LastThursday

I have such a strong connection with some songs. This is one of the vinyl record (a tautology) albums my parents had. It just reminds me of being with my family around the late seventies in Spain as a very small kid. It's just as good as the original song in my opinion: This song was played incessantly late night on TV at my girlfriend's parents' place around 1990. I was foolishly given a key so I would crash there after going to the nightclub across the park and up the hill. Sweaty and drunk and tired: I just love this song for it's etherial, crisp quality and beautiful voice (2021). And looking back in another thirty years will remind of now: Boy, I've lived a long time.

I agree up to a point. There are a million actions that would be good for you, but require effort to do. Implicit in being referred to as lazy, is that you should be doing something. But who's to judge what you should be doing or even if you should be doing anything at all? Where does this judgement come from? It's a societal thing, we're obsessed with doing. If you're not doing then somehow you're deficient in some way or wasting your time. Time is treated as a commodity to be filled with doing stuff; progressing, advancing. Maybe conserving energy or having down time is actually good for you?

To call someone lazy is a judgement. Mostly when people say it, it's because they want to say "look how good I am, I'm not lazy like you", virtue signalling. Sometimes, it's used as genuine encouragement, but it's hardly ever as effective as positive encouragement. What would you rather hear: "Your so lazy you'll never amount to anything" or "You have so much talent, it'll be amazing if you used it"? Anyway, laziness is useful for conserving energy so it's probably an adaptive evolutionary trait. Lastly, most people are very good at telling you you're lazy, but not any good at telling you how not to be lazy - mostly because they don't have a clue themselves or they themselves are too lazy to really help you.

@Preety_India naturally, bad behaviour shouldn't ever be rewarded. But it wouldn't be judgemental to tell a person directly that they've hurt you by their actions. That's enforcing boundaries. If they continue to hurt you knowingly, then you should remove them from your life as painlessly as possible. I agree that ghosting is crappy behaviour.

That doesn't diminish the sweetness and supportiveness you gave and any help they received from you. You are no lesser person. Sometimes people just don't have the skills, empathy or level of experience to acknowledge what you have done for them, or to reciprocate, or even just to say thank you. Just let them go, and if they come back, just accept them for who they are without judgement.

Interesting observation. You can do this process on steroids (not actual steroids). The way is to strongly associate a physical sensation to a calm meditative state. For example say get into deep meditation and touch your left earlobe. Do this for several sessions. After a while you'll get the Pavlovian response to touching your left earlobe - it will immediately put you into a calm meditative state. Hypnotists use this technique all the time, to "induce" you quickly. Next, you induce the state by touching your earlobe and keeping it there, and immediately start mentally reliving the traumatic memory. This will reprogram the emotional response to the memory, as you mentioned about reconsolidation. Don't hold the earlobe for too long however or it could get associated with the traumatic memory. Each time through this exercise should greatly and permanently change the emotional response to the memory. The anchors (i.e. earlobe touching) can be physical, words, sounds, smells or visualisation or combination of those. Often it's best that someone else anchors the state, which leaves you free to concentrate on just the trauma. The anchored states can be any positive or afirming emotion: confidence, calmness, excitement, emptiness etc.

