With the permission of Erica (the celebrity)...I hope
About The Image
I saw my consort sleeping on our couch. Do you like that "my consort"? I am indebted to my buddy Jeff Starrs for acquainting me with its usage in this context--thank you Bodhi. What was I saying--oh yeah, I'm pretty intense--even my calm is intense-so I could see my consort Erica needs to shut of switches and crash + umpteen other reasons also; no need for me to personalize it. I do that to humble myself--it's a practice.
Anyway my beautiful consort looks like a Sleeping Princess to Me. Since I am now in my 29th childhood, I love Sleeping Princess images...so I went and retrieved my dig cam. My Beautiful Consort sensed what I was up to and didn't care to be bothered so she made believe she was deep asleep--thinking that would stop me. Ha!. I was on impulse drive and I couldn't stop myself, I shot a picture (not the sheriff), the flash went off, and Consort Erica with her eyes closed, tried (without success as you are witness to) to hold in a laugh.
STATE YOUR MIND--OR ASK FOR ADVICE: Post You Comments Click (below) To Enter Forum
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Today I am going to demonstrate once again how to apply a mind expansion exercise for looking at a piece of art. Only this time I added a couple of instructions and you will be looking at a new piece of art (that I did). Then I am going to discuss how by applying this method one can judge the quality of a piece of art Sub-Objective."Sub-Objective" a term I just coined means subjectively according to objective or logical critera.
"How can you do that? Isn't that an esthetic judgment?" Well, the answer is yes it is an esthetic judgement, but I can do it if I operationalize my judgement criteria, so that the operational criteria will help you make a loose judgement if the work of art is a good piece of art, a mediocre piece of art, or a poor piece. I will discuss the philosophical underpinings of this experiment after you conduct the experiment...Oh did I ask you to help this discussion along by conducting yesterdays experiment once more (or for the first time if you havn't done it yet) with the added instructions I am including today. Please (don't make me beg you to) do this. It will aid our discussion about Mind Expanding practices. Okay, here is today's practice...when you are through with it read the discussion about it below.
Okay, Here Goes--stretching your mind is better than touching your toes....or as good:
At the top of this page is a link that says, "For Better View of Art--CLICK". Push it---but wait until I finish these instructions :>)!
Okay here's what I want you to do:
1. Look at the piece that Comes up on a Full Screen (shut pop-up if you are getting it). Now I am going to have you vary every which way you look at the piece. 2. Notice if your eyes immediately go to a quadrant or center. Now, break that habit by making them rove all over the art piece and rest them at differrent places on the surface for varying amounts of time. 3. Okay, now tilt your head to the left or right, up or down, up right or left, down right or left etc--every-which-way.
4. Change the distance of your head from the screen. 5. Now randomly start looking at different little elements (pieces) of the piece in all different quadrants and sections of those quardrants...take your time and look at but try simultaneously to take in the WHOLE art piece.
6. Notice your breathing now and then as you do this—are you holding your breath now and then? If so stop it--or start it. Were you slowing it down, change the speed of your exhales and inhales.
7. Look at the piece with squinted eyes
8.Move the distance your head is from the screen, as you vary yourself in the other ways.
9. Go back to the way you first looked at the art work, check it out for a while, if you feel like it start varying it again, blah, blah, blah. You have the idea!
Okay do me a favor, only read the next paragraph after you do the exercise, unless you don't want to do the exercise in habit breaking and being here now with a piece of art.
Discussion
If you did this excercise correctly (didn't rush through it) you will most likely have experienced different things. You will have seen the piece become more alive. You will have seen internal movements of some of the elements or figures in the piece which didn't correlate with your head movements. Of course those were illusions the piece had the potential to disclose or manifest. You will have seen whole gestalts of little section seem to get reorganized. Strange huh. Do you understand: what you have been doing is breaking habits or modal ways of being and looking, so that you are really seeing. You can do the same sort of things in any environment while just looking and participating in the world. The world is very rich, it is undepleteable. Repeat that Bernard! UNDEPLETABLEYou can't ever totally close a gestalt in the world no matter how hard you try; but, many individuals kill its full body flavor and richness--in fact, we all do, to some extent; and some degree of doing that is necessary to survive...sometimes one has to shut off high mode.
