlapping concepts found in permaculture, but also esoteric, philosophy, geometry etc. The idea is to still achieve a broadening of awareness in the wester-urbanite; but the means of achieving this may be shifted...

More details to follow as I map this new idea to the existing chapter headings/ideas to see if this new format makes sense.
:)

Breaking patterns:

2007-10-12T20:31:00.001+02:00

So, after one can identify a pattern in life, the next step is to stop identifying with. How we describe our reality, is how we experience it.

E.G.S.

2007-10-12T03:45:00.000+02:00

no, not the kind that come out of chickens,

instead this stands for:

Emotional Guidance System

I'm doing an experiment. For the next 30 days I'm working on eliminating every thought from my mind that is not positive; this is my latest self-development process in becoming a true 100% optimist. I realize that negative thoughts are like the rain; and sadness is also a fully viable emotion - but never the less I'm using this trick that really seems to be working; it goes like this:

every time I feel that my thoughts are not positive [and I catch myself thinking non-positive thoughts] I just say to myself: E.G.S.

This is either enough to get my thoughts back on positive-track [positive mans: something that feels nice, right, good, correct, proper etc.]; or if it is not, I just keep repeating the letters EGS to myself over and over until I feel ready to make a positive thought instead. It works thus a bit like a mantra; because your brain can't construct negative thoughts if its too busy repeating the words EGS to itself... thus it provides an empty space for myself to either be at one with my emotional state ***without thoughts*** [so that I can release and experience the thought without judgment] and/or for me to switch my emotional state to positive; if its ready to do so.

EGS is an interesting acronym to repeat to myself; because while I am repeating the letters I sometimes also think: "what did that mean again? oh yeah: Emotional Guidance System" this word-image is quite cool, because it implies that I now have a system that guides me; a way to keep myself floating irregardless of happenings. Another acronym would have worked just fine, I just happened to come up with EGS, and its been working.

Why this? Why now? and Why 30 days?

I'd like to really be even more of an optimist than I already am; its interesting because I find that being a 'realist/pessimist' was easy: you just decide thats what you are, and then your set. But being an optimist is a life-long mission; it seems that its an ongoing perfecting-process; you are never quite done, there is always another level, another layer; something new to learn...

30 days is something which came up recently. I was telling this guy that it takes 15 or so days for a human to adapt to ANY condition; after 15 days it feels 'normal' if you are in jail or on hollidays. It becomes hard after those 15 days to imagine life as anything other than what it is/has been... this is the human-adaptive advantage [sometimes disadvantage of course].

However this guy said that to apply self-change; through self-discipline, it takes double the time: 30 days. 30 days to change a habit, or to quit something.

So, I figure if I can apply non-stop positive thoughts for 30 days, I should notice some kind of change that I can then take forward with me in time indefinetly. I'm in day 5 now; so still many weeks to go... November 6th will be about 30 days. Wow, so much is bound to happen in the next 30 days... as at the moment every week is a compltly different experience!

As for why this is at all useful; well, I really believe in the power of the mind to create reality. I'm a firm believer that everything that happens in our lives, we attract/[co]create. So if my thoughts are all positive; then more positive things will continue to occur in my life. Positive thoughts stimulate health, awareness, kindness, love, generosity... the list is endless - and even if all it does is change /improve my disposition, our mental states are so easily picked up upon my others.

It also ties into: radical self reliance and radical self expression.

I am 100% emotionally self reliant: ie my positive state of mind is permanent and [for the most part] unmodifiable by external conditions. This includes everything from relationships, location, health, finance etc.

I am 100% self expressive because if I am expressing myself fully: i automatically feel good about what i am doing. If I feel good about what i am doing, then I am following my E.G.S. - in reverse: following E.G.S. means that to feel good about myself, i am expressing who i am to the fullest extent I want to express myself - its a chicken-egg loop.

For those who know the movie: 'the secret' this entire concept of E.G.S. occurs in that [far too american-consumerist-culture but still valuable] documentary.

cougar springs in the portal land

2007-10-08T19:43:00.000+02:00

Well, this blog post should have happened a few days ago, but didn't - and things have really changed rapidly!

I've just spent 2 weeks in Portland; its quite an interesting place. I went to some nice local events: yoga, sauna houses, potluck, bars, jam sessions, art exhibits etc.

One of the high lites was a hot spring called: Cougar. Here I had an amazingly great time with 5 friends; the best hot spring experience of my life! It was just perfect.

The two weeks culminated with me buying a car, so I could road trip in the states for the next few months, and deciding on staying at a farm in Washington state on the border with Vancouver, Canada.

I did a 1 day trip to some beautiful water falls, and then I swang back into portland to pick up Aprille to go on a 3 day road trip with her first around Oregon state. We went on the road, saw some beautiful waterfalls in the mt. Hood area, landed in the high desert at an amazingly-bizarre hidden oasis called 'smith rock' and then, the next day: the car died - completely!

This totally changes everything, as now I can't see myself buying a new car [that was a financial loss I feel is significant enough] - and I do sort of feel like this has happened because I need to be back in Holland sooner: by the 25th of October; instead of in December: which was more what i was aiming for in the last week.

A complete change of plan; because now I won't be going to this tunnel party this weekend in Washington; and I am uncertain right now how I am getting down to LA.

I'd really like to rent a car now for 1-2 weeks and drive it down the coast to LA and visit all kinds of places along the way; but I am not sure yet if this will be affordable. There are hundreds of places that seem really cool to visit, so I am included to think I am going to fit the bill and go for it; but more will be decided in the next 24 hours.

Aprille and I had a really good connection. She is very sweet, loving & beautiful. After the car broke down, we managed to get a good deal on a very hardcore pickup-truck one-way drive back to Portland. So for a very reasonable price, we made it back home and drove through some beautiful mountains, lava fields, yellow-leaf autumn forests and past more hot springs before settling back here in the present. I just dropped her off a few hours ago; it was weird to say good bye; it felt like we had spent more than 3 days together; but it also felt very short.

Returning to Amsterdam in the winter doesn't sound all that great, but I am looking forward to it for a few reasons:

1. wrap up by business activities for 2007
2. be with family/friends for the winter
3. focus on my new direction[s] for 2008

The time has come for me to make a decision, and focus my energies in a new direction. I read in a book a few weeks ago that for men they need a sense of purpose [a mission] whereas women focus more on emotional experiences... this seemed about right; especially right now in my life, as without a higher mission, things seem flat [well, my mission lately has been to find a mission/place; but thats not really a mission... even though i guess it is...].

The agricultural software I am working on is a great new area to focus on; but it will take some time before that fruits.

Other than that, I've been applying a new self-development technique; that is not new at all, but new for me... I'll write about that in a new blog report.

Procrastination?

2007-10-03T21:16:00.000+02:00

So, yesterday I started to look at my life from a different perspective...

Instead of seeing it as me taking life as it comes, mutating gold opportunity to golden opportunity - following the silver thread of life as each new moment offers a new moment of growth; I started to look at it from a deeper psychological standpoint.

Roots; is the next phase of my life, where to put them? There are so many things I want/can do; but they all involve stability. As my life rotates through the cycles of the seasons [in the metaphorical sense] I develop now a desire to plant down the foundations that will later lead to the blossoming of various fruits.

But where?

Each new interesting place I discover has potential... be it Sydney, Melbourne, Auckland, Wellington, Bristol, London, Glastonbury, San Francisco, Portland... all of them share in common one thing: potential. But none of them are pulling me in to settle unquestionably - probably because I need to make that choice: and then the rest will follow...

Being on the road at the moment has created a certain stale-mate situation. For I am neither settled in Amsterdam; nor settled anywhere else. I need to make a fundamental decision about where I want to live, and by both not living in Amsterdam [traveling] and by not settling anywhere else [traveling] I am both not choosing to be in Amsterdam; but also not choosing to be anywhere else... a sort of procrastination.

Or rather, a kind of momentary objectivity of sorts. Where I can weigh my choices, my priorities. What is it I am actually looking for? What are my responsibilities? How can I live for the short and long term? My needs vs. those of others? The sum of all these questions results in a plethora of options; different scenarios that this little cranium often stumbles to grasp in its totality. It would be one thing if the future could be foretold; but even the most well educated decision will result in an unforeseen story; the mystery and joy of the unknown tale of life we spin...

A combined approach is necessary... I'm going to list out all my priorities one more time, my needs, my responsibilities - and see if I can't combine this with a feeling of a hunch... since after all the sum of my decision should be ascertainable by its totality - its a systems-problem; not a reductionist one. The answer to this life choice lies not in understanding the different aspects of my decision; but in grasping the total feel of the sum of all its components. Whole"istic vs. Reduction"istic thinking.

the spoon

2007-10-03T02:23:00.000+02:00

Speedy conclusions, bears, and distant homes

2007-09-29T21:27:00.000+02:00

Hi yawl!

So, let's wrap up the BM story and move on; shall we?

Well, Saturday I also went out exploring lots of art - I chanted in a double dodecahedron installation in the desert, and generally just had a wonderful time. That Saturday night I was sooo tired though from not sleeping more than 2 hours in the last 48 that i actually had to go to sleep right after the man burned [so I missed the oil rig burn/explosion].

Most of the story has now been told; the remainder was simply beautiful - another incredible sunrise on the desert, such a wonderful place!

I think I forgot to mention I also went walking along in the desert with my green silky outfit + fish head, that was a real success!

After the festival I had no idea where I was going; Bibi and I split paths, she went to stay with her new [un official] boy friend, a friend of our from our camp, and I went to stay with Nick.

Nick was a real sweetheart, and it was really nice to get to know his wife Marij, daugther Ashley and son Colin. With Nick's magic sports-car-keys in my hand I went off to Yoesmeti with only a couple of names in my journal for a potential link-up with some of Brady's friends [another friend of mine I met in NZ and then again in Burningman this year].

When I got to Yosemeti I got in for free and then searched for the workers area where Brady's friends were. when i finally found it, it was very dark outside, I walked into the common kitchen and asked... 'is anyone here called Katherine or Colin"? They shook their heads... then I said. "hmmm, well I'm a friend of Brady's and- " I didn't even get to finish the sentence, all the girls in the room looked up and smiled and said [with quite some passionate love-tonage] "ooooooh Brady!!!!" - ok, I knew I was in good hands now... one of the girls offered me to sleep on the floor in her room [i had my camping gear incl. my self inflating matress] - sweet! Yosemeti on a budget + a whole group of new friends!

Here I met some very nice people from all kinds of difference places in the states, many from inland places like Milwalkie, Tenesee, Kentuky, Idaho etc. Quite a new experience for me.

The first day I hiked on my own, and then after that I went on a road trip with two girls to Monolake and some hot springs, the 3rd day I went on a 2 day hike/camp with another girl.

Every day was another skinny dip in another beautiful body of water, and on one day a bear actually chewed through my bag in search of a late lunch snack! Eeik! fortunetly my bag was only minorly damaged; the bear was quite surgical at removing my food and sucking my water bottle dry! My sneakers have a tooth mark/hole in them from where his jaw went between my pack; a little souvenir!

Then I went to Big Bassin to camp on my own for a night, a red wood forest along the coast - north of Santa Cruz, and then I went to the permaculture intensive / symbiosis festival - as mentioned in my previous post.

Now I'm in Portland. I've been here 3 full days, today will be my 4th full day. I've been making a huge amount of friends [i have about 12 new phone numbers already in my address book!] and not one moment of my days is spent wondering what to do [thus far, cross fingers]. The people here are very friendly, it's bizarre I've only been here 3 days and yet I could already see myself living here quite easily.

There are some con's about the place; it's a city, and it's suposedly quite rainy in the winter - but nature is very close by; yesterday, for example, we went skinny dipping in some natural hot springs with a group of 6 of us [2 guys and 4 girls], followed by a crazy birth day party [you couldn't eat the finger food - someone had to feed it to you; and all the men had to be topless once the second cocktails were making rounds...... disco fever kicked in, erotic spanking of the birthday girl... hey, this is america - people like these sorts of things!]

The first night I ended up square dancing for hours at a cool alternative eco farmers market. It was soooo much fun! Who would have thought, square dancing? I danced for hours with Sara [Lindsay's room mate - from the house where I am staying] - it's so silly and making mistakes is probably half the fun!

Thursday night I ended up at an art-walk. Every last thursday of the month all the artists gather on this one street and sell their work + bars, shops etc. are all open late. I'd forgotten my sweater somewhere and I was fortunate enough to get someone to style my dreads vertically into a cone head + two girls lent/gave me a sweater to wear... I was quite lucky.

I've also met one girl I potentially like, her name is April. I'll probably see her on Monday to hang out, no idea yet if we will be more than friends; all I know at the moment based on my first impression is that she is nice and I'm looking forward to seeing her again.
:)

After the weekend I plan on doing a road/camping trip around Oregon for about a week, maybe longer. I think I can rent a car for as little as 15$ a day - which would make road tripping very affordable! I've even posted an add online to see if anyone might want to road-trip with me; split costs etc... we shall see!!!

Ok, my laundry is done - and there is a big market going on today I'd like to see; I'm still quite tired from the all-night jam session I participated in, I need a nap! but I'm on the works!

Oh and btw, Lindsay lent me a bike that is just insanely pro; its a hybrid redline 1,800$ [new] bike! I've never been on such a light frame - fast bike before in my life! Funny how I am currently materializing sports car's and sports bicycles in my life!! My feet are good to me,

With love from the Pacific coast line,

Oh and new photos from BM and Yosemeti are uploaded in the first photo album:

New photos

Sebastian.

intermission 2....

2007-09-25T17:38:00.002+02:00

before we finish the BM story... lets get up to speed a little...

I just got back from the permaculture course + the symbiossis festival.

The course was nice, I learned a lot about a whole variety of areas. It really showed me a lot of new doors of possibility. The people who attended the course were also all really beautiful amazing people; all very different and unique. It felt very weird leaving the place yesterday, I was very much at home there.

The festival itself was also really cool, though it changed at times drastically in vibe. Sunday was amazing, the music was excellent and everyone on that day was relaxed and partying - it was a really deep sense of peace that prevailed on that day, and you could see it in everyone.

My options now are even more vast, although I lost my journal on Sunday, so its a bit tough right now to follow through with many of the options I had contemplated because a lot of people's / events were in there and I now lost my threads to them. I'm still of the thought that this is all working according to some greater plan - but it sure does make things a lot harder [albeit simpler].

There was a couple of interesting girls I met, but somehow nothing manifested beyond a simple hug and a few precious short connections of hearts. Things were not always that easy for me, I've had a number of lonely moments while I was there, and I didn't always react / act in ways that I found to be correct. So some of my time spent there was also allocated to damage mitigation.

In particular there was one girl named Bianca whom I spent all of Sunday evening and Monday morning trying to find so that I could apologize - because I'm sure I really hurt her feelings, I was reactive; but unfortunately I never managed to find her, and I don't have her contact details... very sad.

At the festival I organized several lectures but as the party evolved it turned out that none of my planned lectures manifested. I do feel at this stage that i have quite a lot of interesting collected thoughts and ideas that I can form into one or more lectures/books - its a hindrance that my journal is gone, because I had mind-mapped the lectures in such a way that writing/talking about them would be easy - but I'm sure I can remap from my brain again if/when necessary. My journal has my email address on the inside cover, so hopefully it will come back to me.

For example, one of the topic I was going to lecture on was: "Geometry [points, circles, lines, spirals], Consciousness, Time and the Egyptian principle of the Perpetuating Trianaries [triangles]".

Well, in a couple of days I'm going to head off to Portland, Oregon. I now have two friend circles up there, and I've never been, and people are always talking about how ultra-cool it is there; so i figure I'll take a peek and check it out. My return flight is now scheduled for October 24th from LAX. Moving dates will cost me some dosh. I figure I'll be back then - although the idea of skipping the winter to stay in the warm sunny weather is very tempting as well... hmmmm, options.

