Of course it’s important to be practical, to be in touch with reality, to draw on the wisdom of others and stand on the shoulders of giants. But at a certain point, in order to truly live, you have got to make your own way, commit your own errors, be your own person, sink or swim.
From a biography of physicist Richard Feynman:
Feynman had got to know [biologist James] Watson during the sabbatical year that Dick had spent as a ‘graduate student’ in biology. He had an opportunity to renew the acquaintance when he visited Chicago early in 1967, and when they met Watson gave Feynman a copy of the typescript of what was to become his famous book The Double Helix, about his discovery, together with Francis Crick, of the structure of DNA. Feynman read the book straight through, the same day. He had been accompanied on that trip by David Goodstein, then a young physicist just completing his PhD at Caltech, and late that night Feynman collared Goodstein and told him that he had to read Watson’s book — immediately. Goodstein did as he was told, reading through the night while Feynman paced up and down, or sat doodling on a pad of paper. Some time towards dawn, Goodstein looked up and commented to Feynman that the surprising thing was that Watson had been involved in making such a fundamental advance in science, and yet he had been completely out of touch with what everybody else in his field was doing.
Feynman held up the pad he had been doodling on. In the middle, surrounded by all kinds of scribble, was one word, in capitals: DISREGARD. That, he told Goodstein, was the whole point. That was what he had forgotten, and why he had been making so little progress. The way for researchers like himself and Watson to make a breakthrough was to be ignorant of what everybody else was doing and plough their own furrow.
Posted at 1:24 pm —
A weird and fascinating tale from a specialist in magic, psychic healing, and exorcism.
Case History 2 – The 100 Year Old Energy Vampire
By Nita Hickok © 2008
The next case history is about a psychic vampire case that I had in the southern United States. I was contacted by a woman who lived in one of the Southern states. She described her problems and the person she believed was causing them. Betty then stated the name of the person and that he did a special sort of prayer.
It reminded me of a really nice woman and her daughter that I had met in California. They had been nice to an older man who helped them with fixing their house that had been falling to pieces. The man had a special prayer method and the same name of the person who Betty said was causing her problems.
The daughter developed brain tumors and brain cancer. They had to sell the house to pay for all of the medical bills. I met them when they were living in the same apartment building I lived in at the time. The Mother was always nice to me.
Read the full post
Posted at 11:53 pm —
A television crew for Outdoor Wisconsin, a show for a local public station, interviewed a bunch of us during my yearlong at Teaching Drum, in summer of 2001. If you want to see me in my woodsy glory, watch this.
Posted at 3:55 pm —
I’ve been pondering the question of violence for a long time, from a number of perspectives. Martial arts. Real-world crime. Nonviolent communication. Self-criticism. Environmental degradation. Emotional abuse. Unseen trauma. It has all seemed too broad-ranging as to seem impossible to weave together into a coherent tapestry. But I think I’m finally at the point where I can begin to make an attempt.
We start with a definition.
Definition: Violence is a disruption of integrity of something, by something else. Integrity denotes continuity, consistency, and stability of structure.
Read the full post
Posted at 11:29 pm —
Thinking a lot about this broad thing called violence. Thinking about it because I’m finally beginning to recognize that I’m constantly in battle with something. Thought-forms is the closest I can come to naming it right now: energy and vibrations and thoughts and feelings and physical behaviors that inhibit my harmonious and full existence and self-expression. Violence is a term I could put to anything that challenges and threatens to damage one of these things that I listed above.
Rory Miller writes, in Meditations on Violence,
Very, very different things get lumped under the general heading of “violence.” Two boxers in a contest of strategy, strength, skill, and will. A drunken husband beating his wife. Two highschoolers punching it out in the parking lot. A mental health professional trying to hold down a schizophrenic so that a sedative can be administered. An officer walking into a robbery in progress finds himself in a shoot-out. Soldiers entering a building in hostile territory. A rapist pushing in the partially open door of an apartment. An entry team preparing to serve a search warrant on a drug house with armed suspects. A Victorian-era duel with small swords.