So here is where we get into esthetics. It is my contention that the more non-depleteable a piece is the better its quality is. If you want proof, do the excercise above on other art pieces you see here on this network, in art magazines and Art books. You will see most every piece has variable energy levels and movement--the more it has, the more difficult it is to deplete, and the less it has, the easier it is to deplete. Better pieces are alway more dynamic-- and I am not talking about qualities like peacefullness, quiet or its opposite, all those can be quite dynamic--I am talking about its ability to grab your attention and keep changing itself the more you look at it. You can help it along but it has to have that potential. Why is that good, One reason is that it correlates with nature or the World Process which is non-depleteable. The world will always cooperate with you in this way. The more you break your habits, attachments, and expectations the more it will alter and expand your consciousness even further.In other words great painting increase your perceptual and kinetic degrees of freedom Some pieces do not emulate the world in that way. They are fastly depleteable and they close you up which may be very comfortable if your use to being closed up, but it is not very good in helping you survive and grow and feel alive...
By the way, one way of making it difficult to hold gestalts in looking at a work, is for the artist to have bombarded the work with so much info that it's impossible to hold a gestalt. However, another way is by making emptyness work as Monet did with the Water Lillies, and Rothko did. Rothkos paintings and his borders keep breathing and changing, they suck you in and you come out of them blissed-out. Something like the difference between Tantric and Zen. But both go to the center
Okay end of my discussion:
How about you sharing with us what you experienced. I have certain things I would like to know also. Did you experience what I talked about? How did you feel afterward like clearer or less clear, etc. Do you think your consciousness was altered. Did you feel a little high. Afterward, are you feeling more vitalized?
STATE YOUR MIND--OR ASK FOR ADVICE: Post You Comments Click (below) To Enter Forum
You are invited to send me your criticism, or you can contribute your own material for publication. Make this your site also--use the Forum Box above. I sure appreciate your interest and would love your participation..
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"all gifts should be passed on!" quote from the Great Guru in The Sky
I was irate when I read Flemming Funch's account of how Budget Rent-a-car gave the sting to Ming--boys and girls http://ming.tv. Below I have Republished Mings account in his own word! You got it! This is a show of PEOPLE POWER VS CORPORATE POWER: We will see how impotent we are. If you are as disgusted as I am after reading it PLEASE reprint the follow article on yur site or blog, and link to Ming.
Just think how much Budget Rent-a-cars unethical behavior (in my opinion and Mings's) will cost them, if every time someone searches for Budget-rent-a-car on a search engine such as Google they are hit with a hundred or more links to reprints of Ming's telling article. Perhaps that will give them an incentive to negotiate a settlement with Ming.
It's about time WE THE PEOPLE organized an create a ring called (You Shouldn't Get Away with It) The idea is for Hundreds of websites and Blogs to re-publish (or Link to) any Horror Story about How a Corporation or Government treated an individual unjustly. If you like the idea send me an e-mail address where I can forward you a link or copy for you to publish at Empower the People: The Ming Horror Story with Budget Rent-a-cars is Below. Read it get irate, and get galvanized!
WARNING:How Budget Rent-a-cars Stung my Friend Flemming Funch or You Can't Sting Ming and Get Away With It or Budget Rent-a-car IT MAY HAVE BEEN LEGAL BUT IT SURE WASN'T ETHICAL!
"Budget sucks!
I had quite a nightmare experience with the car we rented from Budget Rent-a-car 3 months ago when we first came to France. And it is no way finished, as it seems they succeeded in ripping me off of $3300 on top of the full rental and insurance we paid, where really it should have been them who ought to have reimbursed me for our extra trouble and expenses.