So to sum: Sebastian doing very well; though with some minor set backs and sadness [related to Bianca/journal], new ideas, learned lots of new things [both about myself and permaculture] and i have met lots of new amazing people...

Hugs to you all and lots of healing for my mother who has restrained her knee: get well soon Christen! I love you.

Sebastian.

Burning man 2007: the Green Man: 1/2 FRIDAY + 1/2 SATURDAY

2007-09-14T21:49:00.000+02:00

Radical self reliance, radical self expression... i repeated these words as I curved beautiful patterns in the sand; I was at play, joyful and carefree - I look around and its just amazing everywhere, everything is just shinning with pure beauty.

I consider choices, opportunities, responsibility.

These two edicts of burning man, to be both radically self reliant and yet radically self expressive rang home. Being self reliant means taking care of yourself, but also assuming responsibility for your actions. Self sufficiency at the deepest level; not just in terms of nourishment and home, but also emotional. Anyone who can be radically self reliant is by definition able to support and aid others at will with care and detached deep reaching compassion.

Radical self expression... when I do exactly what I feel needs to be done; when I express my thoughts and feelings most clearly. Radical self expression means so many things, it means taking a stand when there is something to stand tall for; it means being yourself; which implies being different, by being who you truly are.

I got the image here now of a silver thread. That in every moment of our lives we are faced with choices - and how in every moment there is an impulse - inspiration - a voice that guides us along choices that imply a silver thread among the plethora of available choices. Intuition told me that this 'correctness of choice' is a guide that does not operate into the future; only in the present. In the present from moment to moment; if we have faith and trust, everything will always fall into place. Being able to take each moment and grasping it for what it means is a challenge which battles directly the source of all fears. It's like a jump; a carefree hop into the unknown as we continually seek growth in every instant.

This is not a state which can normally be held for very long; more traditionally growth comes in phases; often after periods of tension-construction as a series of situations challenge our beliefs to alterations.

Imagination is something which I mentioned in a few blog reports before Burning man; and I'd like to touch on that a bit more because it really is the key to so many things. You can't create something, you can't experience something, unless you imagine it. Imagination is not only the act of creation - and creation IS art - it is also a means for travel. Creation implies change - destruction - creation - and change is always growth; because in my mind, we always become more than we were; time passes, we learn, we grow - we never shrink [at least, not unless you eat the alice cake]. So the more imagination is cherished as an essential and vital component in everyone / your life; the more open you are to new ideas, new opportunities, breaking previous cycles, growth, healing, mystical experiences, new business ventures, love... you name it. Of course imagination is certainly not the -only- key. Life is a knit system - and as soon as you understand something; it weaves into another level with other elements of life and new understandings, expands and reaches new limits to breach - its an ever expanding, ever redefining process...

When I said in my previous post that I felt like I was a wizard, a king and an insect. I felt at the same time that humility of being small-insignificant-sebastian and yet that infinite grace and power within me as all of the worlds delights were laid before me, as a loving, for no other purpose than for my pleasure and satisfaction. In the mode I was operating in, in this night, I felt like I was more a grand preying mantis incarnation - a being who lived on an even higher plane that Raz did - and in this realm raz was also but a fragment of this higher plane, sebastian an even smaller component - and yet in this moment of space-time; sebastian and the insect-king of which i also am; united. it was a different kind of channeling, this entity was at complete peace with everything - reclusive, more of an observer, taking life in stride, enjoying the growth processes and the fruits of the labor of others... not in a malicious way, but rather from a perspective of overseer, director, the unwound-calm-gracious-content-sultan.

But now we have regressed, so let's continue...

I see dazzling pheonix bird costumes where a man has large 3 or 4 meter wide wings of steel where at the end of each feather tip is a constant output of ignited propane gas... he breaths flames in an s shape from his mouth - he looks amazing, I have another body orgasm.

I look up at the sly and I see hundreds of shooting stars a minute... I look again to make sure I am not hallucinating, I know there were meteor showers recently, its 4 or 5am, this could very well be another one; its fucking amazing. Lasers shoot past the meteor shower in waving arches.

A woman stands on a high pedestal no larger than a stool at least 5 meters from the ground and spins extremely long firework-flaming pois that create double helix arches int he sky; lasers crop her form in green, the stars are dazzling, a shooting star falls, another body orgasm.

A woman dances in front of my face with her ass, she is moving with such sexual grace, I'm both calm and collected and yet terribly turned on by this... this is but one of many such moments.

A steel tree with horn trumpets of steam; they play a dazzling melody of puffs and tuuts. I wear my dino head on and enter a dance area; a girl stops me to ask what it is; i explain its a dino head; she asks what the red bit at the front is, I tell her its a tongue so that I can lick the foreheads of others... i then proceed to demonstrate as I use my raz-head to lick her forehead! Awww this was so sweet to watch, it felt special.

Inside this location it was buzzing with people all dancing body-to-body. I couldn't believe how strong of an aphrodisiac this trip was; i've never experienced something like this before... the women were just so stunning and sexy everywhere I looked this night, I was hot, and so incredibly horny - it was a really strange mix to feel simultaneously virtuous, mystical, saint-like and yet physical, powerful, masculine, sexual... but somehow the two fit together perfectly... it probably helped that I didn't need anyone to reach orgasm all night!

Reaching this physical sensation felt similar to dancing on an edge; here is the best description I can give... I would move my body, doing what ever it was I was doing, along what felt like a hidden edge between planes; I like to think of it as dimensional-surfing. This may involve cycling extreemly slow on my bike, to the point where I should fall but remain balanced with all my fingers and toes perfectly balanced - it could involve stroking with my fingers, or simply balancing my bike with my pinkies and my toe tips - its like dancing; dancing with the moment; flowing withwhat ever motion feels natural to shift into - its similar to when I get a really strong moment of artistic-channeling - you draw but you don't think anymore; you just do what what needs to be done, wants to be done. This was the same feeling now; only applied to motion; perhaps this is what a truly in tune dancer feels when they are in communion with their body. This is what I felt; and it lasted for quite some days and hasn't really left me entirely since.

Oh another thing which happened on this night was I tested myself. Dave and a few other people challenged my idea of being straight. There are soooo many bisexual people in the bayarea/California; its ridiculous. While I was meditating in this one camp for a few minutes [I needed a pause to sit down for a bit] this one guy came up to me, and said in the most serious mater-of-fact way the following:

"would you be interested in body contact, touching, massaging? No fluids or fluid exchanges."

I was like "wo, let me repeat that to myself? what does that mean...?" so I did, and it sounded safe so I then I said "ok"...

This was quite and interesting experience, it was more like a massage than anything, though there was also some cuddling involved [his hand over my heart while my back is on his chest, for example] - there was nothing sexual here at all, actually - and it felt really devoid of anything even slightly sexual. Ok, so I know normally that I am straight; but this was in a way a kind of a test for me, to see if the only reason I am straight is because i tell myself i should be... but it was pretty clear to me that there is absolutely zero sexual attraction or energy between me and men. How some guys can be bi; i'll never understand, but then again, they probably can't understand why I am straight [as they tell me they can't]. The cuddling was nice, I felt renergized from it, thankful, I have no idea if he was disappointed or content from the exchange... I hoped he was. I went my merry way... another experience that Burning Man offers that I had never felt ready to try until this night.

I end up in this dome where there is a party going on, I get stuck here for a while cause there is a really funny guy who is pretending / acting out trying to seduce various women there in the lounging area. He offers me some swigs of his strong alcohol, I have no idea anymore what it was; it ripped warmth down my stomach and felt great.

There was a black woman sitting in the same area and we got talking together, she said she was very tense - so I offered to massage her shoulders. We got talking for a while, and then she invited me back to her camp. She played for me this really cool music from a band called "coco rose" or "coco rosy" [i have to check them out once I get a chance] and at that point I didn't feel right being there anymore with her; as for some reason my heart was not in it; and if your heart is not there, you need to listen to it. So I made my way back to the dome tent where I'd met her [my bike was still there] and collected it.

At this point the sun was coming up and a huge blue hot air baloon was landing 10 meters from me; a string of small balloons whipped in the wind behind it, the mountains were a luscious peach blue. Beautiful, agaion! Amazing. Number of times I said to myself "fucking amazing" and "wow" and "that's so beautiful" were numbering now in the order of hundreds...

I circled out on the playa a bit on my own, went to the cathedral that was out on the playa and read what some of the people had written, I read "you were a star in the heavens last night" and began to cry a little.

While it is true that I had had a number of amazing experiences during this night, the one thing I was incapable of was engaging others in conversations - my mental state did not really accommodate that, I was more draconian.

After a few moments on the playa, the sun was coming up fast, people we disappearing back to camp, I cycled along looking for my friends at virus camp, can't find them [i had trouble finding most people i knew at their camps all week; it remained a fairly solitary week for me in all manners of senses] - I passed by dave, also not home and then as I was about to leave his camp, someone said to me "hey whats that thing in your bag?"

So I stopped.

And here I found a new family.

Shawn, Julie, Jerry, Tom and another man who's name escapes me. They made me breakfast, fed me coffee, we exchanged laughs, stories, Julie did the hoola hoop, these people were wonderful!! I really felt a strong connection with them, I felt lots of love - I instantly felt like I want to camp with them next year! I hope this will be possible...

As I am leaving there camp, Tom stops me to draw a card from his deck of healing cards. Apparently I am the first person the entire event who he has asked to pick one. He says to me: "please pick a card for healing"; the cards look in bad shape, many of them are torn and crumpled... so I say without thinking: "well, if this is a card for healing, then I think you should pick out the most damaged card you have in that deck and hand it to me, because that is the card that requires the mot healing" - he looks through the cards "well lets see, hmmm, oh this card is in bad shaped; its ripped all on one side..." he hands it to me, I turn it over...

it's "the Spider"

Curious, I don't know what to make of it. He says, no wait, you have to read what it means in this book...

I paraphrase now as best as I can:

"The Spider is the creature of the forest which first worked in symbols. The spider is the inventor of language as other creatures deciphered its web and found meaning in its symbolism. The Spider catches those creatures in its web that need redirection. The spider is an orchestrator who captures life in its web to consume it so that a new direction for the life can be found."

"Those who are caught in the web of the spider are often caught at the edge of the web, right before they are about to fall into the unknown. But the spider has caught you before you were just about to miss the value of all of your efforts. Rejoice! The spider is here now to let you reap the rewards of all the arduous effort you have recently been planting"

"Those caught in the web of the spider will find solace as they redirect into a new path in life. It is a time to create, create, create! Great benefit can come to those who take the time to write down their recent experiences as the symbols left in time will help to redirect them - form your webstrings"

"This a time of repose, enjoy as you now move forward with new wings"

So you see... now you know why I have chosen to detail my burning man experience so precisely... I hope that my lengthy descriptions of thought and experiences will also bring you something in return.

This card really struck me, the description felt so accurate and fitting... I felt much love in my heart.

[note: a few days after the festival a friend had lent me a car for a week - a VERY fancy sports car, a toyota MR2 SPYDER! How magically-coincidental that the car is called a spyder as well! It took very good care of me all this time since BM...]

I went back to camp, eventually, and tried to sleep for a few hours. I slept for about 2 or so. I met Bibi, she was eager to continue our talk - as the day before I'd expressed my discontentment with her behavior; but didn't finish the discussion.

At this point I felt like wrapping things up, but I wasn't sure how. I settled the air and expressed that I wasn't interested in anything but friendship [not that I feel that this was in question for her], and wished her the best - I'm not sure what she really felt or thought about this - the whole situation with her was reaching an impasse, and it feels/felt like there was little I could do. In a way I felt similar to how it was during the break ups with other girl friends when there is something that the girl does which I don't approve of; she thinks her behavior is acceptable and then there is an impasse that forms... if you don't accept something, but the other person doesn't even agree that your feelings are justified... how can you resolve that? I'm not sure anyone can.
..
My sleep was brief, probably no more than 2 hours. But it was already the afternoon by the time I finally was resting; and its already time to get ready for Saturday night [you see, Friday and Saturday kind of blend together]

Saturday night is when the burn of the man occurs... was I ready for the night? How could anything top what had just occured on Saturday?

One more full day to go before the wrap-down...
;)

Burning man 2007: the Green Man: FRIDAY

2007-09-13T21:25:00.000+02:00

Ooops, it seems that I confused some notes and dates, my thursday day report included also much of Friday's day report... but this doesn't really affect the story that much as we can now skip to the more juicy bits.

So, Friday night was upon me, now every year I've been, Friday is the peak. Everyone is out at night, a huge amount of art projects are done, the vibe is buzzing, the options for entertainment are vast.

My tail had broken again, except this time it's the power-pack that vanished... so even if i wanted to repair it, this was now impossible. In a way, I saw this as a blessing, cause walking around with a tail is such a hassle. So instead I stuffed my raz-head into my backpack and turned it on. This had the effect of having it translucently glow from inside of my bag, while half of it protruded out and the tongue hanged backwards. I have no idea what this looked like, it might have looked like I was a big insect with curled in wings... I also attached a red light to my necklace, and another red light to my water bottle which I held around my torso like a bow-n-arrow. I attached some plastic leaves and flowers to my pants, adorned my beautiful blue-white sweater [zipped open most of the time so I was bare chested] and put on sneakers for the night. This made me feel very mobile and beautiful at the same time. The red lights along my front were perfect as I could place them over my heart and throat chakra, or over my chest as I felt fit.

For this night I had aquired some liquid acidics. Now after wednesday and the last couple of days I was initially a bit hesitant to go out-all out tonight... but really: am I going to let a bad couple of days ruin my burning man? I don't think so!

I soared into the night, the stars were out and the moon was hiding, people were everywhere in massive quantities. There was activity everywhere, every direction I looked, something amazing was going on. The streets were full of lights, a double spinning tree twirled green swirls, a dozen flame throwing cannons over a vast area echoed patterns of audio and visual delight, the sea of space was open before me - i was excited.

I approached a giant mammoth that was made of steel with cages hanging from all sides and half naked women dancing inside of it. There were several art cars all parked around here, many of them with their own sound systems and spontaneous crowds.

I felt the magic cookie [this is what the liquid was placed upon for storage/consumption purposes] coming on, so I had to sit down for a second. A girl cae next to me and we chit-chatted for a bit about trivial things; then she ran off and started makign out with one of the girl in the cage as I circled around to check out some of the other going-ons here.

Then, as I got to this one music-system, I felt the presence of another wizard. Just as I felt this, I turned around and there, in the flesh was Richard!!! Richard from New Zealand; the guy whome I road tripped with for over a month and who then disapeared to go - I have no idea where in the world - poof - Richard. What the fk!?!? What is he doign here [what am I doing here too! for that matter]. When I saw him I was like,... "Richard...? Richard!!!" I grabbed his for arms and started to jump in a circle laughing! He did the same, we were just jumping up and down spinning in a circle a good half dozen of times giggling!! how crazy to bump into someone I know, in the middle of this vast desert! Magic! He certainly looked like a wizard of some sorts; his composer was good, I felt sweetness from him - I hoped he was doing better than before.

At this point I needed to sit down again, which I mentioned to Richard; he took it as a sign that I wanted to go on; Which made me think maybe he wanted to be on his own; so next thing I knew, I was on my own again... smiling though, who would have thought?

My vision moves from waves of bluryness to sharp fracteline precision, I roam the playa from beautiful artwork to beautiful artwork. I remember the circus shows at 9 o'clock and esplanade from last year and head there for a look. It's very packed, the stage is full of erotic dancing women with fire fingers doing some of the most amazing [and super sexual] patterns you can imagine. At this point I start glowing, I head to some Japanese art car and listen to the music, dump my bike at some strange looking tent and walk in. Inside there is a fountain and what looks amazingly like a brothel. I don't dare approach anyone, I'm more a fly on the wall, but there are strange looking things going on in the corners of the room.