This journal seems to be two things. A place of ideas swirling around in my head. A place of retrospective in the hope of understanding myself now. What's missing is future orientation (note to self). Now with that teaser, I'm going to do some more retrospective... Back in 2006 I did a month's set of courses at the NLP Academy in London. For some context, my dad has been into basically self development practices in a business setting. So since teenagehood I had been surrounded by this stuff and because I used to be a big reader, I would just delve into all his books on the subject. So (as mentioned in my learning styles post), I learnt a lot of stuff by osmosis rather than specifically being interested in it. Mostly, I thought it was faddish and I would inwardly roll my eyes when my dad talked enthusiastically about it. He never has been good at noticing body language, but maybe I'm good at hiding it. Anyway. I knew all about NLP before I did the courses, but never really had any context for it, and never was that interested. But around 2006 I was languishing after a break up and my dad firmly insisted I do the courses to which he was attached as he assisted or ran some of them himself. So I relented - at great expense - and partially to please him and let him enjoy collaborating with his son. And, maybe to get something out of it. For the basic introductory course my dad also took part as a pupil himself. There was plenty of material I was already aware of, and plenty of exercises mostly in pairs. Because we were novices the techniques were probably not as effective as they could have been. Also NLP techniques are always focussed on noddy things like smoking cessation and phobias etc. I say noddy, they can be quite debilitating for some. But I personally didn't find them that interesting. Although I did start to realise the power of what was being taught. What I really wanted was solutions to my own problems: anxiety, bitter resentment about the collapse of my family, apathy and so on. Pretty much what I talk about here still on this journal (sigh). The strong irony of my dad wanting to help me but being the actual source of the problems was not lost on me. The irony of him being on the course with me. In fact I found it a relief once the basic course had finished and my dad had left. Was my dad trolling me albeit in an unconscious manner? Was he actually trying to assuage his own guilt - a selfish endeavour? The remainder of the courses were different in character. But there were a couple of particularly powerful experiences I had on the basic course. One involving moving and blending submodalities around - I was with a partner but failing at getting any effect, when one of the instructors spoke to us and said "do it this way", and bam! I was in a daze for the rest of the day, my vision became slightly desaturated, and I felt dreamlike. Another exercise had me slowly bringing my hands together to squash two sets of emotions into one, at the end of which I cried uncontrollably, for half an hour. What I actually found more interesting were the more hypnotic side of NLP and the more visually orientated techniques. I was intrigued that specially tailored language could be used to solve personal problems. So I learned Ericksonian hypnosis. By lunchtime most days, due to early starts but also being completely spaced out by the exercises, there were sleeping bodies strewn in the meeting room, mine included. I really enjoyed this communal aspect to learning. And the range of people were interesting, I especially got on with an Ecuadorian woman (fancied rather), and layed back Portugese bloke. The timeline therapy exercises I particularly enjoyed with Ms Ecuador. It had me floating up into space, to drift slowly back along my "timeline" to a moment before the unpleasantness occured, which was then anchored to (associated with) a strongly positive emotion, and then we are told to rerun the event, all the time experiencing the positive emotion. A lot of the power of NLP revolves around the idea of simultaneously holding two feelings or emotions or mental states, in order that they interfere with each and producing lasting change. All the different exercises are just various ways in which this "collapsing" of states can be encouraged. So it's straightforward to come up with new techniques around this idea. I found visualisation strongly affected me, but that's my main submodality (sense). But physical techniques (e.g. bring hands together) can be quite powerful - for example marking out different floor areas and anchoring different sets of states, to them, and then have the person hold one state whilst walking to a different area on the floor. I came out of those courses a changed person. My anxiety decreased tremendously, my confidence was sky high, I felt relaxed in every day life for the first time in my life. It was night and day. A lot of it stuck and was integrated over time. I also mark that as the start of my spiritual journey, albeit in a completely unintended and unconcious way. Perhaps I do owe my dad something?

Why are you asking this question?