In brief, we rented a car for 3 weeks from Budget in the airport in Toulouse, France. I opted for full insurance and paid it all in advance. During those 3 weeks we decided to drive to Denmark. On the way the car broke down on the freeway in Hamburg, Germany in the middle of the night. Budget had it towed away, and we went and received a replacement car in the Budget office of the Hamburg airport in the morning. We continued in that car. 6 days later when we were coming back, they weren't done reparing the French car, so we kept driving the German car and handed it back at the end of our rental period in Toulouse. In the meantime they had decided that it was our fault the car broke down, because Ford wouldn't repair it under warranty. They at first wanted to bill us the full cost of the repair (1400 euros) and the cost of transporting the two cars back to where they belonged (1300 euros). I refused. Instead they charged 800 euros for an accident deductible. There hadn't been any accident, mind you. I thought that was the end of it, but the next day another $2300+ was charged to my account from Budget Germany. I didn't get any explanation for it, but assumed it would be the rental price for the German car, plus a charge for transporting it back. Note that I already had paid for the whole period and didn't get any refunds.
When I found that out, I asked my bank to reverse the charges (around $3300). They did that, pending investigation, and I sent them my story and all the documentation. But Budget never answered their queries. So then, last week the bank re-reversed the charges and deducted the amount from my account again. And, well, the checking/visa account was almost empty already, so the result became that it is now $3000 overdrawn, and I'd be in risk of losing my account, screwing up my credit, and not having any way of paying my U.S. bills.
The full story with details is at the bottom, for anybody who's particularly interested. But let me bring out a few points and pieces of advice that are good to pass on:
When you rent a car in a European country from a big car rental company, you might not actually be dealing with that company at all, but with a small local franchise. I realized later that I was dealing with one company in the south of France and another in northern Germany, and not at all with Budget Rent A Car System, Inc, despite that it has big signs and business cards and everything saying BUDGET. Only when you get the final bill do you realize who you've been doing business with.
A car rental franchise in one place has very little interest in covering expenses that are incurred with another franchise in another place, even if it is their fault. Even if it has the same BUDGET sign in the same big letters over each of their booths.
Europe is not the U.S. You can't count on the existence of a general rule that "the customer is always right". Asking to talk to somebody's supervisor might not get you anywhere.
It is common in several European countries that even though you opt for the full insurance, there's a large deductible, which they might well forget to mention to you. The approach of some companies is that if anything at all happens to the car, you pay that deductible. It is often 800 or 1000 euros.
A car rental franchise is likely to have the view that if anything breaks down on the car, the warranty of the manufacturer will cover it. And if they don't, it is YOUR fault. Doesn't matter how many other people have driven the car before, or what state it was in when you got it.
If your rental car breaks down, there's an emergency number to call. But don't expect that they'll actually deal with anything other than having the car towed away. They might leave you in the night in the rain in a foreign country until their offices will open on the next business day.
If you get a replacement car in a different office or a different franchise than the original car, and they make you sign a new contract, it is NOT "just a formality". You're likely to become liable for paying exactly what it says on it. You've better get a written and signed statement from them that says it is a replacement car, and it will be covered by the original contact. Verbal statements mean nothing later on.
A car rental company is free to bill you extra charges, damages, etc., without asking you. It is probably hidden in the small print you didn't read, but it doesn't even have to be. Your bank is likely to pay the charges, even if the money isn't in your account.
If you don't agree with the charges, your credit card company can not just cancel the charges. They might be nice to temporarily reverse them while they're looking into it. But they've already paid the company, and unless they agree with the wrongness of the charge, and they can persuade them to give the money back, there's nothing much you can do about it. Particularly when the charges happened in a different country than your bank is in, and all the paperwork is in French and German.
Neither the car rental franchises nor the bank are going to care much about whether it is fair to have to pay $4600 for renting a small faulty car for three weeks, which broke down and didn't get your where you were going. What matters is what the papers say and what you can prove. Or, what they can get away with.
I have rented a lot of cars, both in the U.S. and various European countries, and I've usually felt really safe and comfortable about the transactions. Minor problems like a broken taillight were usually accepted with a smile and a "Thank you for your business!" But then again, I haven't ever used Budget before. Avis has always been nice to me."
A Great Ombudsman WWW Idea...
