LastThursday

I've been watching pick-up videos. It's one of those things, someone posts an interesting video and it piques your interest for whatever reason. This seems to be not so different from pick-up itself: an attractive person piques your interest and you want to know more. Well that's what I've gleaned from the videos I've watched, I'm not a P.U.A. myself. Do I want to be one? Not really (I'm not a sheep, I'm a lone wolf, awooooo). Do I find women interesting? Definitely, very - well some of them anyway. What I personally find cringy about pick-up is the contrived nature of the idea. I can see the strong parallels with being an actor going for an audition. You breathe deeply, shake it all off and inhabit the PUA character. You then get on stage (approach) and deliver the act of your life. Then the woman says "yes" or "no" or even worse throws rotten vegetables at you. Now don't get me wrong. There are many situations in life which require you to perform like this: job interviews, PHD vivas, best-man's speech, company presentation. But why should pick-up be any different? Because being an actor takes dedication and effort, and it takes you away from your natural centre. I've always found it strange that Hollywood actors have their own personalities. They spend a large part of their times inhabiting other characters: you would expect them to be so good that they were chameleons with no natural centre. Every interview with the same actor should reveal a completely different person. But that's not the case Jim Carey is still Jim Carey. Weird isn't? So even a very proficient actor has a natural character they they always return to. This character is the the one they've honed to perfection over a lifetime and it's the one they're most proficient with. We're no different. Pick-up is "weird" because participants are forcing themselves away from their natural character. So how would you be a non-cringy PUA? First, you would forget the idea of actually being a PUA, you're not; instead you're just you doing something you normally wouldn't. This is actually a very normal activity. We are constantly bombarded by novel situations, every situation is a new one. In fact novelty is the de-facto mode of reality. So why is it that we feel very uncomfortable in novel situations? In a word: improvisation. Most of us are shit at improvisation. Strangely, most of us start off being very good at improvisation. Kids universally role play and make up games and respond unconsciously to their emotions. Then usually puberty kills those improvisation skills and we have to agonisingly re-learn them - most of us fail. And improvisation is a skill, it takes constant practice, because we are constantly confronted by novelty. A large part of improvisation involves failing and making mistakes and learning to correct our course on the fly. Improvisation is always a conversation not a scripted event. What can kill improvisation is embarrassment, shame, not being present, lack of fluidity, and stock (scripted) behaviour. Good improvisation is wickedly hard. One of my pet hang-ups is all about fluidity in my interactions. I've worked very hard to improve this aspect of myself. It hasn't come easy at all. What's helped is precisely removing those things that hinder good improvisation. I have become a much much better improviser. For fun, here's one approach I use to use in nightclubs (in my youth) when I was a lot less fluid: Situation: A group of three attractive women. Banging club music. Bad lighting. Me: Approach the group. Hone on in on the least attractive one of the group (but still attractive). Make eye contact. Start talking. Me: "Do you think I'm good looking?" W: Nervous laughter. No answer. Me: "Which one of your friends do you think I find the most attractive?" W: Pulls a face. "Well maybe Katy. She's such a babe." Laughter. Me: "Really? Do you think she would find me attractive?" W: Tries to get Katy's attention. ....

There is an observer. But there is only the illusion of separation from what's being observed.

