01-03 - Happy New Year

Here's my summary of the logs from January 1,2,3 2009.  Your mileage my vary. - CH

Hello and Happy New Year!!In our 10 of 12 logs posted from Jan 1-3 we celebrated gatherings of friends and good beer while considering winter as a time of rest and reflection.  We also considered new year resolutions, new beginnings and arbitrary time marks in which every moment is the beginning of something.

        

Lots of new and old people weave in and out of our sessions.  New people bring on introductions, PaB wiki info, recording notifications and explanations of what PaB is about.  Let’s all stop, drop and see … see appearances without judgment, as they appear, subtracting rather than adding.

     

In the three day period there were multiple references to the phenomenology subject/object reversal experiment in which a kind of realization occurs regarding the distinction between experiencer and the experienced.  What ‘appears’ comes to the foreground and the active experiencer drops away to the background.  It was noted that it’s fun to realize everything is looking at you and some experimenters are inspired by appreciating object viewpoints and that objects find us inspiring too.  The experiment allows us to drop both believing and disbelieving and look at the phenomena while suspending judgment.

        

We compared meditation and contemplation and how that might map to different frameworks like Christianity, Buddhism, Sufi’s and Franciscans.

        

Sometimes we were quiet with each other.

        

Some of us are moving to new homes and have to decide what to keep and what to let go.  Some of us have moved recently and have already kept and let go.  Some of us are constantly on the move.  Some of us stay put.  Like our thoughts and actions, we decide what to keep and what to let go.

        

We wondered whether situations make people happy or do people choose to be happy.  Is contentment inside or outside of us?  Are people happy when their needs are met?  Do needs occasionally show up as conflicts and obstacles?  Perhaps we are personally responsible for our own situations and happiness.  Perhaps we are in a circle of distraction, awareness and attention.

        

We considered if our consciousness is only in our brains or if it resides in other places or if it resides anywhere at all?  By extension, our virtual SL experiences could grow to being plugged-in thought waves transferable or readable by anyone.

     

Many of us agree that how we see ourselves is different than how we are seen by others.  And that we are perceived differently by different people.  People you know may not really know you.  SL avatars can present different versions of you that project a particular version of yourself.  Do some people want to define you to control you?  If we medicate ourselves to cope, which is the real “you”, medicated or non-medicated?  Some read people through appearance. What is the best way to read a person?  Some think that what takes place over time is a measure.

        

We discussed that knowledge and information ownership can be open and shared or controlled.  The viewpoint on ownership varies greatly by age, user, academic discipline and many other factors.  How will the information compartment traditions meld with the social, open source, all data for everyone model?

         

We considered that consciousness is in everything; open, soft, graceful, pulsing with energy breathed in and out.