I often sit here feeling like I've lost an important part of myself over the years. It's pretty difficult to dissect what's been lost exactly, but I'll try my best. Here's a list of nouns I think I've lost or that have diminished and what they mean to me: Energy, vibrancy, excititability: I suppose this comes with age, except that I'm not infirm or in any way unhealthy, I'm fit enough to walk 15 miles in a day. So what gives? Social expectation? Lack of opportunity to express this energy? It just feels like I do still have this, but no outlet for it. I think especially most of the things I do are because I have to do and none of it switches me on. Fun, joy: Again no opportunity to engage with these. Fun and joy are often expressed with other people, especially in intimate situations (not necessarily sexual). I'm quite a humorous and at times sarcastic person and sometimes it works with people (not on a forum full of Americans however - dig). But I find most adults around me just have a humour by-pass, life is serious serious serious. Also, people are just incapable of laughing at themselves or their misfortunes. Connection, people: Maybe the root cause of my loss. As my friends have got married, had kids and maintain mortages, the level of connection has dramatically reduced. Ironically, this connection has increased during lockdown, go figure. I was very close to my sister for most of my childhood, but we have become disconnected as adults - although I'm working on this. I'm not close to my family, we keep each other at a respectable distance. I don't currently have a girlfriend - but I feel strongly ambivalent about having one. I don't do pets or plants. Sheesh. Experimentation: This is a tricky one. Experimentation is kind of a one shot process. Once alcohol, staying awake all night, nightclubs, sex, weed, other stuff, have meet experimented on, that's it. I am experimenting heavily with hypnosis and associated activities. But more of this please Me. Novelty: Again another difficult one, a sort of sister to experimentation. Most experimentation is about novelty, most novelty comes from experimentation. I think some new activites are needed. I have variously done creative writing, acting, song writing, Tai Chi, Badminton (still am). I have a strong interest in running and walking. Problem is none of those activies are novel. How do I turn on the novelty tap. Kindness, gratitude, helping others: It's not that I don't do these things, it's that I don't feel comfortable expressing these as much I want to. Brits are reserved and very sincere about all this stuff. I would just love it to be casual and informal. The way I currently show gratitude is by being physically present and attentive for the people I love. I'm also prepared to go out of my way to help my friends and family. However, I'm not particular verbal about expressing these things. I feel as though my exterior facade doesn't match my interior feelings around kidness and gratitude. Purpose: I've drifted ever since left University now over 25 years ago FFS. Before that my purpose was to escape the confines of London and to get educated as highly as possible and then to earn loads of dosh. I did all that and somewhere along the line gave up striving for anything much at all. Saying that, my scattergun attention doesn't help in this respect, nothing sticks long enough to stick to one purpose. There's no simple solution for this. It's quite possible, that I will never pick up a purpose until I pop my clogs. Optimism: I was an extremely happy go lucky young person. Despite all the odds of parents divorcing, lonely teenagehood, and being poor, I was still optimistic that things would go right and about the future. This has given way to a very pragmatic and grounded person however - which is fine but without optimism all the energy and motivation is sucked out of me. Pragmatism is great for weathering the storm of every day drudgery: working, paying bills and doing the rounds with friends and family, being adult. Pragmatism has also helped kill the anxious young adult I was - for that I'm very thankful. But without optimism life is nothing special. Hmm. What's the theme? People, people, people... How do I square getting to know more people with my lone wolf character? Kill the wolf.

And...? Sorry, just nosey.

Start counting from 1, and keep going to infinity and beyond. Notice that no number ever repeats.

We live in three worlds. The world of the public. The world of the private. The world of our thoughts, desires and fantasies. Each world is governed by it's own rules and code of conduct. The public space has to be shared with people and is therefore designed so that people get on with each other civilly. It's a world of lowest common denominators, not everything goes: nakedness, drug use, most sorts of deviancy from the norm are frowned upon. It's police and politics and politeness. It's the real world of weather and burning sun, concrete and highways; cars. The private space is looser in all those public taboos just mentioned. The only agreement needed is from your (un)loved ones who share your space. Whenever the outside public world intrudes an air of public normalcy pretended, or at least usual private practices are toned down. Recreational drug use is rife, the law doesn't apply. The private space is one of relaxation and letting loose and protection from the rigid public world just outside those windows. It is a place of sleep and dreams and sexual conduct. In a non-pandemic world it is an escape from the public workplace and its codes of conduct. It's a place to eat and shit comfortably. It is a place of deviancy and kink, where some of our fantasies are enacted and a space for getting lost in games both computerised and otherwise. The inner world of thought is the last refuge. If we choose to, it is a perfect place to keep secrets and lock away unpleasant things, even if they often poke us with their ugliness. It is the action centre, and the nerve centre of our sense of self. Here, the three worlds come together to be sorted and sifted into their respective zones. Here no laws apply, and we are unrestricted in our freedom, except for any self imposed imprisonment. We can become others at a moment's notice and then revert to ourselves when finished. We can travel back in time and far into the future. This is the space we use to learn about the other worlds and ourselves. It is a space to secretly hate others or secretly love them.