I remember about 15 years ago on my regular driving commute I had one particular recurring thought: "I wonder how many more times I'll be doing this?". On the surface it's not such an odd thing to think. But being as I am, I began to dig into it a bit more. It can feel sometimes that a situation will never change. Maybe you will never find that job, or you will never get over the death of a loved one, or you'll always be taking that bend at 27 miles per hour. There's a kind of fatalistic sisyphean vibe that can kick in and it can feel like a prison. And then one day it happens, you simply stop doing it, you stop feeling sad, you get that job. Most of the time you don't even notice that you've stopped and you just forget all that time you spent in repetition and it seems like a far off dream. We just as easily slip into doing repetitive things without a moment's thought. For example during the lockdown here, a few friends thought it would be good to meet up virtually on Zoom. There was no plan and not much forethought. But we have kept up the weekly meet for four months now. We quite literally silently sliped into it. How much longer will it last? From experience, one particular week it won't happen and that will be that. This is what "letting things go" really means. Things, people, posessions, situations, come into our lives without notice or planning and they just as easily disappear. We mourn their loss or get angry at having things taken away from us, or that some part of our identity has been changed forever. The expression "nothing lasts forever" is a deep truism about life and it can be hard to accept. Can we go deeper? How long does a thing last? In our minds it has a beginning a long repetitive middle and an end. But this isn't really true. We can break down that repetition into parts: Monday's drive, Tuesday's drive, Wednesday's drive and so on. Our gut knows that each repetition is different from the last. We know every time we see our loved one they are not quite the same person they were last time. How far can we go dividing? When does something really start and really end? How many discrete slices is a thing made up of? At its core, the whole world is constantly starting and ending. For every new moment that starts the previous moment has ended. How much of it do we mourn? Should I mourn the loss of me five minutes ago, the man I was then? No. Another truism is "life is for living". That's just an acknowledgement of the transitory nature of our experience on this planet. If you can learn to grab each moment for what it is: brand new and fresh, and just let go of that old moment then you are flowing with life, and that commute is something to look forward to. Sisyphus would be proud.

@mandyjw Jim Newman I'm not too familiar with. But having had a quick squiz on YouTube this made me chuckle: Maybe it's the absurdity of the conversation. Maybe it's Jim's comedic timing? I get it. But Eckhart and Rupert? Come on, where's the evidence?

I think that all humour is about surprise. And fear. Fear and surprise. Oh yes, and ruthless efficiency... Ok, I'm half Spanish give me a break. Some spiritual teachers are surprisingly jovial, Sadhguru springs to mind and even Mooji. But if you want serious and intense then definitely Rupert Spira or Mr Tolle. Leo is quite serious, but he has his moments. I'm constantly battling against my innate sarcasm and seeing the absurdity of life. To serious people I can come over as insincere or even thick or stupid or even threatening and aggressive. Should I hold back? Maybe, maybe not. Dunno. Humour is very powerful.

It's easy to fall into the trap of ageism or age bias. SD is a progression, with different rates up the Spiral for different folks and different societies. Sure you can take an average, but that isn't hard and fast. Once you level up so to speak, you tend not to slip back down the Spiral, it's a ratchet effect. At an individual level, it's most likely that some of the jumps up the Spiral happen at different biological developmental stages. These are at puberty (12-14), around 25 years (brain maturation) and most probably in the late thirties (35-40, mid-life crisis territory). But again those aren't hard and fast, it depends on the individual. The last of those is interesting. I've seen it happen to so many friends of mine male and female. An awareness kicks in (possibly developmental) whereby strong introspection and a "taking stock of life" vibe happens - and I would argue that this can propel you up the Spiral into higher stages.