In Response to the call to arm to help Budget Rent-a-cars
see the error of their way our friend jmarc link published the following list of key word. Now when anyone does a search using one of those key words, the key word will come up on the engine with a link to Ming's article above...try it...click on one of the key word which I am republishing now with encouragement from jmarc:
STATE YOUR MIND--OR ASK FOR ADVICE: Post You Comments Click (below) To Enter Forum
You are invited to send me your criticism, or you can contribute your own material for publication. Make this your site also--use the Forum Box above. I sure appreciate your interest and would love your participation..
RATE THIS JOURNAL? COLUMN? BLOG...WHAT EVER YOU WANT TO CALL IT...below... Top Colored button means "great!" Bottom colored button means "Feh!"
"all gifts should be passed on!" quote from the Great Guru in the Sky
Aum-Pa Sez
CORRECTION: I read somewhere that genius’s minds work a lot faster than their motor abilities allow them to put their ideas into words…well, if that’s case my I.Q must be flying off the measurable charts, if my news log of yesterday is a proof. Gosh there were so many missing words, missing phrases, and typos that I was truly embarrassed…because I realize the “genius” trip is a good rationalization, when actually I may just have been publicly displaying a case of early Alzheimer’s disease or some weird form of dyslexia…
Anyway, for any of you still interested in the subject I republishing the correct, more easily digestible version of yesterday's article on my log.
Art Work Changes on Thursdays
Mind Expansion Practices: Part 1
Yesterday, my friend Ming wrote an article on his log titled, "Stand still and look until you really see" Ming.
Actually, I think being present is not so much a matter of tricking the left brain in order to "Be Here Now," as Ming and his sources argued but of liberating the right brain from the tyranny of the left brain and developing a healthier symbiosis between the two sides of the brain. In either case, we are talking about mind expansion. What I liked about Ming's article was his talking about specific exercises to help you 'really' see. Those exercises are what I call "PRACTICES."
Practices can be used not only to expand the mind but also to shrink the ego by bringing it into a proper proportion with right brain processing of experience in influencing our behavior; thereby curing it of its pathology. Surely if the ego's extensions, and left brain symbolic process can work together with the right brain to turn someone into a human bomb in order to insure a more noble survival on a higher plane of existence, there is a pathological process going on. That’s what I mean by liberating the right brain from the left brain and its child the ego.
Apparently, there is an inverse relationship between mind expansion and ego diminishment. There is also an intimate relationship between left-brain activity and ego in their attempts to insure our survival. For that reason left-brain activity, and its child ego are both very involved in the pre-perceptual and perceptual process. Unfortunately, our left brain alliance has formed a whole barrel of HABITS (not very good) in order to stabilize a world (even a universe) that is in constant process--so we can operate more effeciently in it--in material and practical ways in order to insure our survival. But, habits tend to abstract and gestalt out large amounts of information from reaching consciousness.
Habit prevents us from being here now. You can think of a habit as a behavioral packet in which the Past (behavior or meaning or understanding or categorizing) is repeated in the Present when confronted with a situation it labels as “similar to” other situations encountered in the past. It does this in order to actualize and secure a future you imagined in the past. Notice the emphasis on “similar.” You see that matching present-experience with past-experience is done both before and after perception in the process of organizing or gestalting our world. So what we experience most of the time is what we have become conditioned to as important for our survival, maintenance, and growth. I hope I made it clear that habit ties the present to the future by matching it with the past. A smoker smokes much more readily and frequently in a novel situation because cigarette smoking tends to tie the past to the present thereby lowering one’s anxiety level and prepare one for what’s going to occur.
Breaking habits is a way of becoming PRESENT, and in so doing receiving a great deal more information in the present ongoing situation. That essentially is what the exercises Ming discussed is designed to do. You are breaking your habituated way of looking in order to see.