Because they involve people in conflict and people get hurt, we lump them together as violence, but they aren’t the same and the skills and mindset from one situation don’t carry over automatically to the other.
Read the full post
Posted at 11:41 pm —
As I’ve said time and again, my attraction to the martial arts is almost always offset by the ambivalence I have for violence — a violence that may be necessary but is also cruel, brutal, and perhaps evil. For all of the people who play at martial arts without ever facing the actual act of harming another human being, there are precious few that I’ve found who actually ask the hard questions. Rory Miller’s book Meditations in Violence is one, and I highly recommend it.
Now I’ve found another: Dueling With O-Sensei: Grappling With the Myth of the Warrior-Sage, by Ellis Amdur. Here’s an excerpt; I recommend reading the whole excerpted chapter.
Some of us, readers and this writer alike, have taken pride in practicing koryu (a “warfare” art). As I write in [a previous chapter], “When I practice my koryu, I make every effort to reach the spirit of the founders, who were born and died in a bloody era of survival. Such practice has both kept me safe, and enabled me to help and protect other people. But as I practice, I often stop and think, ‘What are you doing? There are millions of people, right this minute, slaughtering others using methods not too different from what you are practicing now.’”
Read the full post
Posted at 11:39 pm —
Okay. I haven’t read it and don’t plan to, because it sounds like an oversimplified version of basic principles that are covered in detail many other places. But this review on Amazon was too funny not to post!
Please allow me to share with you how “The Secret” changed my life and in a very real and substantive way allowed me to overcome a severe crisis in my personal life. It is well known that the premise of “The Secret” is the science of attracting the things in life that you desire and need and in removing from your life those things that you don’t want. Before finding this book, I knew nothing of these principles, the process of positive visualization, and had actually engaged in reckless behaviors to the point of endangering my own life and wellbeing.
At age 36, I found myself in a medium security prison serving 3-5 years for destruction of government property and public intoxication. This was stiff punishment for drunkenly defecating in a mailbox but as the judge pointed out, this was my third conviction for the exact same crime. I obviously had an alcohol problem and a deep and intense disrespect for the postal system, but even more importantly I was ignoring the very fabric of our metaphysical reality and inviting destructive influences into my life.
Read the full post
Posted at 12:30 pm —
I wrote last year about going to see a “psychic” at the spiritualist community of Cassadaga, Florida, and my negative feelings associated with it. Nonetheless, a few months after that I had a psychic reading with Erin Pavlina, a psychic who is starting to become well-known (as is her husband, Steve Pavlina).
I probably was not the typical type of client. I didn’t actually need advice about a whole lot except where to move in the future (at the time we were strongly leaning toward Arizona), and I didn’t have a particular interest in contacting any dead relatives. But that one topic, of relocation, was heavy on our minds and it was enough to go seeking in some strange directions.
So. The bad news was that she was pretty expensive. When I booked her early last year, she had just doubled her price, I think; since then she’s added another $100. Not a bad income, a few hundred dollars per half hour.
Was it worth it?
Read the full post
Posted at 11:59 pm —
The goal is to survive and even thrive in situations that are essentially hostile to my energy and essence.
And here I begin to understand, more deeply, why martial arts keeps calling me, even though I do not now nor have ever lived in an atmosphere in which I experienced or even witnessed much physical violence. Because such arts are among the few ways available that are supposed to teach you how to survive raw, dangerous encounters.
I’m finding Peter Ralston’s Cheng Hsin: The Principles of Effortless Power, a book on martial arts philosophy, to have good application my struggle to extend my effectiveness “horizontally,” that is, to be effective in this reality, in a real-world way, rather than merely spiritually developed and practically weak.
Here’s an excerpt that discusses posture, in a way that I’d like to read as not merely about physical posture, but mental-emotional alignment as well.
Read the full post
Posted at 11:53 pm —