It's undeniable that the body does "stuff" outside our conscious awareness. Our blood pumps, food digests, and myriad other mechanistic things churn around. Occasionally that "stuff" is brought to our attention: we feel lethargic, we feel hungry, we have a heart attack. But what about the more intangible things: things like our learning and memories and ideas and emotions? Do they have a life outside of our conscious awareness? Most people would say "yes". Most people call it the subconscious. It's an interesting term: sub-conscious. Sub comes from Latin and it means below or under. It metaphorically betrays itself; the metaphor being that consciousness is like the clear air above a lake and the subconscious is the murky water of underneath it. And, occasionally stuff pokes up above the waterline to delight or scare us. There's also a mechanistic assumption that somehow the machine is churning away somewhere in the murk. I'd argue it's nothing like that at all (but see my previous post for a contradictory view!). Unlike bodies and the world "out there", thoughts and feelings have no permanent form. They are whispy and etherial. Because of this they don't have permanent existence, there's a kind of nothingness quality which permeates them. All machines operate on a kind of algebra or symbolic manipulation. For a four stroke engine, this is shiny steel and liquid gasoline: the steel has a certain shape and configuration, the gasoline has certain attributes and explosive tendencies. For a body the machine is chemistry and physics: different elements each having their own chemical and physical properties are configured in specific interlocking patterns in a vast network. In theory if you can specify a machine in enough detail you can replicate its workings. What sort of machine would work on thoughts and emotions? The obvious one would be language, with all its symbolism and rules and logic. But immediately there is a problem with this idea. Unlike a four stroke engine, the engine of language is not made of thoughts and emotions, but words and sounds. Language is more of an intemediary than the actual thing itself. Thoughts are converted to language are converted to thoughts. Nonetheless, is it possible that the machine of language is churning away and subconsciously processing our thoughts and emotions? I'd say not. The main evidence against it is that you can't get your subconscious to supply you with tomorrow's essay on "Consciousness" whilst you do other things. In other words producing language always involves conscious exertion. The thoughts and ideas come on a whim and are converted there and then into language - the same being true in reverse. There is no language machine under the waterline, it's all above the waterline. Could there be any other sort of machine which sorts and processes thoughts and emotions out of sight of consciousness? For this to happen thoughts and emotions would have to be stored somewhere so that they could be held for processing. But how do you store a thing which is ephemeral or highly abstract like love? If you talk to a materialist then both the machine and the storage mechanism is the human brain and more specifically neurons. And this effectively reduces it to chemistry and physics. But this has precisely the same problem as the language machine idea does: at best the brain is an intermediary for mind. Somehow the brain must have to convert electrical signals and activation potentials into such intangible things as the thought of a swooping bird (and possibly do it in reverse). A four stroke engine is just the same chemistry and physics (mostly carbon): can it process a basic kind of thought? It seems extremely unlikely. Again as with the language idea, is it possible to ask subconscious to churn away and reproduce a kind of mental play for you, ready for you to hit "play" and consciously re-enact it? All whilst you're doing other things? No, it seems not. Even dreams are conscious activities. It's all above the waterline. There is no subconscious, give up the idea. All the processing and machinations of the mind happen in consciousness. Yes, consciousness is that powerful.

The bit in bold is the real reason I think you're asking the question. The short answer is no. The longer answer is that it's all about perspective or framing. When you're disengaged from something or feel separated from it, it's very easy to judge it negatively or to dismiss it as not being interesting. Life becomes boring and dull when you're not engaged with it. The are several ways this could happen in my experience. I will add the caveat that I have in no way solved all these problems for myself: You are not engaged with the present moment. This means that you're not experiencing the full majestic force of reality, instead you're distracted away from it. You are too engaged with thought and you're not being "present". Thinking is a poor substitute for reality. It also distracts you from paying attention to what is really happening around you. It's like watching a movie whilst scrolling on Facebook, you're missing most of the action. You are too engaged with maintaining your identity and story. This is a tricky one. Basically your ego is getting in the way. Your ego is a rabbit warren of interconnected ideas and memories and on and on. Your ego is constantly grabbing your attention and distracting you from reality. Most spiritual work is really about damping down the ego, so you get a chance to engage more fully with reality. You're stuck in a goal or future oriented mindset. In other words you're never "here" you are always striving to be "there". This habit is ingrained from society, it's very hard to escape. It also disengages you from reality. You're not "letting go". More accurately most of us hold on too tightly to things in our lives: people, possessions, memories, identity. This causes suffering, which in turn consumes your attention away from reality. Your job or habits means you're stuck in a rigid sitting posture looking at screens at close range most of your waking life. This consumes all your attention and your body suffers, giving you negative signals. All these things are really about attention. It's very possible to shift your attention so that you are more fully engaged with reality and this means it will be a lot harder to judge negatively or to dismiss it as being uninteresting. When you truly pay attention you'll find that reality is astonishing and very very exciting.