Now I am going to present you with a practice that will expand your ability to see art...Want to try it? Most people have a established set of habits when they look at art. Their eyes usually travel to a certain local on the two-dimensional plain although that local may vary from individual. They may have a habit of immediately looking for meaning, or for an understandable story, whether it is literary, visual, or formal. In short, they may look for things to name, which connects them with past-experience. They may feel a need to immediately analyze or comment on the piece--like the whole world is waiting for their opinion. Nothing is wrong with that but if you want to see, rather than look, you have to break some of those habits and hold off the critiquing until the piece is absorbed. At the top of this page is a button that says, "Wisser's Slide Show". Push it---but wait until I finish these instructions :>)!
Okay here's what I want you to do:
1. Look at the piece that Comes up on a Full Screen (shut pop-up if you are getting it). Now I am going to have you vary every which way you look at the piece. 2. Notice if your eyes immediately go to a quadrant or center. Now, break that habit by making them rove all over the art piece and rest them at differrent places on the surface for varying amounts of time. 3. Okay, now tilt your head to the left or right, up or down, up right or left, down right or left etc--every-which-way. 4. Change the distance of your head from the screen. 5. Notice your breathing now and then as you do this—are you hold your breath now and then? If so stop it--or start it. Were you slowing it down, change the speed of your exhales and inhales. 6. Move the distance you head is from the screen, as you vary yourself in the other ways. Go back to the way you first looked at the art work, check it out for a while, if you feel like it start varying it again, blah, blah, blah. You have the idea!
Okay do me a favor, only read the next paragraph after you do the exercise, unless you don't want to do the exercise in habit breaking and being here now with a piece of art.
Did you Notice...
That you are feeling a bit stoned? Like you are having a little bit of a rush, like you are feeling more alive now? That's what being here now feels like!. Drugs do not get you stoned! Drugs just inhibit your ability to form gestalts to some varying degrees, which is the same as breaking habits. Drugs inhibit the ability to cognize linearly to some degree, which is also a form of habit breaking. The rushes or high feeling is what being ever more PRESENT feels like! So maybe you can also appreciate having a little bit of ego and left brain behavior activated when crossing the street or driving a car...but it can be moderated enough to feel alive even in those situations.
WARNING:
These new Patterns can become habituated and becoming imitations of being alive, you must learn to become aware of that and even vary your patterns of habit breaking or break the habit of breaking habits (sometimes) when they form. That is like saying sometimes you have to break the habit of being attached to being non-attached...
STATE YOUR MIND--OR ASK FOR ADVICE: Post You Comments Click (below) To Enter Forum
You are invited to send me your criticism, or you can contribute your own material for publication. Make this your site also--use the Forum Box above. I sure appreciate your interest and would love your participation..
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"all gifts should be passed on!" quote from the Great Guru in the Sky
Aum-Pa Sez
Love Making and Power
Yesterday, my partner and I reached new qualitative heights in LOVE MAKING. Notice I did not say sex making, I said love making. Is that old fashion?
I guess great sex making involves the exercise of skill, wheras love making surrenders skill and everything else to the catalyzing effect of love on desire in each lovely moment.
No my name is not Braggadocio, moreover if you think this is a case of outlandish bragging let me assure you it is not; for, besides being ecstatic, this log entry has a point to make.
However, when I said new 'qualitative heights' I hoped to invoke in you a picture of a ladder with the words LOVE MAKING making it to the top rung which has broken the heaven barrier....so you will get what Aum-a means by new heights....
Afterward in the peace of bliss, while I was sitting watching my orchard plant grow, I encountered all the artifacts our loveisode left me with: The peacefulness; The universal compassion; The wish that everyone, everywhere, could enjoy such conscious altering experiences...and then I heard a little infantile voice in my head say, 'Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could provide all the world leaders with such experiences for surely if we could, there would be no war....and that rung true because I knew I couldn't make war on any sentient being or plant at that moment. In fact, it was an ideal time for a housefly to sit on the tip of my nose--I mean if one was a housefly.
STATE YOUR MIND--OR ASK FOR ADVICE: Post You Comments Click (below) To Enter Forum
You are invited to send me your criticism, or you can contribute your own material for publication. Make this your site also--use the Forum Box above. I sure appreciate your interest and would love your participation..
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"Your Weekday Abstract Art Piece"