I wouldn't get too hung up on phrasing. Substitute any other empty abstract noun for energy: essence, vibration, type, orientation, flavour or whatever. I would agree that it can't be easily distentangled from socialization, so by that token the primality would seem contrived (by people). Maybe by analogy works: what is feline energy and canine energy? It would be tricky to put your finger on exactly what makes one or the other, but you know there's a difference and they're not arrived at through socialization. If you're playing charades you could mimic (embody) one or the other easily enough. Is cattiness and dogginess primal in the universe? Erm, no, but it is primal for those two groups of mamals. Can you embody both an essence of masculinity and feminity? The answer would seem to be yes and it's primal for humans at least. Universally? Dunno.

The thing you identify as "you" disappears. Change is constant, change is both death and birth at the same time. The identity "you" is copied and mutated and reused, but that's already happening in other people's minds. Just look at a photograph of "you" for example.

@Breakingthewall could something just be all structure? So structure is just appearance or thought? Can thought imagine nothing, and call it a something without structure? Is reality just (a) thought? Is this just cheating, by equating thought and reality? Is thought just reality?

How about a Turing machine running a non-terminating program? A Turing machine being the embodiment of what a calculation is, i.e. it is the base form of mathematical manipulation. A Turing machine requires an infinite one-dimensional tape though. Stephen Wolfram looked as cellular automata as a base for reality, he numbered them for convenience. One of the cellular automata is Turing complete (equivalent to a Turing machine). Cellular automata have extremely simple rules for each iteration. Some flutter out some don't.

Nice. A self replicating entity? That would make reality equal to this particle? Could you get structure out of reiteration? What about balance? What is reiteration, is it just copying? Is the copying perfect or imperfect?

Don't be so pessimistic. Maybe the question will actually get an answer today by a hippy internet kid? I'm hopeful.

@Breakingthewall good contemplation. More questions: What is something? Does something have an opposite? Is something contained in nothing or nothing contained in something? Can something really be the same as nothing and vice versa? How can nothing have any structure at all? (You say it's non-structure). What is a pattern? What is complexity? What is a form? Is it something or is form something else? Does form automatically have structure? Is structure form?

I'm going to be annoying, by asking more questions. What is "it" and "this" referring to? Who or what is doing the "work"? What is being in "balanced" and why is balance preferred?

No answers, just more questions: Why is reality structured at all? What would reality without structure be? Non-dual, chaos, something else? Is reality actually structured? Does the perceiver of the structure impose the structure? Is structure actually necessary to have consciousness and awareness and existence? What does structure actually mean? Is it subdivision or reduction or connection or cause and effect or objectification or what? Is structure purely conceptual?

@The_Truth_Seeker I applaud you for engaging in this topic. I originally posted about it precisely because there is judgement and stigma surrounding femininity. What better way to understand femininity than to embody it yourself? My aim for myself is to have a better balance of masculinity and femininity, not to be extreme in one or the other. I would never want to push this on to other people though. Generally, men will always have more of a masculine bias and women more feminine.

What isn't everything? What isn't infinity? Whatever the answer is to those two questions must also equal each other.