One of my pet hates is when people talk in riddles. Having studied NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming), I know that there is a range of language that can be used to convey information. On one end you have scientific or legal documents, which use very specific and long-winded language; on the other you end you have poetry and the soundbites of politicians. It's all about deletion and equivalence. Deletion comes in many forms, but the main forms of deletion are grammatical and semantic. Here's some examples: She walked through the gardens and smelled the pink flowers. Emily, who had just entered her 36th year was a keen horticulturalist with a fascination for roses. That morning she was walking through the National Trust gardens and smelling the scents of different pink roses. See how in the first example "she" is referring to someone that hasn't been introduced yet, i.e. "she" could be absolutely anything. This is grammatical deletion. The word "she" is a grammatical placeholder for something that should have already been specified earlier. However in the first example "pink flowers" is a semantic deletion. While it is grammatically specific, it is semantically unspecific; what sort of flowers are they, how big are they, what shape, what species? In the second example, we know that "Emily" is mostly likely a female human, who is 36 years old etc. There is no grammatical deletion here. There is also a lot less semantic deletion here. Although even here there is room to be a lot more semantically specific. Equivalence is a grammatical trick used to connect two things which are normally not associated with each other. It's often used in metaphorical language or in explanatory language. Here's some examples of this: I feel sad because nobody talks to me. The universe is made of love. Light are waves which travel through the vacuum of space In the first example the word "because" serves to connect two disparate ideas: "feeling sad" and "nobody talking to me". Note that by themselves they are quite distinct concepts. But the grammatical trick serves to make one concept imply the other. In the second example the word "is" serves to make the two concepts equivalent to each other. One concept is "the universe" and the other "made of love". Note that semantically, it really makes no sense whatsoever, it's completely a grammatical trick. The last example is again another equivalence using "are". Light is being equated to waves. Note that the everyday notions of light and waves are completely different from each other. So what happens when we're faced with deletion or equivalence in language? We naturally try and mentally "fill in" the deleted information or we try and make the equivalence "work" by creating a new mental model that incorporates both ideas at once. Note how these two activities are similar, extra information has to be supplied by our imaginations - the extra information doesn't in fact exist in the communication itself! Specific language and non-specific language have their places. But when discussing abstract topics, it's much better to stay specific so that as much information is conveyed as possible: Q: What is consciousness? A: It's the dragonfly floating on the wind. Meh!

I don't know. But here are some intuitions I have about it: Your personal egoic imagination is not reality. So the moon of your imagination has nothing to do with the moon in your reality. For example try and draw the moon from your imagination, then compare it to the real thing. For your imagination to become reality, you would have to get completely lost and consumed by it - a bit like dreaming at night. Maybe a psychedelic would help you do that. Imagine you had a control, a slider which went all the way from complete order to complete random chaos. On one end complete order, would be utterly boring, nothing would ever change for eternity, it would be completely frozen and still. On the other end, nothing would be still, everything would change every second, it would be a confusing jumble of experience and you couldn't make any sense of it whatsoever. As you can see you can't live a life at either extreme, the only way to live it is to have the slider somewhere in the middle. There's enough order to make it sensible, but enough randomness to make new things happen. In other words the "laws" are the orderly part of existence. If everything in your imagination came true, you wouldn't be able to lead a normal life. How would you control what imagination became reality and what didn't? Would it be possible to maintain your sanity? If everything in your imagination became reality, would you still call it imagination?

We're singing from the same hymn sheet. Are the laws and patterns real? Yes. Are they fixed? No. They are real only insofar as they are being imagined in the moment. And as we're both saying, imagination is the ground of everything. Subjective and objective are the same thing. If we're talking scientific laws which is what I think @An young being is referring to, then they cannot be fixed. Science is subject to revision at any point. For example to say that gravity is a fixed law is foolish. Are we talking Newtonian gravity or relativistic gravity or whatever new type of gravity that comes along in future? Science is a relative collective enterprise, there are no fixed absolute certainties: that would be religion. The laws (patterns) come from science not God. And if not scientific, then I'm not sure what sort of laws are being talked about here.

Yeah, that's the question I was begging. Everything is imagination - there is no world "out there". But if I'd said that first, everyone would have rolled their eyes.

