2018.04.30 - Day 47

Eliza, I would like to keep going – thank you very much for posting the link each morning as well. I find that having these little rants every morning helps to clarify my ideas, if nothing else :-)

Charles Tart has now moved from looking at the example of a hypnotist and a subject to the analogous way our culture induces a kind of consensus trance in each one of us, especially when we are children. Although we need a cultural matrix in order to function, this cultural consensus trance can have the effect of stultifying creativity and also has other negative effects. 'When you automatically think, behave, and feel "normally," when the internal workings of your mind automatically echo most of the values and beliefs of your culture, you have achieved cultural consensus trance.'

I remember wondering a lot about this in my early 20s when I noticed just how locked into a set of beliefs most people were. Nothing on my friends’ horizons except getting jobs, money, a partner and getting married, having kids and a house. It is more noticeable when you move to another culture than the one you were brought up in, as when I moved to Australia. People all around me just seemed to have so many automatic assumptions about life that I always seemed to want to question. I guess that's why I eventually got interested in philosophy :-) I think I am now getting interested in social psychology :-)

Zen, thank you for the meaningful bits as you read.
Have thought a lot about the cultural consensus trance. In late teens, in a stagnate culture and not moving somewhere else, could clearly see the trance all around. Great new books, magazines and TV showed there was a different pop culture growing. It picked up speed and sent many zinging out of the cycles. Most slowed and returned to orbital tregetories. Got jobs, partners, kids, etc. but many came back changed and did not follow the consensus. Some raised kids differently. One easy way to fight the trance is to attentively out sing the Muzak.

Here is the much edited entry. Gentle reader, you do not need to know the details.

Y'all would be surprised to hear that there is another Riddle that does not come out in public.
For 40 years and married for 35 years today, one person has been there all the time. Together, we have been through some really really shitty times. Together we have shared some really great joys. Together, we have shared the in between every day busy lives. edited 18:21, 30 Apr 2018

Happy 40/35th Anniversary Riddle & non-public Riddle. <3 That is really beautiful.

Thanks Zen. :) I really enjoy reading your musings first thing in the morning!

I've settled on the next phase of this exploration: Unlearning Isolation. This phrase jumped out from a book I hardly remember otherwise, called Light is the New Black, which I read when participating in some 'spiritually minded' entrepreneurial groups... 'networking'. Things had happened to turn focus away from Second Life: one health related, one heart related, a few important intuitions and realizations, and then just some generally misguided strategies about how to get my act together and move more confidently into life's next phases. Obviously I was still in SL, but I was trying to figure out how to branch out of it a lot more, too.

I met a few wonderful women leaders, did some 'stepping out of comfort zone' non-text-based activities, even re-bonded with my 10-yr younger sister as she went through some difficult things, and several 'old friends'. Took cooking classes - Indian, then one Italian class which was also a date that falls into old friends category. Attended a meditation class at a library for several weeks. Took a pottery class. Submerged in a dark salt water chamber. Went to a funeral mass for someone I hadn't seen for a decade, sat in the middle of estranged family. Studied what I could find about non-dual Christianity in an attempt to soften the chip on my shoulder. Kabbalah class. Spent a lot of time on Facebook, which was the medium the entrepreneurial groups use primarily. ETC!

In other words, I've actually been at this a while. :)

I'm not sure I've learned very much, but some things are, 1) Isolation is a way of being. That's particularly why I like the idea of 'unlearning' it. I can take all the cooking classes in the world, get out into the world and walk my steps, talk to the pharmacy people (iow anyone I happen upon in a day), have a full family life (and animals!) and STILL keep to myself. It is rather amazing.

And 2) Keeping up illusions of connection can be very painful. You can't 'go home again' with old friends... home isn't there anymore, never was. You 'can' meet a few anew, when you both have that desire and capacity. People can be face to face and not see each other; avatar to avatar can sometimes see clearly, starkly eye to eye.

Eden's session this morning was warm, striking deep chords that re-tuned all this for me. We talked about isolation, in part, and isolation in the middle of lots of activity and many others, even 'good work'. Connection is something different. So, it can't be about the bucket-list style plan I made, to do things like 'read at the pool instead of inside the apartment', although I'm indeed going to do those things.

What will it mean then, concretely as practice, to “unlearn isolation” and write about it here? I don't know.

Sorry so long. This is my New Day 1. edited 22:23, 30 Apr 2018

Zen - "cultural consensus trance" is a great phrase. Please alert us if you (or anyone else) see it happening in PaB.

Riddle - So happy for you! Congratulations. :)) And yes I am jealous of my friends who make it so long together.

Eliza - Welcome to Day 1. So glad you could join us! ;-)) Great first entry - not too long - and, oh my, what a journey. Will follow it avidly. I will only say that you can't run from isolation. But I don't think that's what you'll do anyway.

I am making much more steady progress with Homo Ludens. I'm not sure whether I'm getting better at reading it or that the material is sparking fewer inspirations. Huizinga has been discussing the relationship between play and religion.

However one little phrase jumped out early. "A play-community tends to become permanent even after the game is over." Of course in the context of that part of the book, he is talking about games and sports, anything from bridge to golf and beyond, and the clubs that are formed and that people belong to.

But consider Play as Being. It is a long time since Pema's original experiments that so many of us took part in. Perhaps long periods may now go by without many people doing much of those original 9 second meditations (though we may just have internalized them) or the more adventurous exercises like YSBS. And though small, yet in the context of Second Life, the community of Play as Being has persisted, against all odds, and shows no sign of evaporating just yet!