Then I enter a cinema, I'm handed some popcorn, I have a seat and they start playing this really weird version of Flash Gorden; except the whole movie has been mutated and recut in most interesting ways. Here is where I have one of my first of what would surmount to be an uncountable amount of new physical experiences. Effortlessly I dip into a state of peace and silence, every tip of my body is activated - my toes and fingers feel lots of energy and then 'woosh' I feel the onset of what can best be described as an orgasm; except that its not centered on my sexual organs, instead its my entire body that feels it - a body-orgasm. I have about 3 in the theater as well as a piercing moment where I could stare straight into the fabric of space-time, and then I head out, with my popcorn in hand.

Already at this point I start to feel insect like. Or rather some kind of combination between a magician, a king and an insect [more like a praying mantis]. I felt as if I was one of the rare privileged few in the universe - and this whole event was my party. A massive celebration put on for my pleasure and enjoyment. And it really was! I mean moment after moment the entire evening I'd walk somewhere, everyone arround me would say "wow thats beautiful", "amazing", "wow" and then I'd move on, look at the next amazing thing, think to myself "wow thats beautiful" and then the next person would say [to themselves or their friends]: "wow thats beautiful"... over and over again, meanwhile I'd be having deep meditative experiences continuously and eventually also one body orgasm per location I went to - it was incredible, I can't even fathom how to describe it properly.

The thing is, a large part of this experience was also related to the telepathic aspects of LSD. It was on this night that I felt I made a new breakthrough in my understanding of telepathy, death and the collective unconsciousness. But to explain this properly, I also need to get back to my stomach, and the 2nd chakra.

They say the 2nd chakra is our emotional self. Now I knew already for some time that this is currently my most problematic chakra. Historically I've stored stress here since I was young, and later in life when stress was felt in the mind I would place it in my stomach. I was feeling stress these last few days here again, and so I was again confronted with my patterns of behavior... why the stress? Why the second chakra?

Well, the more I thought about it, the more everything clicked together. The 2nd chakra represents pleasure [side note: my spanking came up on "pleasure"]. In many ways by me persueing infatuations with women who had previously rejected me, I was denying my own pleasure. As with previous years, I found myself picking up lots of other people's m.o.o.p. [mater out of place] aka trash at the event - and at this point I said to myself: "sebastian, stop picking up other people's moop!" - "enjoy!"

I think I've always been more on the work-aholic side of things, I'm someone who needs to remind myself to relax and enjoy life, instead of taking thigns so seriously all the time.

Another relation to the 2nd chakra was naval. I was focusing on the feeling in my stomach while I was tripping, and trying to detect what that feeling actually is... I got this image of an umbilical chord... this feeling of center of energy, or of the material connection. Now I can tell you that floating in a country and not knowing where you are currently living, how long you are traveling, or where home is [other than between the ears] can be a bit of a strain on one's concepts. Again, another 2nd chakra pressure.

What I did on this evening was totally relax into things. I was one with grace. On Tuesday when I channeled Raz, I had this conversation with him in which Raz told me that he was a higher entity of myself; a star traveler on a long lonely journey through space to understand the universe and Sebastian was but one of the alien species he had discovered. My life, to him, is/was but one moment within his greater lifetime - or rather one incarnation along his journey. A rather bizarre imaginative story to follow.

On Wednesday when I was the doped out dino, my experience brought me close to the feelings of telepathy and death - as the two seemed very closely knit.

What I experienced on Wednesday was the following: If you take any moment and pretend that you die in that moment - then suddenly the ego is gone and the only thing which exsists is the environment. However the environment that you are currently located in is not coincidental, it is something into which you have both drawn yourself into; and something which has drawn you into it.

As a creationist I believe that every moment of every conversation/event that you hear and see is in your life because it is a reflection of your own inner world. There is no separation between the outer and inner world. So when someone says something to someone else and you over hear them; that conversation is also something that is taking place within you. There is no chance, only choice - but that choice is completely free; here is where words become confusing and the logic seems to contradict itself.

For I believe that at the center of everything lies not a point [or a string or any other kind of geometry], but consciousness. Conscious is by definition self-ruling and thus by definition unpredictable. if consciousness could be predictable then it would no longer be consciously aware because you could define it. It's easy for me to brush this one over, but its a very important assumption I am making/drawing which is a building block for a lot of other understanding into the nature of reality I am now refining.

The universe-experience is one of duality. You can't create anything without creating its opposite. If this is true of all aspects of the universe, then logically this would also be true of consciousness itself. For there to be a sense of uniqueness/individuality; then it must imply that there is also oneness/absolution. And if oneness exists; then it must be infinite; and if it is infinite and it exsists then it also implies that it exists in the present; all around you, right now in this very moment [and all moments] - you are just not aware of it right now; you are focussed on this very particular specific experience.

On Wednesday I was able to use my imagination to explore the world of death at any particular moment in time. So when I would approach a situation, I could sense the feelings that were present in myself and thus reflected in my surroundings. This ever present oneness is the collective unconsciousness. The collective unconsciousness is not the collective HUMAN unconsciousness, but more of a universal collective unconsciousness. However, because humans represent a particular 'frequency' of consciousness that we currently relate with most intuitively it is true that most collective unconscious interactions tend to be focussed via other human entities.

Naturally all humans are also unique, and we are all gifted with freewill. There fore the way the system works is nested. You have the personal level, where people form their own reality, this sends out messages to the universe which attract and repulse other self-aware; self-governing entities into it. Between us all we radiate collective unconscious thought; most of which is unconscious and so intuitive its ignored, and operate oon individual levels directly.

This might sound far fetched, but really our bodies are just as seemingly foreign to us as our environmental interactions are; and yet we take this 'unknown' as a 'given' and do not really consider its implications very strongly either. The body amazingly reflects and interacts with us as a means to exist in this reality; and yet it operates relatively autonomously from our conscious-ego.

The biggest challenge I had Wednesday was deciphering between ego thoughts, and telepathic thoughts, for without experience the two can seem identical and ego thoughts can easily become projected as collective ones.

So on Friday all of this not only made sense, but I was able to also communicate now directly back with the collective unconsciousness in interesting ways. There were at least two moments when I was meditating, the first time was at a giant boat where people were dancing beautiful poses and I could feel the minds of all the people on the boat looking onto me [i was the only spectator and I sat down with my popcorn to see what they were going to do].

As I felt their minds probing me with questions I said to myself "If you wish to look, I have nothing to hide" and let them in to me fully; at that moment I also thought to myself, what is it I can give you instead? Do you need something? And then in flash it felt like I could enter into the deepest part of every person in that area and heal them. Now I can't tell you for sure how much of this is real; it will forever remain a highly personal experience that I can never prove to anyone beyond my word, but several people in that room/area started to say words like "thank you god" and "jesus christ" and 2 people took my picture, I was in lotus position at the time. It is true, for a moment I felt like I was a saint, everything drifted away and I could heal others effortlessly. This event took place at least one other time at the entrance to a nightclub area where people again were calling me a savior in their own tongues. Quite the experience.

After the dancing boat ship, I walked behind the streets of the festival before cutting back into the playa; I felt electric, my body was in prefect communion with my mind. My fingers and toes were energized; the bycicle and me were one, I danced on the bicycle, I would hold positions with my lights and create art of my every motion and being. and then I considered art.

What is art? The answer came to me instantly. We all tend to think that art is the most useless creation of man; that thing that hold no purpose other than for a new thought; but then I knew this was not true at all; the reverse was true. for if you take a persons life, and you look at it from start to finish; what was that life really about? What does that unique life, that will never occure again in exactly the same way forever and every, really mean in the totality of the universe? That life WAS art. Life IS art. We are all works of art pieces, created by ourselves. And here I was at a place where art is everything; it really felt to me like Burningman is not only a place where you can see a lot of art, its a place where you can become art as you all collectily create a beautiful living art piece. Now thats something incredibly special; because while all life is art; most of the time we are all following some larger-art-in-progress = culture or society; while in parallel developing our own art-lives. That freedom of expression that Burning Man provides is an oppertunity to become the most of what you already contain.

Radical self expression.
Radical self reliance.

I repeated these two words to myself over and over... what does this mean?

Shoot, I have to go, there is a lot to still cover for friday - so I will publish this entry now and hopefully another entry before I go to my permaculture course; but if not; then the next blog entry will be after the 24th of September some time when I am back from the Symbiosis festival!

All the best to you, my collective friends...
;)

[no I am not crazy, at least, not by my standards, still the same old seb! just a little wiser every day; hehe]

x

intermission....

2007-09-11T05:20:00.000+02:00

hi folks!

we interrupt this burning man story to tell you some important information.

my phone number in the USA [for the extent of the time I am here] is:

+1 (510) 599-6696

should you wish to text / call me, this is where i am at!

just back from an amazing time at yosemeti, and in a few days i will begin my permaculture course! after that: its 1 week festival int he sierra nevada mountains, and then i'm not entirely sure but i do have a job offer in the malibu hills to teach children for 1 - 2 weeks which i would like to pursue - and I am also thinking about doing a massage certification course as well; taking all opportunities as they arise... life is ripping with potential!

[ok lets not skip ahead too much now! back to the BM story...]

Burning man 2007: the Green Man: THURSDAY

2007-09-11T04:32:00.000+02:00

Man, times are so-so-so rich and full right now; and again my blog is waaay far behind the reality I am currently living... it is good that we are now at Thursday though, for starting from this day onwards amazing growth and grace enters my life [although this only become apparent by Friday]. Not that it isn't always full of grace; but my awareness of how lucky and thankful i am for all of the magic that encircles my life becomes quite conscious and focused... so to speak.

So on Thursday morning I wake up feeling even more stressed than before, I'm feeling lonely and bad that I bailed on my friends. I'm also in a sad state cause I left my bike somewhere and I wasn't exactly sure where...

So I wake up Bibi to tell her that I am borrowing her bike to find it and scout about... I look for at least an hour but I can't find it anywhere...
:(

I get back to camp, Ingeborg and Brandon are up and they hear about my funny stories about nearly getting smothered in a cage last night - and my lost bike, and offer to help me find it.

We get back to the last thing I remember [this head-sphere that people were feeding with lumber in the center of a plaza] - and within 5 minutes they spot it! hooray! I found my bike back!

Bibi wakes up a bit, and I go and visit her in her tent and tell her my story of last night. We make plans to go out on thursday night with just the two of us, I applogize for having bailed on everyone the night before and explain as best as I can why I did what i did.

Now I'm in no position on a blog to describe the exact details of the nature of our other 'non verbal' exchange - but basically what ensued made me feel taken advantage of and disrespected. Although at the time I didn't realize it until much later in the day when I had a conversation with Dave - a really cool red neck cow boy, Dave is the guy who gave us a ride up to Burning man from Sacramento.

I had a talk with Bibi later on as well, to tell her I felt like her criticism of me, which was that I was not giving without expectations - was actually not only false; but inverted. I feel like she was projecting her own failures as her behavior was not one of generosity - but of only wanting to receive.

After my talk with Dave I felt so-so-so much better. The stress in my stomach was quite high at this point, and this was the start to being able to resolve the issues. While I was with Dave two men tried to chat me up [Dave is gay and so in his presence guys really get the wrong impressions of me]. Dave showed me some pretty strange tents... one in which there were lots of men + a couple women [for good measure] having group sex together, and another place where if someone asks you something, you have to answer with the words "yes please" [that was the name of the camp]. In the 'yes please' camp there was a couple having quite intimate sex [more like 'love making'] right in one corner.

This might all sound outlandish, but this is Burning man, and part of what burning man is, is freedom of expression... so if people want to have sex in public... go for it [so long as the people involved are enjoying themselves, its 'ok' - you don't have to watch if you don't like it...]

Dave went back to find his friends, and I had a walk around on my own. I went to an art tent, talked to some nice people and then I went to a tango tent, asked a lady to dance and taught her some moves, we suffered an intense sand storm, then it began to rain, a beautiful double rainbow came out and I ended up in another bar - this time with a big wheel with all kinds of words on it. I asked "whats the wheel for?" so the guy at the bar said "well, spin it and I'll tell you...". So niave happy me complied and it landed on "pleasure: 2"

So the guy said to me "ok, place your hands on that bench over there. Now this lady can use this paddle to spank you as hard as she pleases: two times". I was like "oh dear... ok, well I guess I'm into new things..." so i bent over and got ready...

Man, she certainly didn't hold back at all! She hit me as hard as she could and it left quite a warm tingle on my ass for at least an hour! After that I got a really nice drink [i figured i deserved it] and meandered away [in a little zigzag as best as I could] off into the playa.

My mood was much-much better, I went back to my tent, bumped into this really sweet guy who had listened in at my string theory class [he had just been randomly married to a girl on the playa - a playa marriage that lasts until the end of the festival, he looked in love, and so deeply happy] - I got my fish head costume on.

This costume was great as it allowed me to walk in the ensuing intense sand storm without the need for goggles... it was great and i made little fish dances for people as I passed them... several people took some Polaroids of me, i danced on seesaw trees in the waves of sand, visibility was about 5 feet [2 meters] or less.

So as far as I knew, Bibi and I were going to hang out together this evening together. But instead she peeled off from the group with Josh, another guy from our camp, and didn't even turn back to say she was leaving - and as far as I knew, we had still planned on hanging out together. So I see all my friends splitting off into satellite groups; none of them saying bye to any of the other people [naturally i was guilty of this the night before: but this night i was back in my senses]. so here i was standing alone for a second watching three groups all walk different directions... I didn't know what was best to do, but i didn't want to be alone again on this night; especially since i had promised Bibi i'd spend time with her... so i walked up to her and josh, and joined them.

The whole time this felt very awkward. i felt like i was intruding on something. i could see josh was really into bibi, and bibi seemed indifferent to anything; including the event - she seemed like a spectator instead of a participant in the things she saw.

when josh started massaging her feet i really felt like the 3rd wheel and asked her if she wanted to be alone with Josh - she said she didn't; infact she gave me that weird look of 'what are you talking about'? But surely enough as the week progressed they indded became a couple, so in fact my intuition was correct.

At about 12 or 1 I was feeling quite tired, as were they; so we made back for the tent. I knew Brandon was playing at about 3 or 4am somewhere, but i just didn't feel like i had the energy to make it - i hoped he wouldn't mind, i went to sleep...

Why did I get spanked? Probably to snap my senses into place. Infatuation in a situation that needs to be disposed of is a charm that has drawn me in far too many times... sebastian... wake up!

Friday an awaking ocures...

Burning man 2007: the Green Man: WEDNESDAY

2007-09-06T18:02:00.000+02:00

So Wednesday Bibi and I dress up in our Greek outfits and go seeking my friends Konstantin and Telene. We manage to find their camp and then on the way back we stop at math camp... a camp all dedicated to mathematics.

At math camp we talk about different subjects when I'm at the white board drawing a picture of a hang [ a musical instrument from switzerland ] and someone says to me "hey, are you going to give a lecture on string theory?"

and i think to myself 'that's weird, cause i do know enough to talk about that...' so I say "well, I can if you like."

next thing I know I'm at the white board in my flowing Greek cloths giving a spontaneous lecture on the forces, quantum gravity, particle interactions, string theory, multiple dimension, m-plane, 11th dimensional interactions [big bang alternatives] and the whole debacle. The crowd of people slowly grows and grows until there is a spontaneous group of about 30 odd people all listening intently.

When it's over I'm quite taken back... what just happened? Spontaneous lectures on string theory? Only at burning man could something like this happen.

When the lecture was done I found out what had happened... it turns out that there was a planned lecture at 2pm about 'string theory' but it was going to be about how to 'make knots' with ropes, not quantum gravity... but since i was at the board at exactly 2pm and someone said 'hey are you giving a lecture on string theory?' it was just the magic of coincidence and all gears fell into place...

For this night Bibi and Ingeborg were planning on hanging out with me - and simultaneously Brandon wanted to know where Kim was so he could meet her and ask her for 'magic supplies'.

I'd had such a nice time getting a bit stoned the day before on space cake, I figured smoking a bit of weed could be nice. What I had totally flored me - I was mega flattened immediately.