Why have friends? This is something I think about sometimes. I think there is a deep rooted need to be in the presence of other people - it's simply a built in imperative for being a human being. The bottom line so I've read is survival. Humans can greatly improve their chances of survival if they co-operate. Our reliance on other pople can't be overstated. We would die very quickly if we couldn't get other people to provide food and shelter for us. Nearly nobody in modern society has the skills to survive without other people. And even if you had the skills, life would be very tough without other people to back you up. The more effectively we can co-operate the better our chances of survival. We are evolved to maximise our co-operative strategies. Co-operating is a kind of reciprocal agreement, where one day you help your fellow human and the next day they return the favour. It's a win-win strategy. So we're very good at playing the reciprocation game. We even do it with domesticated animals. Even dogs can be our friends. But I feel like there is a different dimension to friendships. We come together so we can be "more whole". What I mean by this is that each of us is a different mixture of traits and abilities - it's what makes us, us. The flipside is that we also lack in many areas. For example, we may be good at planning, but bad at coping with emotions. We all lack in some ways. We make friends so that we can level out our imbalances, by complementing each other with our good traits and abilities and sharing them. The whole becomes greater than the sum of the parts. We multiply our potential by having friends. No person can truly be an island.

My point was deep. Do we actually experience the world as it is? Or are we always experiencing just our interpretation of the world? Are the specific patterns really in the world? Or are the patterns just a product of our interpretation of the world? For a concrete example, take the Mona Lisa. Is it a picture of a woman? Or is it a just a bunch of brush strokes? Is the pattern of the Mona Lisa really there? Or is she just in our imagination?

What's gravity? Is it nature or is it something we made up to explain nature?

I find I have to hit snooze a few times before waking up. It doesn't matter how insistent or charistmatic my alarm is. Wake up! Wake up! Wake up! ZzZzZzzz....

When doing shadow work (a.k.a. things that bug you), it's informative to pay attention to people that irritate or upset you. More specifically examine exactly what it is that bugs you about the way they are. Some of the things can be very subtle so take a bit of work to ferret out. The reason for doing this is that the irritation itself is the shadow - it's a form of suffering. The irritation is just a pointer of course, it's giving you a message. What's the message? The message is that you are lacking awareness in a certain area and this can be improved Ok. This is going to seem like a rant, but it's not. These are some of the concrete things that irritate me, followed by some potential solutions: People trying to grab my attention when I'm obviously concentrating on other things People's constant need for talking, meeting up, texting, etc. especially if it's about nothing in particular Anyone who says or insists that I "must" do something, or do things on my behalf without asking Flakiness in general, saying and agreeing to one thing and then doing something different, not manning up or taking responsibility for their actions Craziness: general incoherence, emotional overreaction to everything, constant passive aggressiveness, explaining everything in terms of signs or theories beyond their comprehension, racists, sexists and so on. Entitled people. This is subtle one. People who expect others to automatically pay deference to them (lots of beautiful people suffer from this or people in official capacities), do things for them on a whim, expect others to tolerate their rudeness, inadequacies, manipulations or to bolster their self image for them. Possibly includes some psychopaths. Psychopaths and sociopaths. People who generally go around leaving devastation in their wake without a thought to the people they've hurt, inconvenienced, stressed out, put out of pocket. Includes people largely lacking empathy: narcissists, neurotics, borderline personality disorder and so on. Solutions and notes. Kind of more note to self than solutions for anyone else: 1. I should be stronger in setting boundaries. This means having periods of time where I'm uninterruptible and making that clear. Enforcing the boundary when someone oversteps it. This is just a lack of social skill on my part. Conversely having time where it's ok to be interrupted and not getting wound up by it: having better emotional control on my part. 2. Balance. This is about reaching an equilibrium. I know personally I need large swathes of "alone" time. But I realise for more extrovert and gregarious people this might be intolerable. I need to get comfortable with compromising and setting aside time for this. Partially feeds into number 1. And know that largely if I'm in the right frame of mind, I'm happy to be around people and enjoy it. 3. This is definitely about people impinging on my strong values. I have a high value on having freedom of choice. The answer is to be firm and explain that a) I'm more than capable of deciding for myself, b) I will do things when I'm ready. In other words social skills. 4. I know I have a high value on being reliable. How do I tolerate unreliability? Compassion is the answer. Not everyone has the necessary experience, character or awareness to be reliable. I should lead by example and not expect other people to be like me. I should step up and take responsibility if a situation warrants reliability. 5. Having had lots "crazy" people in my life (family included unfortunately), I find this very hard to solve. It's a combination of compassion, patience, leading, explaining and simply just keeping away from it. The problem I find is that giving crazy people oxygen just makes them crazier. I've largely learned to disown crazy people, but sometimes there's no avoiding them. I need to have the social skills to face them head on and point out their craziness to them. But also to realise that I might also be crazy in many ways. I should clear up my own craziness first. 6. Again this goes against my strong value on equality. Absolutely no-one is above or below me in a hierarchy, class, race and so on. Of course it takes guts to admit some people are cleverer, more skilled, wiser, better looking or whatever than me. This is also about it triggering feelings in me that some people are "out of reach" or that my own circumstances are being circumscribed by the narcissistic standards of others. The only thing left for me to do is a) Not pamper to people's sense of entitlement (and take the consequences), b) Lead by example and be as egalitarian as possible in my interactions, or c) Just keep away from people like this. 7. I thank that most people I know aren't like this. But I know many who lack in empathy in certain areas and that still grates. I perhaps also lack empathy at times. I think this comes from being transparent, not wanting to dress things up and being quite direct and largely pragmatic. I don't tolerate too much emotion well. I still have plenty of room for being more empathetic and compassionate, I need to improve this muscle. But it's also about exercising my own boundaries and not letting people take the piss. In short: better social skills, enforcing and maintaining better boundaries, raising my awareness and being more empathetic. Easy! Not.