I realise I write like Charles Dickens. Not so much in Victorian language but more in the style of omniscient narrator. Despite really talking about myself in all my posts, I like to detach as if I'm some sort of drone recording a scene from a distance. Maybe this is indicative of how I view my world, that I'm somehow once removed from everything I say and do, and I'm just watching it all happen. So let's talk women's clothing. One aspect of feminity (my new embodiment), is how it's expressed as a form of body art. Clothing whether functional or expressive is always body art. It modifies the naked canvas of the wearer to convey artistic intent. What's the intent? Many things. It could signal subversion, group belonging, sexuality, authority, defined roles, richness, poverty, modesty, submission, dominance, gender, culture, age, temperament, period, class, or a combination of those. What specifically does this omniscient narrator think is feminine clothing? One aspect is roundness and softness. Often feminine dress is designed to accentuate the round features of the breasts and buttocks, by being tight fitting, modesty is only a secondary consideration and is catered for by varying amounts of coverage. This is enhancement rather than outright modification, like wearing eyeliner to accentuate the eyes. This is about letting the canvas itself speak, by bringing attention to it and lightly contouring it. PVC works because it sticks to and stretches well with skin, like a modified outer skin. Flow is important. This is soft undulating movement. Clothing that flows amplifies a woman's natural flowing movements. This is hard to pin down aesthetically, but when compared to more masculine movement, it is a more graceful and less rigid movement, which comes from having less muscle mass and finer frames (in general). Dresses, skirts, long hair (an extension of clothing) especially if it billows, baggy blouses and trousers, saris, kimonos, hijab. Flowing clothing is connected with feminine sensuality. Frilly attachments have a flowing undulation and is very prevalent in feminine underwear. Longer clothing such as coats are designed to swish. Pattern and sculpting is important. In a sense all clothing is sculpting. Flowers or plant life or tiger patterns (!) are feminine and prevalent. Lacework is reminiscent of patterns found in nature, folliage and filaments. All sorts of repeating and geometric patterns, stripes, polka dots, and often these are cut-outs strategically exposing the canvas below. These have the effect of modifying the immediate sensation of shape and volume of the body and break it up - but at the same accentuate movement where the patterns overlap and swish about against each other. It's about attention: look at me I'm feminine and here I am. This is clothing art as body modification. The sculpting is very often about strategically exposing the skin around the arms, ankles, knees, midriff, bust. This is about contrast, smooth pale skin, beautiful dark brown skin against patterned fabric. The contrast bringing attention to aesthetically femine parts of the body. These parts mostly being covered in masculine attire. Clothing is shorter to expose the canvas. Makeup and tatoos is body art and a form of clothing, permanent or temporary. Feminine makeup intensifies, it makes eyes, eyelashes, eyebrows and lips fuller, colour enhances and overlays onto natural features. Flaws are disguised, In this case it's the feminity that's being intensified, smooth skin and homogeneous healthy appearance. Feminine beauty is attached to looking healthy, flaws being a sign of potential bad health. Makeup is facial sculpting to intensify feminity. Shoes are used to accentuate and sculpt body form especially calves and buttocks. They increase height and feminine dominance. Heels force shorter more feminine steps and the click-clack against hard floors bring attention to the shorter steps. The slight instability in walking in heels increases the sway (and flowing movement) of the hips and buttocks. Shoes expose toes with painted toenails. They can be soft to the touch and look functional, but also accentuate feminine softness. Colour in shoes is very important. Long boots also accentuate and dress the lower legs. Shiny shoes gleam with constantly moving highlights, outlining feminine movement. Bright reds and primary colours also bring attention and can be used to indicate blood and sexuality. Red and light red (pink) are feminine colours. Pastel and unsaturated colours signal placidness and lightness, both feminine traits, in men this is used to constrast againt masculinity (but not generally used in masculine shoeware). Accesories, tights, stockings, jewellery, hats, scalfs further sculpt the outline and employ flow, highlighting, colour. Masculine body art generally has less accesorising, because this would break up the straighter lines and more homogenous look of male clothing.

I've spent my whole life in masculinity and doing quite well at it. However I feel that's not the whole story, I feel I could have a better balance. How do I get in touch with and embody feminine energy as a man? Note, that I'm not talking about sexual orientation, attraction or finding a woman.