Meanwhile I'd sown more of my tail to my costume together and had knitted my spine to my backpack. This turned out to be a really bad idea cause now that my tail was sown to my backpack, I had no way of getting to anything in my bag anymore without assistance.

My tail was also starting to get sloth, and it drooped over the back wheel - so I had to use one hand to hold up my tail so that it wouldn't rub against the wheel.

I could tell that Ingeborg and Bibi wanted to split off from the group with just the 3 of us - and I knew that Brandon really wanted to get to Kim so suddenly I felt like I was put in a really stressful situation...

A voice inside of me felt that I just wanted to get away from Bibi; and I also knew I didn't want to find Kim as I was not particularly looking forward to seeing her again after she rejected me. In essence I want to be out of situations [in general] where women are rejecting me - and with Bibi my feelings were still building at this point. Things were tougher than I was expecting them to be, and I had stress building in my stomach [my 2nd chakra].

So, here I was - stressed on both sides and not feeling like my own freedom was able to be expressed... so; I did what any dinosaur might do when it suddenly see's the open esplanade before it... I bolted.

At ultra high speed I took off from the group and just cycled away into the deep playa as far as I could, as fast as I could in a conscious attempt to loose them. I knew my behavior would have potential repercussions for those who could not understand my feelings; but at the time it felt like my survival depended on it.

From this point on things became very intense, out of all the nights, this was the lowest of all points - I was literally tripping from the weed, it was ultra intense, and for some reason all the people I met on this night were not that friendly. I had problems reaching my pack, and at a certain point I thought I'd lost my water. When I tried to find my way back to my camp, I couldn't.

On this night I felt like I was a dinosaur, not raz. And it was on this night that the full extent of the 'green' theme settled in. Here I was in the desert; a completly desolate vast void of emptiness; it felt like I was at the end of time, and here in the total emptiness of everything mankind was still burning fuel, still running engines, polluting, burning wood... it was a very strong image of mankind static and unchanging in the face of its own anialation. my own form became that of a dinosaur: and what i represented became: "that which mankind will become if we do not change our ways".

So it was funny because I had expected to see many green things at burning man that were going to make me see new hope and solutions - but instead the strongest green images I have seen are those that show me how un-green we are; and the dangers that man is wielding - the fears related to change - the difficulty related to that change - and the reality of our petroleum lives...

It was a night of warning, the man was being built upon at night, it was that grim dark moment in a story when you really don't know if the heroin is going to survive.

I went for another attempt at finding my camp and I ended up in a place where there was a large life size operation table with people hunched around it. At this point it felt like I was the one being operated upon. Then I went to a steel spherical firechamber, slung my tail upon the sofa and laid down like a lizard - it was really amazing how you start to have to move and walk like the creature you imitate in order to live. Costumes are pretty incredible because they really make you become something: both in thought and in project imagination.

At this point my bike was becoming a real hassle to use, let alone find back. Every time I'd drop it down somewhere it would take quite a while to remember where i had left it.

One place I entered I remember getting a really strange vibe from people - oh it should be mentioned that my abilities at telepathy were quite strong again this evening.

Anyways, the vibe was so intense that I remember the only thing I wanted to do was leave, and once I started walking without my bike I felt much better - to the point where I really didn't want to go back and get my bike. The thought of going to get it again just made me fearful, so I kept on walking.

I felt that the only way I could survive right now, since finding my camp was impossible, was to get away from people and into the deep playa and wait for the sun rise. I felt like then I'd be safe.

At this point an art car, in the form of a cage with speakers pointing inside the cage and a little go cart pulling it with a person on a megaphone - drove past me...

on the mega phone the lady said: "hey lizard man, fancy a ride?"

'cool' i thought, nice to get a lift and not have to walk all the way back to the esplanade. Once I got into the cage I noticed that there was another couple in the cage making out - the driver said "ok, let me play you some music so you can dance". So some music was played and I got down to doing the boogie with my tail [its really fun dancing with a tail btw and with my helmet i could get down really low and move just like a dancing lizard!]

At that point the lady said "ok everyone, we have a lizard here in this cage, if anyone wants him you can have him" - I was surprised "huh?" I turn around and before I can figure out whats going on about 5 or so big huge burly men - with glittering eyes and big smiles are all pilling into the cage! Survival instinct kick in, I'm like "eeeik! help!!" the art car starts to pick up speed and its going faster and faster... I get to the entrance and have to push out from between the men, I jump out, nearly loose my footing but land fine and escape! Phew!!! The lizard didn't get smothered between several sheets of man-love; I'm safe!

Eventually from the deep playa where I continued to feel alone and lonely, but I gathered just enough wit to focus on what needs to be done. Staying up for sunrise with no water it just not an option, so I must find my camp. I knew if I could find 7 o'clock and esplanade I could get home. I asked an art car for directions, he gave me excellent coordinates [the man was still not up so navigating was tough] and I set off for home. I found 7 o'clock and esplanade, got home - finally - and went to bed, relax!

While I am on it, 7 o'clock esplanade was a special street. It was the street that connected to the open playa and at the corner of this street it had a huge heart mounted on a tall staff. I thought to myself that it was quite appropriate that the marker that indicated my position within the BM city-among-the-stars was a heart. Especially since one of the strongest themes for this years wish is 'love'.

BTW:

Here is the arsonists interview/article from wired, the guy who burned the man on Monday:

http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/news/2007/08/addis?currentPage=1

I would agree with much that he says but he forgets one very important thing in his arguments:

'multiplicity'

For some the event will be meaningless, corporate, jaded...
For others it will be fresh, new, meaningful.
For other yet some other combination of meaning...

There is no one singleplicity to any one event, time and place - the only truth is the truths we all personally discover that are unique.

I agree though that the organization has become too rigid and formal. Chaos: the founding ingredient of BM, is becoming controlled. There needs to be mix-ups to shuffle the deck. Why not burn the man on Monday and then raise a giant broccoli [which was just sitting around in another art piece] for the Saturday burn instead? Improvisation is part of art - once you start to have this control-obsession: that things can't work unless they are the way you planned them; you loose connection with the magic that always engulfs you. You loose faith, trust, that all solutions lie within your disposal...

Burning man 2007: the Green Man: TUESDAY

2007-09-05T18:05:00.000+02:00

Tuesday, Burningman 2007.

Tuesday morning I woke up early and tried to find different camps from different people. I couldn't find either of the permaculture camps, but we did manage to register ourselves in the computer directory and determine where the ice was stored.

One group I did manage to find is the Virus camp; where Mark the author of books on the Chakra's was to be found.

I had a nice series of conversations with him in the morning and a little breakfast. One lady with his group had some tarot cards and they offered me to make a drawing for myself.

Now up until this point I had noticed that between Bibi and myself things were not going as smoothly anymore as I would have liked them to go. I was feeling bitterness towards her, and periodically jealousy or other feelings that I know are not me, nor did I want to feel these things, so it confused me... in the weeks leading up to BM I had managed to resolve all my feelings regarding her before - so it was surprising that there was still a seed here that was troubling me. What it was exactly I was still unable to verbalize.

I drew the following cards, in my own self chosen sequence / meaning:

1: Home: I drew a card related to home because I felt quite lost and homeless in many ways. Roaming as I have been, wanting to settle roots, but unsure where. The card I got was the 10 of Cups.

This card blew me away, for on it is a rainbow, with 10 cups in it, a couple holding arms together, two children dancing, a dog and a home on the hills. I don't think there is any card in the deck that radiates more strongly the meaning of 'home' than this card does.

To me this card immediately was telling me that 'i am home' or that 'i am safe' - both because I am at burning man [the slogan everyone loves to tell each other when they arrive is: "welcome home"] - and because my home is safely tucked within me. There is no need to 'look' for a home. A comfort card; or rather a card that implies ease in the quest for feeling at home.

The second card I drew was for relationships, or in this case, me and Bibi. I drew the Queen of Pentacles. Within the card is a goat, symbol of capricorn [Bibi is a Capricorn]. She holds her pentacle as she ponders worth and value. To me a sense of worth, both of her - and of my own self worth is currently being triggered in my relationship with Bibi. But this sense of self-worth would only become more clear by Friday night / Saturday morning.

The third card I drew for career, the card was 'the lovers'. This was also a strong card; and I think this card represents the marriage that I am busy with achieving between my passions and my income[s] of wealth. Until now I have lived, like many, a double life. Where half of my time is spent earning money, and the other half is spent using the money I earned to feed interests I believe in. I'd like to change this, even if it means loosing some of my current passions so that the work I do, is work I believe in. This card was reassuring that I am on the right path to achieving this marriage of ideal and pragmatical.

The fourth card I drew was for my mother. Or rather; my relation and position as presented between myself and my mother. The card I drew was the one with the floating cups and a man in black who contemplated all of their various contents. The 7 of Cups.

This card mirrored exactly my feeling of the situation; but did not offer any immediate insight as to what I should do. Quite simply the card depicts a vast array of choices. The man in black, who is both presenting and selecting his choice seems to be the reprensetation of the difficulty that the choice implies [and also that any choice that is made implies loss or pain on some level]. The fact that I have a huge amount of choice before me is obvious; this card echoes this. The main comfort I felt from this card was that all choices were equal somehow. For a plethora of valid choices implies that all choices are equal, none worse than others, so in that sense I feel free to make a choice without a moral implosion. Making a choice right now in my life has been daunting - so I have been delaying the situation for some time. This point of reflex-orientation is nearly upon me now though, this much is clear. A new direction will be formed shortly in my life.

My fourth card was for my 'emotions' combined with 'what [this] BM will represent'. Partially recommended by my friend who was helping me to draw and interpret my cards. The card I drew was the 'Page of Swords'. She saw this card to represent an ease at which I would cut through things; I saw it as a transition as i moved forward in one way - without thinking perhaps enough - and cutting away at some other direction in the process.

The 5th and last card I was not planning to draw, but she recommended I draw a final conclusion card, so I did. This card was the Queen of Cups. It shows a woman who is intensely staring at a cup in her hands with sharply piercing eyes. Beneath her is water that is flowing up; it feels like a disaster. I got the impression that even though there is a problem around her, she is focussed on her cup. Perhaps because she believes it holds the answers to what to do, or why things have unfolded the way they have. I felt a bit of naivety here, but also a strong mind that was deeply inquisitive.

One interpretation of the card I have read says: Here we meet the feminine beauty, she embodies the hypnotic power of the feminine and is a catalyst for the emergence of deep feelings, which are bottomless. The image of unconscious, of intense passion and fate. As a mystery herself, motivated by her own secret purposes, introverted and magical loves she wholeheartedly or hates. She is both virginal and harlot, a calculator and a victim. A mature woman, caring and loving, has experienced an eventful and emotional life and is consequently sympathetic to the problems of others. She is capable of activating the depths in others and calls action and conflict without doing anything at all.

Once I had copied down the last card, I popped into a lecture on Aura reading.

The Aura reading class was interesting, but I did not manage to get far in it except to relax. The techniques themselves sounded very similar to techniques which I have done before [sub]consciously - and curiously would reappear later in the week as tools for my own explorations on Friday.

Mid way in the class, I left though because I had obligations I felt I needed to hold concerning our ice situation back at the camp. As it turned out though, the ice situation had been covered. So instead I focussed on fixing my tail so that it would be ready for the evening.

Fixing my tail took a very long time, I had sowing to do, soldering and stuffing. Things I wish I had completed waaaay before the festival - next year I am going to make sure that I only bring things to BM that are done, as you already need a lot of time to organize and operate your camp without extra chores that you could have resolved before arrival. [although next year there are other things I wan to do now as well like offer various services, lectures etc.]

Once my tail was done, I headed for the international camp. I had been told that the people from NZ were planning on having a zombie dress-up party and gathering here this evening.

It was great seeing people from NZ, and it gave me back that sense of nostalgia and missing feeling as I heard people speak about NZ as if I still lived there myself.

The group wasn't ready to go out just yet; people were still getting dressed up and gathering, so I decided to go for a little wander.

Within a very short distance of their camp I landed in a small chill-out zone around the corner as one lady said hello and pulled me in for a chat. There was one beautiful woman, tall, slender with black hair filled with red jets of color who was talking to another man. As she turned to leave, someone in the camp told her 'happy birth day!' so, i got up and rushed after her and also wisher her a happy birthday as well - she thanked me and asked me if I would accompany her back to her camp across the road for a drink.

Kim is a self employed toy painter in LA who has her own luxurious place in the hills. She fed me various drinks, painted my nails red and offered me some birthday [space] cake. I though Kim was really beautiful, so I was quite happy in her company - but shy to make any immediate move.

After a while two of her other friends arrived and also partook in the drinking and the ringing of the bell outside. Kim got her stuff ready to play the bass, she's a singer song writer, and we went out to the street where she put her bass guitar out on the middle of the road and started to play. Her music was nice, and I was definetly into her.

After this point though; things started to go on a twist. We got back to her camp area, more drinks were made, and her friends started to get their costumes ready. Paul pulled out a pair of beautifully crafted light sabers so we turned them on and began to duel!

Kim did some hoola hoop outside, and I found and took care of a lost beetle.

I was ringing the bell to the music when suddenly out of no-where this young 20 year old metro-sexual-raver kid. Ultra sweet but o-so-glowing-niave came out of now where and entered our camp. I gave him his playa name: "le belle" [as in 'the beautiful an d also as in 'the bell'" since he was drawn and fascinated by it so intensely], since he said he was in need of one.

Paul and I had had a really fun time the last hour exchanging highly charged witty comments. I was in one of those moods where I could twist any statement into an assumption for you; so as to unveil your deeper thoughts.

Le belle was really into Kim; and at first her attention was divided. But within a very short amount of time, Kim was accepting and reciprocating this young lads advanced [which I thought were quite flat and brute, but endearing].

So here we are, walking outside at another camp when Le Belle and Kim are all over each other, kissing - which I found really surprising but mainly disappointing, and then Paul turns to me and says in the most serious tone possible: "may I hold your noggin"? - I was in shock! This was all going completely the opposite direction I had intended! The hot girl I was into had been claimed by a totally naive 20 year old; and some witty and nice, but oh so not my type [and hello, a GUY!] was suddenly all over me! I thought the situation was hilarious, and I was really laughing at it for quite some time.

This was really the end of the situation for me, I couldn't hack it any longer without it just being an unnecessary ego-debooster; so I said my goodbyes to them all, and headed off on my way back to camp to suit up in my now finally ready dino suit.
:-)

Kim had said to me when I first met her that she was still heart broken from a man who was a Leo [I'm also a Leo] - I think she wanted something easy and simple; and perhaps I was too real for her. I was interested in her, and that interest had the potential to become more than just a few easy kisses or grinds for a night; and I think she sensed that - and she got scared.

I'm really getting to the point now where I'm learning to never compromise [myself] - though in the process of learning to not compromise, continual tests continue to occur as the extents are measured.

When I got back Jake and Ole were at camp, two friends-of-friends who were camped with us. I asked them if they wanted to join me, and I suited up. I went riding with my tail now also lit into the playa and saw some nice artwork. There was a really amazing spinning strobe steel caroselle structure that was powered by bicycles that showed a monkey swinging between vines as a snake descended towards him. Held inside the mouth of the snake was an apple. The cool thing was the monkey ate not only the apple, the but snake was also swallowed with it.

Then we went to a mountain of white light with stars moving along its surface. We queued up for about 30 minutes and went inside. Here there were various stations with several concentric circles of light, each morphing into a different color and spinning at a different rate. Above each color station was a microphone in the shape of an orchid flower. I tried all kinds of things to interact with it, speaking into the microphone, rubbing the petals, touching the screen - the sounds it emanated were real but I could not grasp how they were being related to the interaction. The imaginative image of the situation was stimulating to say the least.

In the center chamber was receptacle stations, with a central scoop display that captured more of the beams. All of this really felt like a scene from my comic book: "The life of Raz".