Of all the physical activities I do, I enjoy walking the most. Running is about endurance and always reaching for that fast time or improving stamina. Badminton about fast reflexes and mastering different skills. Walking is different. For me walking is about seeing and exploration and novelty. And there is so much of the world to see, even in your own backyard. In the UK we are blessed with having rights of way through the countryside, through fields and woods and farm buildings and ancient highways. In towns pedestrians are well catered for and you can walk anywhere. I like to take long hikes, to keep me fit, but mostly because it affords me the pleasure of seeing how places are connected to each other and for discovering new places and scenery and for a sense of accomplishment. Walking also allows me to meditate. It's very effective for bringing my senses into the present moment, the novelty in my surroundings makes me pay attention, and by body goes into automatic - putting one foot in front of another. I much prefer this to a formal sitting meditation. With that there's a strong feeling of resistance, I'm forcing myself to pay attention and forcing myself to be still. With sitting meditation I can only do 20 minutes, with walking meditation I can do five hours. The body is evolved for movement, not for being still. If you watch animals they are rarely still, except perhaps when they're sleeping. And in the same way that quietude and meditation is healthy for the mind, so likewise movement and exertion is healthy for the body. Walking is the perfect blend of the two. I enjoy walking through the countryside or town in equal measure, they both have their own beauty. This weekend a lengthy hike (15 miles probably) through London with a photographer friend is in order. I believe Charles Dickens got most of his inspiration from doing exactly this: taking long walks through London.

@lmfao mistakes are a fact of life, you will make more of them in future. If you've hurt people then apologise sincerely and authentically. Be aware that it may take some people a long time to process the pain, be patient with them. But when it's time, move on without regret. If it's a material mistake or it involves money, then offer to pay or work to make up for the mistake. You need to make a sacrifice in order to be absolved.

No need to overcome it. Vagueness is a great skill to have. What you're looking for is flexibility. Sometimes it's good to be specific and exact, sometimes not. The thing with thoughts (non verbal thoughts) and emotions is that there no real way to exactly represent them in words. Words are always vague approximations. Even if the words are specific, someone's interpretation of them will be completely different to yours. In a phrase: everything is relative. The thing with counsellors is all they want to do is talk. Can you see the problem? But if you do want to go specific, then you should do things the other way round. Use your emotions as a reality check instead. For example the specific goal of "I want to learn to drive", does it fill you with excitment or boredom? If boredom, then forget driving. Use your emotions like a compass to guide you through the land of specificity that everyone else keeps imposing on you.

If you're fully aligned with who you are and what you stand for, then using your name and photograph, shouldn't be an issue. But. The internet can be used against you in future. And if that makes you worry about posting certain things here, then I would say that's just getting in the way of proper investigation and expression. There's nothing to lose by being anonymous, this isn't a social club. If you want to be truly anonymous then make sure that you don't give personal information away ever (name, email, phone number). Especially make sure that your avatar image is not searchable on Google or Tin Eye. But man @K VIL just set up a new account and make a clean break - be anonymous again.

