Key

Forgive the title 'Key', but I think it is appropriate. I like the concept of enlightenment, not in the all encompassing sense of suddenly being a totally new person, but rather as in a 'key' idea where now you understand what is behind the view at the surface, or in other words the rules that generate the surface effects. Therefore my definition of enlightenment is one of those 'aha' experiences that adds to your understanding.

I put out a previous post on how I was missing the 'theta' waves & my intention of working on these. Now what is interesting about this is that I have been working on generating the brain waves I want for some months, but because of the view I was using I was totally unaware of what I was missing, or how it might affect my sessions. So without feedback there was no indication of what I was missing. Having been reading 'The High Performance Mind' (book report coming) and now with an excellent graphical view that the Neurosky software gives of the brain waves, I realized my mistake and brought attention to the missing component. I plan on posting an accelerated view of a session in the not too different future, but for now I will give a verbal description. I spent more time not having the theta component than having it, but at times the theta component would pop in anywhere from roughly 25 to 90%. I think this is the best meditation I have had to date. The aha experience was in realizing that it was not enough to only hit the desired brainwave frequencys, but also that the experience is greatly affected by the expectation. In the past I hesitated to give too much significance to what was used as the center of the session (new ideas, compassion, relaxation) thinking that what was important was the brainwaves. But this just is not so, I noticed that if I did a compassion meditation that I typically felt quite a bit happier, and dare I say it(?), spiritual, which hardly defines how I think of myself, being an atheist and all.

So this time with the theta component coming on not incrementally but generally in large jumps that would then decay there was this feeling of slipping into another universe. I tell yah, if you want to do games for this I would do setups where the travels & discoveries in the game were part of your state, it could have been really fun, and much more life like in that things are not always in your control.

I think this is a perfect example of my earlier post on placebos & brain systems. If you get the brain expectations set in just the right directions it is as if it is on autopilot and taking you there without any effort on your part. What a great system! I think this will get easier as I become more expert at remembering a feeling, which can regenerate the desired brain state.

This brings up some ideas on types of intelligences which I will discuss in a future post