For the dino outfit I was wearing was not just any dinosaur; I was wearing the outfit of Raz, a comic book character that I used to draw when I was 18. Raz is a humanoid-dino who lives in space. He travels around the universe discovering and cataloging various alternative realities. A renegade, armed with his own fleet and his own mission, Raz operates alone with a twisted sense of morals and a powerful intellect.

After the mountain chamber Ole and Jacob decided to stay around outside and dance for a while - I took my exit and ventured across the playa. As I did I began to channel Raz as I got more and more character. I started to talk with Raz and I had a really amazing conversation with him. I understand now more fully which aspect of my self this character is, and should I ever chose to continue my comic book, the depth of the character and position within time and space is now vastly constructed.

From this point onwards I went to some night clubs and bars to try and socialize, but somehow I was not really in a social mood. I found it very difficult to talk to others [a difficultly that persisted off-and-on throughout the festival], though some took the initiative to talk to me [heck, I was in full blown magno-dino outfit!] - people loved my costume on this night, I had a lot of fun - and then at some point tiredness took me and Raz and I went to sleep back at our tent.

Burning man 2007: the Green Man: MONDAY

2007-09-04T17:37:00.000+02:00

This is going to be one mega long yarn to unwind...

Dave picks us up at 4 in the morning to drive out, we have a really nice trip on the road for about 4 hours with the trailer behind us zipping through the mountains into Nevada. Dave is 40 something and he's been with the same guy [virtual marriage] since he was in his early 20. They have 3 children in their early teens, all brothers and sisters that they adopted from Russia about 8 years ago. Quite a special story. Dave, and his partner: Joel are really sweet fun loving great people.

We arrive at Burning man in the heavy heat and wind. Here we are again! Scorching, sand, trusting mountains... quite the place.

Ingeborg has trouble dealing w. the heat on the first day so i help to arrange a shower for her from a neighbor - this helps her quite a bit.

After a few hours of setting up camp I discover that my dino tail is broken. Close to home is the AEZ (Alternative Energy Zone) camp, so I head on over there to ask if they can help me solder my costume. Night falls quickly, and just when I think its fixed: after an hour of soldering, it suddenly doesn't work anymore again! Doh!

I get back to the camp, and there is everyone getting ready to go into town. So I suit up with my helmet only [since the tail is dead] and we head off to have a look around.

Bibi's dino outfit is looking great, we bop around a dance floor for a bit and then the fatigue of only having slept about 4 hours the night before starts to catch up with us.

Lunar Eclipse and the Man Burns on Monday!

We were told that between 12:00 and 4:00 there would be a lunar eclipse, not sure until what time I stayed up, but it wasn't later than 2:00 in the morning; so I missed it. The next day I found out it was supposed to have eclipsed at 3:30 or so.

At first when people told me the next morning that the man had burned during the lunar eclipse I didn't believe it [I've heard playa-stories before!]; but then it seemed more and more true; and the man did look indeed half scorched. How bizarre!

The full impact of the man burning prematurely didn't sink in until I started to want to visit the lectures at the pavilion... for right after the burn the DPW [department of public works] closed the entire pavilion down. And seeing as nearly all the eco-green talks and activities were taking place at the pavilion, this meant that nearly all green theme'd activities were canceled! It took several days to rebuild the man; they worked on it all night for days - it was quite the sight to approach the fences and see them soldering and mounting beams of wood for the man in the pitch black of night. They were all working so seriously, in strong beams of light; it was a mega-serious mission taking place! As serious as you would be if you needed to build a rocket that would take at least 4 days to build on a planet that was about to be destroyed in 3 days... so your life depended on it...

Now you can think what ever you please, but to me this smelled of conspiracy. Firstly there was a lot of people who were not happy with the decision to have a theme for burning man that involved a change in the way people "thought" instead of just a guideline to how that thought was "expressed" - for being 'green' also implies a change of attitude; and some specialist areas: such as fossil fuel burners: are potentially being out casted with this new direction [there are many happy-pyro's out there]

If someone is going to sneak in and burn the man, there was no better time to do it than during the eclipse. An eclipse meant that it was very dark, and it also meant that everyone was looking at the moon at that moment, not at the man.

The effect of burning the man was multiple... firstly it meant that for days I couldn't figure out where I was on the playa at night! I got lost many times on the roads too as I was used to using the man as a compass point.

Metaphysically I think it also represented how on the issues of 'green', mankind is fearful that it may not survive the necessary transformation. There 'self image' [here represented by the man] is lost to us. We are not sure how to reinvent ourselves to survive.

For it was a real rush to rebuild the man in time for the burn, he was not back up before Friday. The fact that he was rebuilt, this time with the emblem of a phoenix represented to me the fact that mankind can rebuild itself and that the dangers involved with our times [environmental collapse, peak oil etc.] will and shall be overcome; though with difficulty and with some necessary darkness [death] so that there can be rebirth [death as a means for transformation].

The person who burned the man succeeded in closing down the pavilion for 4 days. Even if they didn't burn the man to close the pavilion; subconsciously they would have known the repercussions; and even if they didn't, the collective-unconscious-subconscious knew. Thats a long time to not have anything on demo! If you were someone who didn't like the idea of a corporate take-over at the pavilion, or if you didn't want the event to become green; then the success of closing it down for 4 days was quite a victory.

For me I learned a tremendous amount of things at this event, what I did learn about being green, I actually did not learn from the pavilion itself. But more on that as this story unfolds...

[end Monday]

off to burningman... again!

2007-08-27T03:27:00.000+02:00

well, these last few weeks have been great. very busy with preparations for burning man !

dinosaur costumes are complete, as is a wonderful cape and other garments that my mother also helped me sow together. i hope to get some nice pictures as i think its going to look great!

i plan on visiting some permaculture tents while I am at the event, so I can meet some cool new people and make some contacts in this new world.

being back in california feels like a dream right now. its terribly familiar, and yet it also feels foreign.

Back in Amsterdam, I've had to move out of the temporary place I had, which is really a shame because I really liked living with Anat. She was so good to me in the last weeks and really helped me to get my costume together as well... I wish I didn't leave her place in such a mess though! feel bad about that, so I am planning on trying to make it up to her when I get back.

In my last weeks in Amsterdam i had a beautiful time with a new girl i met named Stephanie. She's Polish in origin but grew up in Munich, Germany. By now I think she has moved back to Munich, she was staying in Amsterdam a year for school student of literature, but this time is now over. I met her dancing one night in a nice small squat-club. The whole experience was pure and simple. It was a nice even exchange of love, no expectations, and no sadness at parting - just joy for what was. really this is the kind of relationship[s] dynamic I am looking for, so it was a really great experience, and a really welcome change after all the other romantic experiences I have just had over the last 10 months or so.

so, i'm curious what world i will be in, a week form this time.

all the very best to you all, a full report of burningman 2007 will follow!

this is all truel;y a full circle now as i started my whole blog with my arrival in SF and going to burning man one year ago today!

Dreams and imagination as a tool for undersatanding/traveling...

2007-08-25T21:14:00.000+02:00

An interesting subject lately is the power of imagination. One thing which Seth discussed in book III was that one of the keys to dimensional travel [something that we all do all the time although we don't perceive it as such] is: imagination.

By imagining you are something, a part of you becomes it. By imagining a world: you create it in some space that may not be 'real' in human terms, but is just as real as anything else in greater terms. Imagination leads to empathy, it fascinates a broadening of perspectives, new ideas, formation of frontiers, solutions and growth.

One experiment I have been running is to close my eyes and to allow my creative imagination complete free will. Every image i see before my eyes I follow, and when I feel myself aware of what it is and I feel that I understand what it is, I allow my imagination to conjure up a change in the least expend way possible. This has led to some highly creative sessions, on busy days I attempt this during the pre-fall asleep phase, right before I doze off for the night.

Speaking of dreams, lately many have been quite interesting, one night I had a dream right before I fell asleep that I was showing a group of people some ability I had discovered/mastered. There was one female mentor in particular who was guiding me / reviewing my progress. In the dream I changed the index fingers of my hand into loose forms of energy. I was floating in a dark egg shaped space, the other observing entities were loosely in a circle before me and to the sides. From the dematerialized fingers, which twinkled speckles of white light in a deep painted black an blazing intense spray of energy ejected. The people who were onlooking were intrigued and happy with my ability. It made an intense sound. I expanded the dematerialization across my fingers and enveloped my hands in it. This was a bit scary because it was so easy to expand it over my whole body and I had no idea what would happen if I engulfed my whole body in it - so I scaled it back to zero, and since it was actually really easy to control, I felt secure. So rather quickly after that I again expanded the effect over all my fingers, my arms, my torso, down my arms - all of it jetting energy in all directions and then I let it engulf my whole body, head and all - and as soon as my entire body was engulfed - everything disappeared, consciousness included until I woke up the next morning. I have no idea where I went, maybe it was the same place I go every night at sleep - or maybe it wasn't.

On another night I had a very similar dream except instead of dematerializing, I entered a floating prayer pose and placed my hands over my head. When i did so, my crown chakra completely opened and it was just as intense and real as when this happened to me [awake] in the summer of 2002. The experience is very unique; its all gold and silver - it feels like god flows through you, in you, like you are god - or at least a part of god; or the universe, whatever you want to call it. its pure bliss, grace... its warm locking pure energy. words fail here.

wasn't expecting to write about dream experiences here today... but there you go.

seth speaks book II [short] review

2007-08-25T20:45:00.001+02:00

hello dearest friends,

well here I am, back in dream world california. It feels so odd being here; like walking in a familiar dreamscape; now two days away from being back home in the most bizarre and yet normal place I know: burning man.

things these last weeks have been very intensely busy. so there has been no chance to add to my blog the stories that have become lately.

i promised a book review, but for now all i have time to do is summarize things:

Book I of Seth Speaks is more a general tour of concepts. Seth is an entity who speaks through Jane Robert's during channeling sessions. In the first book he describes who he is, and runs through general concepts about reincarnation, life, death, purpose, multidimensional time, religions, higher purposes and the nature of reality and the soul.

Book II "Personal reality" focusses exclusively on the individual, your personal power, how each individual creates their own reality, the nature of illness / problems / challenges, the nature of growth, the multifaceted nature of being. It's a book aimed at expanding one's view of the self, the purpose of experience. Like the first it is deeply empowering above all else, I highly recommend this book as an essential read to anyone interested in metaphysical/psychology subjects.

Book II is great because it really focusses on a specific topic which means that quite a deep level of understanding can be explored. Self value / worth is such an essential topic it really is the basis for further learning, and thus makes the perfect and most logical extension to the first Seth book. The first book was more of a general broad introduction, and then this book targets the self specifically within its framework. While it is possible to read this book without reading the 1st book, it is worthwhile to already have read the first book for further insight.

Book III, where I am now is all about parallel / multidimensional time, concepts of probabilities, multiple selves, reincarnation etc. and is quite a heavy subject which I wouldn't recommend reading before reading and digesting the first 2 books.

Gaps between Home and Burning

2007-08-07T10:03:00.001+02:00

Landing back in Holland, I felt driven for a change. Inside I felt my insides bursting for space: I needed to find a place to live, as soon as possible!

Something that provides some stability, though not permanence. Permanence is still something I am not ready for right now - even now as I reflect 3 weeks into the past with my blog.

That same night, 1 day after I got back in Holland from England, I made a new friend named Anat. An art student from Israel. As she left the squat bar I had met her in she said to me: "oh btw if you hear of anyone who needs a room..." - my eyes opened and I said "me-me-me-me!" - i saw the house the next day, loved it, I'll move in monday was the decision. So Anat is not only a room mate now, she is also a really great new friend.

From this point forward I did some corporate work again, dealt with my past for the tax-man, enriched my understanding of myself and relationships, developed ideas related to the permaculture software I'm developing with Ruby, finished a book and contemplated deeply the varied potential purposes and meaning of my USA trip to burning man that is coming up at the end of August.

Not too much to say about work, except that its good to not be working 40 hours a week at the moment. It's mainly 2 to 4 days a week of development time. The cash flow is welcome, charging my battery up.

In my romantic life, I've been learning new levels of interaction - and shifting certain emotional needs more internally. I am aware of the future growth that I will accomplish in this area to come, and also more in tune with my current direct motives and desires. It's a broad and simple-direct conviction.

Revisiting my past for my tax battle was a really bizarre experience. I've never looked into my past as deeply as I needed to do so now. Every day of 2004 and 2005 was dissected, each activity i did was broken down in hours. Each idea was measured against potential and actual income generation.

From the experience I can tell you that music was a huge time-machine these last few years. Literally hundreds and thousands of hours were spent in this direction. It is true that as I left on my world trip I had an album half way done, things feel so different now. My world trip has changed everything, so it feels bizarre to be doing the same things I had been doing in the past. I still have a conviction to finish the tracks I worked on previously, but for me to be true to myself, I also need - want - to shift direction now.

Oddly its not art nor music that is drawing me, but writing. Either software code for projects I believe in, or writing to express concepts that I believe I have a talent at grasping and simplifying for others. There are certain complexities that my mind can grasp and then visualize - this is true in life, and of my observations of the elements within it, but also for concepts that surf on the edges of accepted limits [more on metaphysics at another time].

I've been doing some research on permaculture, but so far I find lots of material on the agriculture aspect of permaculture... but very little on the cultural aspect. This 'gap' - if there turns out to be one - this will provide the focus point for my near-future efforts.

My desire for a necessary change also comes from my back ground, I was literally raised to be multi-dimesnional. Every place I moved to as a child and teenager required, offered and then stimulated a completely different facet of my dormant character-potential. As an adult, this impetus continues. To truly be the person "I am" requires me to continuously be something "new" and different. This is a very contradictory proposition - but the more refined my experience becomes, the more necessary it is to accept the nature of my nature.

If I lived in a world where things seemed to be taking care of themselves, and wasn't such a broadly raised cookie, I'd probably still be a musician, or an artist. But this isn't the world I grew up in. Fundamental subjects need to be dealt with.

Very soon now, actually already right now in the present, decisions need to be made. What kind of a world do YOU want to live in? Can we identify areas where we can focus and improve proactively? Or will we simply accept unguided impulsive reactive reactions?

Will we become sustainable and stop the media machine? Or regress in blind aggravation as controls [securities] fail us?

Most people I meet, live in denial about the world. They believe in permanence or the impossibility of change, and any fracture of that sense of permanence unleashes deep settled feelings of despair. the thought process is literally: "I don't want to feel despair, therefore I will believe in permanence because I can't deal with a 'potential' change to reality. And any change is always 'bad', I can't 'imagine' it any different".

And yet imagination literally 'forms' every aspect of your reality. We are all creationists in this regard.

Put another way: Denial = is that belief that 'the past will remain the future'. We wish for the present to always be present. It is linked to the desire to always be young, or immortale.

But to exist we constantly NEED to change. Most people, if probed will admit that something that doesn't change is dead. However even death is change. Be it 'death' of an idea, a way of life, a structure, or a living thing. Viewed in this light, death is simply the explosive release of change that was necessary to instigate new levels of growth that were no longer forth coming. In these words, and from this living perspective, death becomes the 'ultimate' growth that occurs when life itself no longer provides sufficient growth.

So change is not 'bad', change is always good. Even if change appears bad, it is only bad because it is compared to something lacking - something that we know exists and should be felt. A full experience is a full one, it is all aspects of all things. You can not write about the beauty of the sun if you have never seen the night. The purpose of living is not to experience nothing then, but rather to experience everything.

Despair is felt when we feel that we must change, but we don't know how to change - so we panic, cling or fall into a mode of powerlessness. This is rooted on a deep feeling of powerlessness that most, if not all of us, seem to have within us to some extent. It is echoed in our religeons. Especially in Christian's, but even in eastern religions as well. This makes sense because beliefs form ideas and ideas form structures, these structures can be nations, but also religious [or god property] beliefs. And while most of us claim to be 'atheists' or 'agnostics' or 'gnostics', this modes of thinking are also a part of our cultural building blocks - and hence they are knit into any of our beliefs, be them conformist or an accepted form of anti-conformatisim.