Dreaming is peculiar. I very often wake up from dreams feeling a sense of loss. It's like I've been party to some other alternate reality that I can never re-experience; each dream is a one off. There are of course recurring characters but the situations are always different. The main peculiarity of dreams is that you are doing it with eyes closed. You are seeing without eyes. If nothing else, it emphasises the fact that most of the seeing experience has nothing to do with light impinging on the retina, it is independent of that. That in itself is radical. Another peculiarity is how real they seem. There's a kind of full embodiment within dreams, just like in the waking state, and there's not usually a sense of unreality, even if you find yourself flying or in bizarre scenarios. Also, there's normally no sense at all that you are actually dreaming. It's only when waking up you realise how strange and disjointed dreams are. For me thinking back on dreams they seem to be made up like scenes in a film. Each scene can be wildly different, but somehow the whole fits into a cohesive story line. That story line aspect is telling. There is a strong narrative sense to both dreams and waking, where disparate experiences are fitted together so that they mesh into something that can be understood and re-told. Without that everyday life would be chaotic and choppy. The only thing that makes real sense to me is that we're dreaming all the time. We're "seeing" and "story telling" in every moment we're conscious (awake or not). When we're awake the dream is directly modulated by the experiences of our senses, but when we're not awake the senses are disengaged but the dreaming continues. The difference is one of degree or intensity of experience. If that is the case then interpreting dreams is no different from trying to interpret being awake - both are story telling ventures. Both worlds are equally valid. As examples, two recent dreams of mine: Dream 1 I'm in a room, that seems to be a kind of student area, I'm on the staircase leading down into it. People are being vetted and chaperoned where they then mysteriously disappear through or behind a long upright locker in the room. I soon realise that each person is being given some sort of baby pet, kittens mostly. Then I realise I'm with an ex of mine, she goes first. But she somehow fails to follow instructions and can't exit the room through the wall/locker, and instead just sits on the floor in a sulk. I'm given my pet. It's a very small palm sized barn owl! I'm surprised in my dream (I can feel it's claws digging into my hand), and I think "what am I supposed to do with it?". I wake up. Dream 2 We're in a darkened room getting ready to watch a film in a kind of makeshift outdoor/home cinema. The prime seats are chairs arranged so that you are head on to the screen, everyone else is sitting on the ground or standing. I make my way to one of the seats, but find it already has a small towel on it, I sit guiltily anyway. Soon the owner of the seat returns and indicates she wants her seat back. I tease her and say no, and she walks off angrily. I say "I better go and find her". Incidentally this girl/woman is a very old school friend of mine, who I always used to think was well dressed and glamorous, and she was also a rule breaker who smoked. I follow her (cut scene) and find her outside a night club. She seems to not be angry anymore, but instead offers to buy me entry and it seems as though she is affiliated with the club in some way. Then she introduces me to her sister who unlike her has long straight dark brown hair. I'm instantly attracted and approach and hold her on the small of her back very gently and stand very close. The attraction is mutual (she doesn't pull away!), but she is busily scribbling away inside a card and she doesn't give any overt signal. I'm unsure but I go for a gentle kiss on her shoulder. She immediately gets frustrated by this places the card on my forehead and furiously scratches out everything she's written. And yet, she still doesn't disengage. I wake up. My only thought on waking up is how incredibly sweet it was for Louisa to introduce me to her sister, who was clearly unhappy. Ah well, goodbye hot dream psycho sister.

As an ex-smoker, it's good to realise that the craving comes and goes. If you're trying to quit, just know the craving won't last and you can just wait until it passes. I believe nicotene is one of the most addictive substances.

The collective good is as worthy as the individual good:

An antidote to love songs and stalkers and abusers. An anti-love song: I been touched I been kissed Don't see why I won't be missed Don't wanna be desired Don't wanna try Don't want you to be inspired By me I been smothered I been crushed Don't see why I won't be missed Don't wanna be desired Don't wanna cry Don't want you to be inspired By me I been air-brushed I been hushed Don't see why I won't be missed Don't wanna be desired Don't wanna try Don't want you to be inspired By me By me By me...