But reality is always ours to form, and change we can - and must - to grow. Once we realize: one person at a time, that we are always in control of our reality, and that growth is always the unknown, the power will return and despair will fall away. We need trust. Trust in ourselves, our [spiritual] meaning, trust in our abilities...

Burning man, and my related trip to the states, has been taking up a lot of my time - and I've experienced much joy through this preparation process. My return to San Francisco again, so strange, unexpected and spontaneous, now feels like a new powerful arrowhead. All my energy seems to be projected forward now to this point, and in this permeable future place there lies a new gateway. A cross road where a new powerful choice will lead me into a new possible future. That's an exciting feeling - and it's the door I feel I have been preparing for ever since my return to Holland [but also for some time before then as well]. I can say this all with certainty because I can sense levels of my psyche at work in creation.

In terms of permaculture, my links in the bay area [bay area = san francisco] are exploding; every person I contact passes me several new contact details - from one person appears 5 more and 5 more again... burning man itself is looking to be just one big permaculture event in itself!

The issues related to 'where will i settle'? Are vitally important, I think about it every day, but it also feels like this will become clear at the moment clarity is necessary. For now I am capitalizing on my mobility of thought-feeling-being to capture the essence of global opportunities. I know my travels go against my beliefs; it disturbs me, but I also still have faith that the work that is being done here will out weigh the negatives.

There is no expectations on my behalf related to where this opportunity/clarity will come. It could be entirely internal, or external in one person, or in an opportunity, or location... I leave the details up to the inherently unpredictableness of life to surprise me, as it always does, should and will.

Charging into the San Francisco for the festival and then right back to my "reclusive unclear" dutch routine seems non-sensical... not to mention resource wasteful, so I plan on staying around after BM in California for at least a month, but maybe more - really I have no clue. I will stay there until it feels like I should move on. My hunch is 4 to 8 weeks time should suffice to know.

This week I'll be finally starting work on the dinosaur costumes [for burning man]! Other cool developments in our camping group include solar panel grids for our camp, a massive parachute tent for general shade, a bike transformed into a mobile music machine and night-light-wire [thin bendable lengths of phosphorus wire you can bend which glows brightly] which I plan on integrating into my costume and bike so that at night I can be as fully into the experience as possible!

This is already a long blog entry, so my book review on the title I just finished: Seth II: 'The personal reality', will be done in my following posting instead.

Sweet dreams! I'm turning in for for what is left of the short night.

English trip part 4... Revamp to the 50's

2007-08-01T10:24:00.000+02:00

So Bibi arrives in London, I spend some time waiting for her in an internet cafe and walking around a park. She is delayed. I contemplated all manner of thing, what had become unclear to me was, what Bibi and I would become.

When I first met Bibi, I fell in love with her at first sight. But that was more than a year ago - and back then things didn't really get going properly, due perhaps to where we both were in life. But now that I had been back from my world trip, we had been hanging out together as friends for several months, the friendship was blooming.

I knew deep inside I would be fine if we just stayed friends, but I was also keen on knowing if we could actually become a couple - maybe things were different now?

Before I left to England, things seemed to be moving in the direction of us becoming quite serious together - at least, this is what we started discussing in words with each other - but now before her arrival in England, Bibi expressed confusion and uncertainty concerning us being together. So my expectations were unclear. All I knew is I wanted to have a nice time, enjoy the moment, and enjoy Bibi's company, no matter what transcended.

My time for contemplation was over, Bibi appeared at the tube station - shinning and with a big smile wearing red. We popped back into the train and went to stay with her London [extended] family and prepare for the dancing costume 50's party that night. This was a very peaceful day, fun packed with shopping for accessories and dressing up. As the night came to pass, the entire family was in hilariously-exotic-humorous attire! Bibi transformed into a real 50's queen and I was very proud to have her as my date for the evening. It really felt like I was going to the prom! She looked stunningly beautiful [as usual].

The night itself was great, I did my humble best to do 50's dance moves [solo and as twisting couples] - and then we walked the London night streets in search of our home bound cab company when the last dance was done.

In the light that shown over this era, I felt that Bibi and I were getting closer, and it felt to me that the moment of confusion was passing. I felt like we were more enjoying the present, less focussed on ideas of what the future should be; and this is what I wanted, so I was happy.

For several days this happiness progressed until it acquiesced. We did what couples might do while they pick-nick in the park, we were happy, we hid underneath trees while it rained, we danced, we skipped, life was good.

But then things drifted, distance formed in the gaps between the words, and I could sense departure settle in. Things became more one sided but at first I did not act because I wanted to also give things time and space to develop unhindered; for clouds to pass and moods to fill spaces and reform as nature would.

As the 5 days came to a close, it had become obvious to me that the gap was now a rift which would not reseal without words, so we talked.

Sadly from what was said, I did not see any solid mutual feelings regarding our viability as a couple. It was hard on the spot to make the right turn, although I knew it's existence was determined.

We got back over Holland, the sun gave us its final beam as we were in turn greeted by a thick layer of clouds and rain. The plane dived at high speed straight in nose first without hesitation.

After a day of contemplation, it became clear to me that the previous years cycle between us had not changed, as this time around things were panning out identically to last, so the best thing I could do was make that shift inside of me from a solid "yes" to a sure "no", in relation to our relation. Bibi is a really special woman whom I really love, and I'd rather have her as my friend than not at all. And what else can I do anyways? But let the one you love go...

Besides, I know that there will be someone in this life who I will love and who will love me, so I am not afraid to let someone go while still loving and respecting her, and myself all at the same time. I trust. And that trust is in me. There is no anger, there was some sadness - but nothing extreme, just natural normal sadness; there was mainly peace and thankfulness for all that had been, was and will be. I feel deeply mature.

The most remarkable thing I find is that last year when I met Bibi, I learned that I had been in a pattern in my romantic relationships that needed breaking. This year what I learned from my experience with Bibi was not that I there was something wrong with me, but rather that there is nothing wrong with me at all! Exactly the opposite conclusion: surprising, empowering.

It's my birthday today, so I'm going to get going with my day, 31 years on the 31st! Nice! Birthdays are cool! It's neat to be able to celebrate birth.

In the last 2 or 3 weeks since I am back there has been much more news and thoughts to tell - sigh - it shall have to wait!

Lot's of luck to you all,

Sebastian.

English trip part 3... Cornwall

2007-07-30T09:43:00.001+02:00

Well, first my pictures have been falling behind... and now my blog has been falling behind too!

Let's try and correct the situation properly.

Life has been very busy, and lots of new pages in my life have been written...

We shall pick up the story first where we left off... and hopefully catch back up to the "present" ... when we left off... we left off: in the safari.

So after the Safari Erika and I drove down to Cornwall via Glastonbury [village], the supposed burial place of King Arthur. Here we stopped and hiked to the top of the Tor. It is said that the wind always blows into the tower at the top of this hill in the middle of the valley - straight up the shaft to the top, a place of great energy concentration. As we approached the top, and the main gate's contents revealed themselves I saw three people standing inside of the Tor, and one of them certainly looked like a wizard. His long hair and coat flapping in the wind, his arms extended, hands open, head arched back. I stood beside them and closed my eyes to feel what energy I could also muster.
If I felt anything, it was a sense of floating, and of spread being. As if my consciousness was able to thinly spread out across the valley before me.

On the way down we went for a nice meal in a vegetarian restaurant - this place was so eco-hippy conscious it was nearly ridiculous. According to guide books, a meat eater has just as hard a time finding meat in Glastonbury as a vegan in mongolia.

Later on we drove a very long distance to Tintagel, thats on the north coast of the start of Cornwall. It was dark by the time we arrived, and the rain started to pour down hard. The roads were tiny, so small that two cars can't pass each other - I've never seen such small roads before! The only hostel in Tintagel had just one female bed left, and 5 miles away in another village there was a hostel that only had one male bed left - so we were in a bit of a dilemma. We decided to do the double drop off: each of us at one hostel, and then regroup in the morning routine. But I never made if to my hostel. On the way to the first hostel, the one where they just had female beds left, we got caught in a dead end, on a dirt road, in pot holes, with thick rain covering all the windows. I needed to back out, no way forward. And upon backing out suddenly the right wall was way too close to the car! Eeeik! The fear of damage to the car took over me... but there was no way to know until it stopped raining what, if anything, had happened to the right door of the car from the wall...

When we finally did make it out of the dead end and along the bumpy pot hole filled road to Erika's hostel, it turned out that they had men dorm beds too, but they were just full. The room where she was sleeping in had extra beds, but they were being very bureaucratic "sorry, this is a women's room only, we can't sell these beds to men"! Grrr! I've been to many hostel's, and this was the first one that refused to offer me a bed when they had one left just because of silly rules. I decided I wasn't driving in the rain along that road again, so I slept the night in the car. It was quite a surreal sleep. Even though I can't say I slept well, somehow it was a good sleep in a different kind of way because by being half awake all night it keeps your ego-concious more aware of sleep-conciousness... if you follow.

So the morning comes, the rain is no more, and we are in Tintagel. The supposed birth place of King Arthur. This is a very quant coastal village that has a real irish feel. Along the cliffs is a peninsula where the ruins of a castle domain. A ruined castle that came complete with its very own bridge troll. Yup, as you cross the bridge to get to the peninsula you see a little shack, and there in the shack, here in the middle of no where is, sure enough, a young lady you licks: "that will be three pound fifty per person please"...

Our car was a good distance back, and we had no money on us. How bizarre to have a tariff on this bridge for some ruins! I felt like I was in a Monty python scene. Surely I thought there must be a secret password we can utter to pass! reasoning with the woman was getting us no where, and us walking past her a little was not making her very happy. Finally Erika suddenly had a vision and uttered a very powerful word, and we were through! She said: "do you take credit cards?" - which, to my amazement, the troll happily fingered with glee in its hands as it whipped its colorful surface along a piece of paper so that it could keep a memory in ink. How odd it is that bridge trolls accept plastic? I thought... so modern.

The ruins themselves were really nice, the photos will [once they finally get uploaded] speak more than my words here... if I had to use words I'd say: contained, subdued force, epic faces faintly echoed in towers of stone, swirling observing wise seagulls that know more than we do, layered pancakes of stone that create beautiful windows, vivid blue and shimmering white set against deep shades of gray and gray blue... peaceful and yet sad. Isolated and yet a source of forged electric form.

The car... alas was well damaged. I estimated in my mind at least 250 pounds of liability here... if not more depending on how brutal they are. Until we got back to Bristol the thought of damage was on my mind. I thought back to the trilogy "his dark materials" [a highly recommended series of books by Philip Pullman]. In one of the books, the witches have a spell: the spell of invisibility. The way the spell works, is it doesn't actually make anything disappear - instead it makes someone just not notice you, or the thing in question - their mind is distracted by something else and an appearance of invisibility takes form. I thought to myself: this is what we need to do, we need to prepare an invisibility spell for the damage on the car! Erika seemed keen on the idea, so we discussed the invisibility spell a number of times during the remainder of the week.

The next day we drove down through a touristy town, didn't stop and instead we pulled out at a beautiful brown sandy beach. Now instead of being in ireland, I felt like I was in New Zealand again. The beach was very deep, a good 200 or 300 meters of sand before the waves crashed on the shore, novice surfers flopped about the sand, there was moss along the cliff walls lining the beaches, thick vivid green moss - and grottos. Lots of them, little caves that lined all the sides of the broad beach. We clambered through stone archways, into caves, over puddles and rocks for a while here as I watched distant storm clouds pass us to the sides and rain on other parts of the land. The sun was out, and the light was golden.

Shortly thereafter we arrived in Saint Ives. This was a very quaint Mediterranean feeling port town, with ultra skinny stone streets, lots of boats and little shops all along the sea side. We stayed the night and then the next morning we did a 4 or 5 hour hike by foot along the north coast cliffs. It was great hiking, there was one short moment of rain and wind, but for the most part, it was dry and sunny. The waves crashing far beneath our feet with a purposeful thunder. Seagulls spontaneously becoming angled diving arrows. Fields of purple flowers, flying fox bulbs, caterpillars in the palms of my hand... the glimpse of a stretching emptiness of space. The open ocean.

After our hike, we hitchhiked back to St. Ives with an english man who just moved to Cornwall himself, and then we drove down to 'Lands End', the most western part of mainland england.

Here the weather changed and became layers of rain clouds that all pilled in on top of each other. Between them columns of misty light that looks like its pouring from heaven would prevail in small spots, but for the most part, the distant light houses were battered by a setting sun that meant only more waves cast with rain in a returning darkness. Erika and I took a nice nap in the car [where it was warm] and then a cup of tea before continuing to our new hostel. This third hostel was the best of the lot, nice open grass field with a view of two rolling hills that abruptly end in cliff faces, a soft violet orange purple sunset, a farm house with the first night star twinkling overhead. Night came in fully, and I slept with some funny italian men in my room who liked to walk around the hostel room in their white underwear and spread all their cloths and things all over the floor [sadly their messiness somehow distracted me and I ended up forgetting a few low value possessions when I left].

The next day was to be our last in Cornwall, we headed to the south where there is an open air theater house, and here it was raining lightly still. We got out of the car for breakfast, and then decided to walk a short distance up the hill. Before we knew it we walked all the way to the theater, and the cliff top where you can look onto the beach. This was the most beautiful beach of all. Here I felt like I was in Ibiza, or New Zealand again. Palm trees and tropical plants, rough rock vegetation, large leaved plants, beautiful small sandy beach with rolling waves tucked between high rising fingers of earth on either side. The sand: pristine without a single human or traceable foot print. The drizzle did offer this one advantage. This is the one place and time I didn't have my camera with me, which is a shame because the photos would have been stunning.

The rain settled into a consistent mist of moisture you didn't want to walk in anymore, we drove on some extremely tiny roads and eventually we found and stopped the car to see a small stone circle called: "merry maidens". I really liked the energy here too. I could really feel that in the past many important psychic events here had taken place, and the stones were here as witnesses to some important secrets. I walked in a circle with my umbrella in one hand resting my right hand on each stone until I touched every single one and then made back for the car before I was soaked to the bone. It was like walking through a shower now, my cloths were getting wet. Visibility was getting as low as 200 meters. From the stones I was left with a latent base tone that I felt in my hand, arm and shoulder. It felt good; it was solid energy.

We made a brief stop at Penzance to try and see the distant foresters-island that it's famous for, but the visibility was so bad, all you could make out was the distant darker trace of where the island met the ocean. But anything above 10 meters from the water was lost in a carpet of gray misty rain drizzle that extended up into the sky. Here we again took a little nap in the car, as its quite pleasant to sleep in the rain in a dry spot with a nice view, grabbed a little bite and some coffee and then we made for Bristol in one dash-spring on the freeway. 6 or so hours later, we were back in Bristol.

It was time to return the car, now was the time to see if we could pull our invisibility spell. I pulled the car into the main parking area and parked the car right in the middle of it - making absolutely no intention to hide the part that was damaged; in fact, the side that was damaged was facing the office, so it could not have been in more plain sight. I figured that any attempt to hide it would just draw attention to it, so best to just completely act as if there is nothing to hide at all. We walked in, discussed some issues we had about the CD player, and then Erika suddenly remembered she had left a CD in the player. So we all walked to the car, with the damage inspector. I was very friendly and bubbly, so were we all. We got to the car, Erika opens the door to grab the CD and magically here two ankles line up exactly where the two deep dents are. The inspecting lady walks around the car, gets back to the damaged area as Erika leaves the car for her to get in, she checks some more things, and then we all walk back inside... it worked! The invisibility spell was completely effective! Naturally Erika's smooth move was 90% what it took, but it certainly wasn't planed and worked in the most natural way you could have never anticipated. I was really happy! And jumped up and down along the street for at least half an hour.

We got back, I packed up, and then I was on a bus off to London...

by 8 in the evening I was back in London, and back at Ada's house. I spent one night again with her and got to meet her boy fiend - a really nice guy. There was a fancy dinner we all ate together in the roof room under the sky lights, and then I went to sleep knowing that the next day Bibi was arriving - it was time to get ready for a new phase of the holidays - the last phase with Bibi and it was going to start with a 50's costume party...

Some Cornwall pictures of part 3 are online [but not all yet] you can see them on: Photo Album Part ONE

English trippin' part 2.

2007-07-23T17:54:00.000+02:00

Bristol is an eclectic mix of rundown Victorian buildings rolling along a hand full of hill sides. The entire city looks like one big decapitated suburban post nouveau-rich urban womb that has just passed between the phase of poverty to artistic explosion. Every area of the town is in the process of gentrification. vegan this, counter culture that, music of all tastes every evening - a real cultural smorgasborg. As an alternative to London, Bristol has it in the bag - with forests and ocean side an hour or so from the center; commuting in and out for work or play seems like a viable option.

Bath is an old roman town, with a royal bath from thermal springs and extremely old buildings - all made of a very precious stone. The streets are small and cozy. It is here that the British word quaint and posh both reach the perfection of definition. A nice place to visit, very quite, but perhaps too subtle to live in when the action is taking place in Bristol every evening instead.

Erika [a friend of mine from Holland who happened to be living in Bristol] joined me on my Cornwall trip! That was really cool, we rented a car together - which gave me the prefect excuse to drive again and off we went! Erika was very sweet and read me several chapters of her book while I was driving, that was really nice and gave us many interesting conversational boosts!

Dermit, Erika's boy friend, couldn't make it along - alas. he seemed to be doing well himself, working hard on music, and his new tunes were nice.
:-)

During our week together, we talked about many topics, relationship psychology, relationship patterns, dreams, future plans, current dilemma's and even sexual tantric massage points and techniques! It's been great to spend time with Erika, she is really healthy now, and she has grown quite a bit - at times I really felt like I was getting to know a new person. Cool-cool.

Out first destination was just outside of Bristol at two friends of Erika's: Dizzy and Zak. Dizzy the dulcimer player [musical instrument with strings and a hammer] and Zak: the wizard. Both of these forest people were very career driven, true optimists and charmingly friendly. Dizzy showed us some secret ruins with waterfalls and ancient yew trees. And most important of all, her favorite places where she would often come and read or just drift in thoughts for hours. Both Dizzy and Zak have spent many weeks and months in the forests living in tree houses and forest pyramids.

I admired the way they lived, in a caravan with a huge outdoor tent as their living room / dance stage - simply and close to many secret forest paths. They both showed me how being financially practical could combine with artistic endeavors. How what it takes to run your own business ideas. The importance of timing ideas with the world. Match making upon the hourglasses of time. The power of synchronization.

After Dizzy and Zak we headed east a little to a safari where Kate, the sister of Lucy Cotter [one of my closest friends in Holland] invited us over for the night and into the safari park where she worked.

kate was ultra sweet and looked stunning. She was very kind, left us breakfast, got us free passes and arranged us to travel with the filming crew [Kate is a producer for the BBC]. Unfortunately Erika and I had very little time remaining as we had only until Friday to check out Cornwall before I needed to be in London and Erika needed to be back in Bristol - so we could only stay one night and the morning. The safari itself though was really disappointing. I was expecting free animals living in their natural manner - but instead I just saw big cages where you drove through them in your car, but the animals were not really free at all... tigers hand fed meat, monkeys running over cars for lack of anything else to do - it was just as sad as any zoo I've been to before and I really don't approve of this way of treating animals.

Animals are not on earth for us to control, they should be treated as equals. And preserving a species is preserving it in a jar - its allowing it to live the way it's always lived: free to make its own decisions, free to find its own food, its own place, its own home.

the English Trip begins

2007-06-29T11:05:00.000+02:00

Life here started with a bumpy ride on slEazy jet to Watterloo in London. It is an interesting place to be here, rain every few hours for a fewminutes, compact umbrella my best friend, people hovering around pubs like bands of asteroids...

Spent my first few days between Jody, Ada and Jo.

My conversation with Jody was really interesting. Jody has been part of a spiritual following now for some time. We talked about a multitude of spiritual subjects and its pracatical application in life. Talking with Jody offered me a good oppertunity to really excercise my listening skills; the ever more vital because I have some reservations about Jody's spiritual group.

We discussed common ideas of karmic-debt/credit (imposed judgement) vs. my beliefs related to karma as choice (free learning). Subjects related to the application of 'spiritual experience' to the daily lives of mankind, and how species-evolution plays animportant role in development. The multi-dimensional aspects of the future and the uncertainty of our planet's development [good and bad possabilities both considered]. The validity of every life lived by every person [whether seen as spiritual or not in the eyes of so-called spiritual people] and our different views on the goal related to spreading awareness in order to achieve mass levels of conciousness; I'm basically not as convinced that mass levels of awareness should be the goal of any one individuals work [mass levels of awareness happens by its self when one perpetuatues individual levels of awareness].

Bumped into Jo, a really attractive chinese girl I met at the fullmoon party last year on the street! Spontaneously we hung out with her boyfriend + some funny south african trance heads on saturday in camdon town who were all talking about their love for germany [oddly enough] - it was nice to get the proper hippy-london experience again!
:)

With Ada I stayed several nights in her place with her mother, Barbara, from Massachusets. Barbara had a really good quote when I askedher her reason for going to art school:

'We only need a reason to do something when we don't want to do it'

At Ada's I had yummy raw coconut and coconut milk smoothies [I've been spending a lotof timelately healing my stomach with thought-awareness, crystals and visualization and I'm doing very well in this front], went to a silly show with wrestling and comic male stripping and a woman who did a self mutilation zombie strip tease [but we never even got to see any tities... just fake blood pouring out from everywhere... what kind of strip tease is that???]

It was great spending lazy time with Ada, our friendship is timeless. On the night before I left her place, one of their plants: a 'night blooming cirus' decided to flower for the first time in 3 years! The flower only opens for one night, and then it dies...how lucky was that??? I took many photos! Very beautiful white flower that opens in thin curling delicate lines - sort of ochid-like only shot-white with a deeper ventil and thine petals.

After London I skipped on over to my god father: Sol in a small town near Ascot / Wooking / Guilford.

It was so nice to see Sol his wife Janey and his 13year old son Max again... it had been many years since I had last seen Sol in the flesh. As much as 6 or 7 years perhaps! Way too long a time.

We talked and talked for two days non stop on so many subjects my head felt like it was going to explode at times.

We talked about my father, Sol's past, my dreams. Sol drilled me on my future planning and my apparent lacking disciplin. We talked about the levels of human awareness from person to mystic to englightened to the channeling of the sat guru [sat = true].

Sol mentioned another reason why my father's mother didn't want me to be in contact with her son: inheretance. I honestly never thought about this before, but it is probably true that my father's mother is loaded... how sad. While I do think that I should be due my share, I also don't really care or want to get involved in such matters. I'd much rather have a father and a grandmother than some numbers on a bankstatement...

One strong thread was Sol pushing me to put solid roots down somewhere... save money sebastian, buy a house or some property, and then in 10 years you can sell your house and buy a boat if thats what you want to do...but dont waist time; now is the time to invest in the future'... i can still hear his voice ringing in my head!

putting roots down is definetly something I am working towards; but I also know i'mstillnot ready. I need to find the right place to do this - not just anywhere I seemto stumble accross. This need to find a place to put roots down is one of the main reasons I am in England anyways; so I am working on it.

So far the biggest advantages of England are:
- high pay / salary if working in IT related industries.
- english speaking.
- in europe = close to my mother / euro-friends.
- booming music/technology culture.

Disadvantages:
- weather only slightly better than holland
- population density still high though better than holland

Nature access and quality of nature is still unclear, I need to get to cornwall still to find this out [in a few days I will head that direction]

Sol and I also went deeply into some of Sol's wealth of ancient wisdom, old books and teachings. We talked about crystals, healing techniques, chakras and the various forms of yoga: hatha, asana, krijia and raja. I learned that the meditation techniques I aquired from guru Maharaji [aka Prem Rawat] are a descendant form of Raja yoga. It was fascinating and inspiring to learn more about Raja yoga as well as some of Sol's personal experiences [from his initiation, practice and stories of others through him].

The net result is a new found desire to structure and focus on my meditation techniques... I'd like to sit somewhere for a day some time and just meditate straightfor 8 hours on my current techniques.

On other fronts I was privi to an arugment between Janey, Sol and their son Max over whether it was allowed to buy red bull drink for his party and their guests.

It was interesting to see how both of them had good points and how their different opinions were merging or rather not merging on the subject.

I personally pulled out some advice for myself on the subject:

- always try and discuss differences of opinion away from the child so that there is clarity and cohesion.

- both parents really need to listen and adopt the other person's views into their own if they are to have an integrated standpoint into how to raise their child. if both parents operate with different standards/ methods; things get a bit fire-forged; which is notnecessarily bad, but it does create more heated discussions and opertunitites for the child to play both parents against each other in order to obtain what it is they want.

- sol had a good point that instead of refusing things for the child, its always better to get the child to decide to refuse something themselves. And then only refusing it for them if its necessary.

After I leftSol, I felt like I was in a new deep sense of peace. I've had a lot of things to think about.

Arrived in Bristol by train, and now I'm here with Erika!

The most dificult now is deciding whether to go to the safari or skip it for more time in corwall...

Saw Bath yesterday, beautiful little town.

what is Love?

2007-06-24T13:12:00.000+02:00

The major theme of this year has been 'love'

I've been thinking about a few things lately, and over the last couple of days I've been trying to think about what love is?

Someone told me they don't know what love is. And that got me thinking a few things...

It may sound niave, but my first reaction to myself was: 'is that actually possible?'

In a way it feels to me that everyone knows what love is; because I feel like [get out the vase of hippy flowers and rainbows]: everyone IS love.

It also got me thinking because I generally feel like I myself am just some over bubbling froth of love - largly contained at the creaking cultural edges, for your benefit.

I'd be VERY curious to get comments on this post, what do YOU think love is???

If you don't want to know what I think it is befor you jot down your ideas, you may want to stop reading this post NOW

[and I mean right now]

Ok, your still here I see... or you have written your thoughts so that mine will not affect yours. Here is what came out on papper after some mulling over the subject in various locations in London [oh yeah, I'm in English country apparently! Nice times here!]:

What is love?

* Love is that warm feeling that fills me when I wake up in the morning and think of you.
* Love is the joy you bring
* Love is the happiness I feel when I see you happy
* Love is the gratitude, appreciation; love is loving you for the person you are.
* Love is letting someone go so that they can be the person they need to become. The wisdom in knowing that love is not possesed: it is given freely without condition and returned naturally without need for reclaimation.
* Love is deeply loving yourself within so that you can radiate penetrating love without.
* Love is the apposit of fear: it is the boundlesses of freefall. Fear is the friction our souls encounter as they discover more meaning to the meaning of love. The disolving of fear in this vision represents the new levels of love that are uncovered in our eternal growth.
* Love in undefinable because it will always mean more than words can mean
* Love is the grace that feeds your life. Like the caring hand that holds the world in place.
* Love is the knowledge that there is no good and evil; there is only good and temporary ignorance.
* Love is the gratitude one feels for the love that the devine/universe/god[s] have in me.
* Love is creation
* Love is the companion fed from and by trust, respect, appreciation, joy, intimacy. It is the state one can enter when there is both a crystilization of intense individuality and the merging of the self with 'the one' [= with others or with thyself].
* Love is the binding ellement of the universe, unconditional and beyond all worldy joys and tribulations.
* Love is being able to accept everything about yourself and another person to the fullest of your abilities. It can be a moment, or a subconcious truth that lives integrated inside of you.
* Love is finding someone in your life you can be the person you trurly are with. It is the redisocvery of that state of peace, contentment and acceptance that one really is.
* Love is accepting the present moment of this life, seeing the joy that surrounds you without fears of time.
* Love is the knowledge that we continually are loved while accepting that the form of love we receive is constantly in a state of change. Some people may exchange a love that evolves over years, others may exchange love between various different people at different times; the contexts of interactions change but the love is always present if you are open to it.
* Love is what you are left with once all the other layers of life are peeled away. It is the fountain's source, and the light at the end of our tunnels. It binds us.

Or one of my favorite perspectives on love came in a drawing I made in my art journal back in mid 2006:

Serene power and wisdom in the fundamental polenesian architype, Bora bora, french polenesia, 2006.

Most people will not admit
that man is nothing more than unconditional love
in self denial

burn the money?

2007-06-19T23:52:00.000+02:00

Just a thought...

why is it, when I get a ticket [from a police officer] I have to pay a penalty and they get a reward?

Wouldn't a financial punishment make more sense if when you give the office(r) money related to your infringement, they burn the money right in front of you? I mean, why do they get to keep my money because I did something wrong?

Burning the money would make more sense since this wouldn't actually 'compensate' crimes, which indirectly perpetuates the need for crime and also the need for crimes to support crime reduction agencies [a huge oxymoron if I've ever seen one].

If the money were destroyed, then the crime would be bad for everyone. And since crime actually IS bad for everyone... the solution would match the intention.

rats in swamps with trombones prelaunch destination English fairy tale

2007-06-16T21:02:00.000+02:00

If you watched rats drinking something, and some of them shriveled up and died - would you drink it?

Well, apparently according to Coca Cola, you will - because they die from a specific form of cancer that humans don't get... yeah... right.

Coca Cola is changing their synthetic sugar to a new synthetic source. It was on the radio here; though maybe you didn't hear it. This source is not approved in Europe [its on the banned list] but the pressure is 'on' to have Europe accept this new chemical.

Presumably this new chemical X is cheaper to fabricate/more readily producible than their old chemical Y they were using before.

There are so many things that we know can give people cancer all around us - Why add yet another possible contribution?

Did I ever tell you how nice it is to just drink a glass of water?

Nothing beats the REAL thing

I mentioned this to some people who were drinking coca cola this week, their response?

"yeah but i need my caffeine and sugar!"

But do you really?

Presumably humans flourished very well before we could rapid-inject sugar and caffeine.

I've been getting quite into:
Neuro-linguistic programming

If you say to someone:

"yeah but i need my caffeine and sugar!"

Then you really do need it!!

The more I observe this subject, the more I realize that how you speak to others about yourself / your thoughts is akin to a form of self hypnosis.

So I feel that in the mere act of 'communicating' thoughts, you not only spread ideas that do not only beyond you: [memes] but you are also self-hypnotizing yourself into a self-chosen sub-state of reality...

Life

This week i rented a car and went on a beautiful two day trip into Frisland [North-East Netherlands] with a friend of mine: Naomi. It was nice spending some time with her exploring Holland - this was the first time I drove in this country. Canoing in the marshes is great! Probably one of the nicest things you can do in Holland.

Quite a nice end to the last two months I've been here - cause on Friday I'm flying off to England where I'll be on the road again - exploring the land of druids, moles, standing stones, elves and fairies.

Roughly I'll be going from London to Bristol, Bath and then to the south western peninsula / Cornwall. Along the way I'll be stopping at a Safari! Not sure if I will be doing most of my travels by car, bus or train... I'm kinda leaving it till I get there to figure it out.

Being on the road is going to be really good. It will give me a chance to reflect on what has happened in the last two months since I am back; how I have grown; and what new directions lay ahead of me.

Progress on my book and tattoo has been very slow this last week; I guess there were other things on my mind.

Been going to the gym as much as I can though, and I'm starting to mark the difference.

Went to a concert this week, supper expensive, but I had to go... the band was Burning Spear [=roots reggae] and it was great!

Man I'm in love right now with brass instruments... they had a trumpet, saxophone and trombone. and they sounded like golden layers of love whenever they played together. And their solos were excellent. UG! so nice! Their drummer was also hyper-good, he was a real joy to watch play... animated, like a child crouching over his toy-kit, playing soft teasing riffs and then he would raise up, a perfectly muscle toned and strikingly hansom black man, and smash the drums down with perfect force and timing all over the place in a chaos of orderly might.

Burning spear himself is a man of at least 70 if not 80 years old; a real character, singing, sliding, dancing and bouncing across the stage.

JOY is the key

2007-06-09T18:10:00.001+02:00

One week after my new insights, it's taken some time to integrate the new knowledge...

At first I made the mistake of focusing my visualization only on imagination. While this worked very well in the short term; after about 3 days it proved unsustainable.

Then two conversations on separate occasions with my dear friend Lotta really made a difference.

In the first she reminded me to focus on the "feeling" of what it was I felt was missing as present -in the present- instead of looking to completion only being satisfied in a future formed by the mind's imagination.

In the second conversation we had, "Joy" was brought up. And how focusing on it brings joy into your life automatically. This reminded me once again to break my tendency to be too analytical about things; and allowed a big shift. This has given me new strength to my ability to simply 'be' and to be utterly content with things as they are.

Magically the two seem utterly connected as by focusing on experiencing joy in the present, and by focusing on quality in the current aspects of your life, you naturally attract the two: they are linked together by the hip - as it were.

Bruce gave me the advice that I should try and adopt the ideas of 'the secret' into my own current methods; and this is certainly very good advice. At first I was applying these techniques literally; but now I feel like a lot less conscious effort is required.

All you need to do is to focus some of your day on fostering the new positive outlooks; and then the rest of the day you can focus on finding and experiencing the joy of what already exists by seeking and creating joy all around you where ever you can.

once the new positive outlook is established, you don't really even need to think about it very much anymore - if at all; it simply becomes a part of your entire world-view-belief-system.

Being self aware of your thoughts and unlearning thoughts that are now no longer seen as beneficial: is a real long process; but if you stick with it, it absolutely works, and the benefits are enormous. And focussing on joy really makes this a lot easier as you naturally become a lot less hard on yourself.

You know what's really strange though?

I feel like I've been learning so much in this life. I grew up in so many places, learned how to meditate when i was young; and continually meet such illuminated people - sometimes I feel like the sheer magnitude of what I have learned is so vast; that it seems strange to imagine that I'm the person who has experienced all these things.

I mean, imagine: reincarnation. Supposedly in other lives I would experience other things, why is it then that in this life I seem to be experiencing so many different things? - all magically together - it's as if I am getting a tour of the world, during a moment of peak-energy [with planes etc.] - which coincidently allows me to travel all over the place to learn, meet and experience so many different things.

When I view my life from this special position: one where I am in a vast position of privilege: I can't help but feel as if I am near the end of a reincarnation cycle.

All I do know is that I can feel the bliss of total enlightenment. It's presence occupies the space all around me; and yet in our sense of time, my life experience only relatively rarely dips into it.

But I know its real. As real as the air you breath. I've been there and I've experienced it as clearly as the sunshine on my face.

Certainly I don't presume to know all that much; I remain hopefully wise enough to always remember how relative and simple my significance and wisdom is in the greater scheme of things. And it's probably true that I think I know a lot now, but in some other time I'll know so much more that I'll look back at this time with a sense of naive compassion. I'm sure that in this life alone, the lessons behind me still probably dwarf all the lessons ahead. In this sense I know my humble place.

What I am talking about instead, is that cross-leap that we all suposedly have within us. How any person, plant, animal or thing suposedly is connected to the 'one' we [generally] all know exists [on some level] [sorry atheists], but find allusive in this life. That place that permeates infinity and breaks all practical modes of thinking. That place we all have locked within us and is our uniqueness forever. Ours to cherish, to experience, to trust... to enjoy.

my public vision board

2007-06-07T11:16:00.000+02:00

as proof of the power of positive vison, for both myself and for the benefit of others [as a living example of the power of humanity],
and my force to form reality as i please,
the following truths will come shortly to pass:

* I am a model to myself and others in the achievement of a harmonious balance of mind-body and spirit.

BODY:

* my stomach is ultra healthy, and no longer has any issues with anything, therefore:
- I am no longer allergic to coconut.
- I can drink coffee without any negative side effects.

* my body is ultra fit and in perfect health, all previous minor ailments will no longer persist.

MIND:

* I will end this year wealthy, and with at least double if not up to four times the money I ended last year in my bank account [pure neto].

* every goal I have set for myself this year, I will accomplish: this includes:

- Completing my new music album, which will be met with great success and touch the hearts of many.
- Completing my Steim device and it will be successful and meet with a high level of further interest, and lead me to new and greater things I could never expect.
- Completing the first draft of my permaculture summary/book. It will attract high public interest in others while achieving my two goals: a conscious-awareness accelerations, and a positive-integration-shift.

SPIRIT:

* I will soon meet a very special woman. We will both love each other openly. Our paths will entwine together harmoniously in the start of a wonderful new relationship. Reciprocated affection, trust, open hearts, unbounded, liberated.

* I will soon find a place to live where I can satisfy my need to be with nature, I will find a connection with the land I live with, and become a stuart for our kinship.

* All remaining chakras of mine will open freely as I become even more of who I already am, with every breath focused and unfolding.

the secret

2007-06-03T23:07:00.000+02:00

wow, ok - here we go! another aspect of life clicks into place.

I just watched 'the secret'

http://thesecret.tv/home.html

I had thought that most of the information here would be 'old hat' to me; but instead I've been blown away.

This movie goes into the realm of "thought forms reality" - a subject that has been very strong in my life all these last years with all the wishes I've been making [that keep coming true].

Seth book also went deep into this subject; and there are countless connections with it here too.

What I liked about the secret was the angle; it's a very practical application of the principle: "ask, answer and receive". And because of the practical approach it has addressed some of the very topics I had swirling in my head lately.

One subject is directly related to the permaculture summary I'm writing... 'how can you write about a subject, that is about the environment, and avoid being negative?' - I can see the answer now clearly; probably because the question is now properly formed.

Tone of voice is essential. I think that perhaps one of the main reason that people are not that into 'left' movements is because they are generally negative, and limiting.

Abundance

Thats a word that doesn't occur much anymore; but it should.

The real issue with the world is awareness. Or rather; what needs to be *encouraged* is awareness-consciousness. Through this: abundance - as well as protection for nature and all the things we love - will follow.

The new politics you will see soon will no longer divide views of left and right. People will soon learn that any good leader is an integrated one. You can't have wealth if you are making money [right] but there is no roof over your head [left]. The left, and by this I mean mainly the greens, will also learn that they need to focus on promoting love and values for the things they want to protect - not hate towards the 'invisible force' that destroys the world.

We are all people, and the vast majority of us mean to do well.

My challenge now is going to be in how to accommodate this perspective into a subject that has a natural tendency to be negative-defeatist.

And in my own domain of reality; I'm now reconsidering again my dilemma of whether wishes are necessary. Now that I have yet more information at my finger tips; here is how the decision positions itself:

first my prior conclusions:

1. wishing is not necessary because it is too powerful a gift to use all the time for 'mundane' things [which i guess meant my personal life]. the 'wishing' force under this premise became a hidden-for-important-causes wild card.
2. its not necessary to make wishes to prove that reality is formed by suggestion because i have had this proven to me 3 years in a row unequivocally.
3. i'd like to see how life unfolds without making wishes, to just let the universe unfold without making predeterminations/expectations.

however, already since i came to this conclusion [this is now back in December 2006/ january 2007] - i noticed a few things...

1. wishes i had made but then decided 'not' to wish for, came true anyways
2. suggestion: whether formed as a wish, or simply thought in passing was as powerful as a wish - and since the mind makes suggestions all-the-time - this meant that its been very difficult [if not impossible] to not make wishes even if i didn't want to...

so here is where my concept about wishes and reality expands one layer further.

instead of it being loose "wishes come true". I'm realizing that its not just wishes that come true; but all thoughts form all reality. period. so whether i form my thoughts as 'wishes' or just as 'thoughts' or as 'feelings' - it's irrelevant.

given this new conclusion, it would seem that its rather silly to then decide not to make conscious wishes... because by saying to myself:

"i will not make wishes"

all i am really saying is:

"i do not deserve: _____"

what ever it was i would have wanted to wish for...

and that makes a lot of sense.
[although this hidden layer of my psychology was not obvious to me until now]

so now I'm on a self-applied think-feel-creative-thought-program. I'm reinstating my wish for this year, and in fact I'm making several and they are no longer year based [the sooner they manifest, the nicer].

haha, and to think today was a day i was feeling a bit down-and-low. and then suddenly things turn around completely and i write a blog entry like this! i must be doing something right...
;)

hugs and kisses [if you're into those things] to you, wherever you might be,

sebastian.

website done, future-space forming

2007-06-02T16:49:00.000+02:00

So, here it is, the website I've been busy with for about 6 weeks!

Still some final work to be done in the coming weeks, but for the most part, its live! Phew! What a project.

You can visit it here:

abn amro trade globe

Today I got my dreads fixed! aaah feels so much better!

Work on my permaculture book/summary is happening; i have the general lay out done and some writing has begun. In typical seb-fashion I think i have many things I'm working on in parallel now! Tattoo, permaculture, websites; and hopefully soon my music and steim device... been having some issues with taxes; primarily with filing my report! But otherwise life has been relatively stress free.

Spent a week at Naomi's house while she was in England [friend of mine] - it was sooo nice to have my own space again! The freedom of mind it offered certainly reminded me what you get in exchange for the reduced freedom of a bag on your back - and I must admit not having a place is making it a bit difficult for my head to think clearly - but I'm trying to be patient as I am going to england in about 2 weeks and there is no sense finding a flat and then leaving for 3 weeks immediately after I move in. The key moto right now is: simple sanctuary: nothing too permanent but still homely - as I am generaly still unrooted in my attitudes to any one place.

I'm more than half done uploading Japan photos... I just saw a really inspiring photography installation all about animals:

spirit of the wild

And indeed i am continuing to take photos with my SLR camera now and again. The expo was inspiring: both because it connected me with animals, far-off-places and nature again; and because it inspired me with photography. Once I finally get all these photos updated I want to start printing them out; maybe from the top 12 photos of my trip I can make a little expo... just an idea... we will see!

eMergy-Pump & Correcting patterns

2007-05-26T14:41:00.000+02:00

Life in the secluded isolated bubble continues. I'm shielded here from the world, or so it feels, left to wander in my own thoughts, or in books, as the weeks continue to fall past me...

The website [for work] is nearing completion, and everyone is happy - this is good.

I've been discussing my future plans a bit with my mother, I'm not too sure I can wait around in this country for 9 or more months to help my mom move, that might be too long - I really want my life to continue its growth process [though i also realize that responsibility and helping my mother move is also a part of that growth process]. I'll also need at least one more client/project this year for legal purposes... and this all goes against my intention of working on my device/music album.

Tattoo progress has been slow, as I'm trying to use the computer as little as possible when working already 9+ hours a day... [and unfortunately I have to use the computer to do what I want done on the tattoo]

I've signed up to the gym! Swimming pool, fitness equipment, yoga lessons... all in one, I've been 4 times already, trying to go at least 3 times a week if I can. I'm on a "muscle building" program; primarily upper body. Slowly getting fit, less stiff from the computer; my first yoga lesson was a killer! Especially since the yoga at this gym is mainly focussed on 'strength positions', instead of flexibility.

I'm really-really-really looking forward to England! It's going to be like a breath of fresh air to be outdoors again, out of Holland, and traveling. Can't wait! I'm also eager to see what the south-west part of England is like... and its only once I've been to England that I'll know for sure where I want to move to.

Permaculture book is done! Since yesterday. I'm still very keen on the idea of using the ideas as a spring board for more information-promotion. I'm going to research now some of the accounting systems - two were mentioned: the

Ecological footprint:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_footprint#General

EMERGY [embodied energy in a system/person/object etc.]:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergy

So the next step is figuring out what my impact is, apply some change changes to my life [to shift from consumerism to participism] - and then go back through the book and remark out all the parts in it I think need highlighting/diagrams for my re-write.

Many-many-many new photos of Japan in Album 4... maybe eventually I will catch up and be able to show my new pictures of Holland...? One day...

Love to you all,

Sebastian

Physical retention, tattoo art, permacultural-awareness

2007-05-15T21:07:00.000+02:00

Dearest friends,

In the last while the weather has turned back to rain and cloud. It's quite intense living here, and I'm only vaguely aware of the rapidly passing weeks as they run between my fingers.

Work has been going very well, this new website I'm making is going to end up being one of the best sites I've ever made... but the tole on my body hasn't been all that great. Too many hours sitting behind the computer; it's just not healthy. I find that the previous frustration I had with Holland hasn't changed: being that I often consider going outside, but then I can never think of anywhere to go, so instead I stay indoors. Honestly, I can't wait until I leave this country! I'm far too 'into nature' now to be content with this low quality of life one has here.

My body went 'on strike' for a week, and I was left with a stiff neck - I'm guessing my body took out revenge on me for not having fulfilled my promise... as I have yet to start or do any of the physical activities I had presumed I was going to do. How awful!

on the positive side of life, I've been working on a tattoo for Corey, my Canadian spirit-brother [I traveled with him in NZ]. It's not the first time I've been asked to make one, but it is the first time I'm actually going to do it! It's scary! And I want it to be just perfect; so I'm taking a long time to work on it; sketching by hand, scanning, correcting in the computer, printing, drawing by hand... over and over again in a repeating cycle... I think it's going to look really nice! [eventually!]

On the awareness front I'm learning a lot from the permaculture book. When I'd done with it I want to go through it again and mark slides I can make for a reduced-size:higher-impact [power point] presentation. I think there is tons of excellent information here just waiting to be told to a wider [not agriculturally focussed] population. If the presentation looks like it has value, I might go the next step and make a web site and/or you Tube info documentary... we shall see.

I'm quite eager to talk with Ruby in a few weeks/months about possible [work] collaboration. Ruby is my long standing friend from high school, he's become the permaculture-mastermind; me the humble green sprout.

Oh, new photos uploaded in album 4!

you can now see all my pictures from Tokyo, monkeys and Mt. Fuji...
thats about 8 days of photos! So I still have about 8.8 gigabytes of photos still to sort!

Hugs!

Seb.

Tripple system maker analyzer,

2007-05-06T09:40:00.000+02:00

Well time is moving very fast now! Work is overwhelming, but highly enjoyable. Hard to even find time to blog; which is surprising! My inbox is just getting cluttered with emails I haven't had the time to reply to. Today I vote for the new French president!

I'm doing all right; I'm happy because I excerise that choice. honestly just focusing on things to do, and leaving deeper questions a bit on the side for now.

There is a dominant theme at work, in all facets of life I seem to be focussed currently on learning about system design. Whether it be the design of my flash application for work, or about permaculture human-system design, or about my own deeper self analysis while working through the latest Seth Book I am reading: part II 'the Nature of Personal Reality'.

It feels to me as if some higher-self has taken an interest in becoming better at creating and dealing with intricate systems; and I am its tool for this processes to unfold. I'm learning much.

The weather here has been good, too good. There is often not a cloud in the sky with high temperatures, and there was only 1 day of rain in April. The hottest April on record since the 1700's I think is what they said... thats not very good for rain-thirsty plants! The irony is people realize that the weather is definitely out of whack, but the attitude is "hotter is nice" - whereas I just see it more like the 'quite before the storm'... a sort of half-paradise-with strings-effect. It's amazing to see how people switch from denial to despair to quickly. [one of] the really positive thing is reading about permaculture is giving me a much better overall perspective into the whole process and workable solutions.

Still working on uploading pictures from Japan, now days 1-6 are uploaded! but there is still about 4 more weeks of pictures to come! I'm sooooo behind in this regard... sorry!

Oh, this week I get keys to a place I can use for the next month while one of my friends is in Israel. Will be nice to have my own space back!

Still have not started doing Akido and the Gym [maybe some yoga too, not sure]. I want to focus a lot of my time on my body; ironically my body has gone on "strike" this week, I had a really stiff neck for a couple of days, couldn't turn my head at all! Arg, frustration that was! I hope to get this regard in tune soon, as it is one of my higher priorities.

Hugs to you all,

System-Seb.