2014.10.23 13:00 - Forgetting

The Guardian for this meeting was Eliza Madrigal. The comments are by Eliza Madrigal, who after this session remembered reading a wonderful book titled The Book of Learning and Forgetting. It suggested that we learn more efficiently by collaborating and coordinating in social communities, than by forceful effort. It was based in the mindset of other education books like Punished by Rewards and unschooling philosophies.

--BELL--
 

Eliza Madrigal: Hi Bruce :)
Bruce Mowbray: Heya, Eliza!
Eliza Madrigal: was beginning to think I'd be by my lonesome today
Bruce Mowbray: My typist just NOW returned from his daily walk, otherwise he'd not have been able to be here either.
Eliza Madrigal: Ah. All well?
Bruce Mowbray: Hmmm, well, I guess so.
Eliza Madrigal: "ultimately no problem" <--from Pema's interview :)
Bruce Mowbray: DARNit! I keep forgetting to read that.
Eliza Madrigal: ooooh, you must
Bruce Mowbray: I have the link saved and everything, just too many other things keep getting in the way.
Eliza Madrigal: it isn't long, but felt fresh and inspiring
Eliza Madrigal nods... understood
Bruce Mowbray: kk, will pull it up for reading... when this session is over.
Bruce Mowbray: https://wiki.playasbeing.org/Chronicles/The_Chapter_31:_Pema_Pera_Interview

Eliza Madrigal: I know, but always forget, as we do with friends I guess, how crisp Pema is... always celebrating :)
Bruce Mowbray: "crisp" as in a man of few words,
Bruce Mowbray: or 'crisp' as in knows exactly the right words...?
Eliza Madrigal: crisp as in, fresh
Bruce Mowbray: Ahhh!
Bruce Mowbray: Brisk and crisp... like a fall morning in Ohio!
Eliza Madrigal: like, I felt...or my mind felt, livened after reading the interview
Bruce Mowbray: I will definitely read it.
Eliza Madrigal: and not because he gave any premonitions about the group or anything... which I think I expected a bit
Eliza Madrigal: anyway.... what is on your heart / thoughts today?
Bruce Mowbray: I feel that Pema has truly "released" the group to be itself.
Bruce Mowbray: (PaB, I mean.)
Eliza Madrigal: ah, well yes, but like a child it still resembles him
Bruce Mowbray: nods.
Eliza Madrigal: :)

Bruce Mowbray: As I grow older, I appreciate more and more how important it is to have "fresh" things in one's life . . . and, for me, especially fresh ideas.
Bruce Mowbray: [drop approaches]
Eliza Madrigal: :)

--BELL--

Eliza Madrigal: sometimes when there is a pause, I lose my place entirely.. train of thought just stops
Bruce Mowbray: nods.
Bruce Mowbray: [I think that's the idea.]
Eliza Madrigal: the spot from which fresh ideas come most often
Eliza Madrigal: lol yes
Eliza Madrigal: interrupting the boats on the mindstream
Eliza Madrigal: conducting inspections

Bruce Mowbray: During my walk today, I listened it to a Radio Lab program about "limits."
Eliza Madrigal: oh?
Bruce Mowbray: one of the segments of that program was on memory, and the limits of memory.
Bruce Mowbray: It featured individuals at a world-class memory competition,
Bruce Mowbray: during which the contestants had to memorize literally thousands of numbers in succession... and in order.
Bruce Mowbray: and one of the points that the program made was -- how essential to memory it is that we are also capable of forgetting.
Bruce Mowbray: otherwise, -- well, one of the examples they used was walking the sidewalks of New York city.
Bruce Mowbray: if you remembered every individual you encountered....
Eliza Madrigal nods..
Bruce Mowbray: then you probably wouldn't recognize your own wife when you got home, or your own children.
Bruce Mowbray: it's necessary to forget, in order to remember... in order to remember even the simplest things, like who your children are.
Bruce Mowbray: I'm wondering if this might have something to do with Alzheimer's....
Bruce Mowbray: Heya, Kori!
Eliza Madrigal: Hi Kori :)
Korel Laloix: Osiyo
Eliza Madrigal: buddhism offers a good metaphor for this perhaps, if you think about how impossible it might be to experience a new life, if you remembered thousands of others simultaneously
Bruce Mowbray: Nods, I had not thought of the concept in that context. Thanks.
Eliza Madrigal: although I think that for many of us there is at least partially the feeling of doing that... of switching between lives
Bruce Mowbray: I have had those same feelings throughout life, Eliza..
Eliza Madrigal: there are articles by the dozens lately about the experiments with targeting memory and whether if one could be selective, would it be beneficial
Bruce Mowbray: In fact, I had to psychic readers -- separated by two decades -- who didn't even know each other, or about each other -- confirmed the same two " past lives" for me.
Eliza Madrigal: how interesting
Bruce Mowbray: One was involving the woman that I married - - - and was from the Middle Ages in Europe.
Bruce Mowbray: the other was from Nazi Germany.
Bruce Mowbray: interesting, indeed, but nothing to get hung up about.
Eliza Madrigal: true
Eliza Madrigal: that's why I say metaphor

Bruce Mowbray: Have you had any experiences with past lives, Kori?
Korel Laloix: I try to forget the first half of this life, not sure I would want to remember one before that.
Eliza Madrigal: people with dream practices also tend to have that sense of blending or switching too
Bruce Mowbray: ha ha!
Eliza Madrigal smiles at Kori
Korel Laloix: I just never remeber my dreams.
Bruce Mowbray: yes, Eliza, that was one of the things we talked about in Maxine's dream session.
Bruce Mowbray: how dreams seem to be almost fractal-like sometimes.
Eliza Madrigal: memory is such a mystery still, yes
Korel Laloix: The funny part, I did not mean for that comment to be entertaining. Strange how we take things sometimes.
Bruce Mowbray: no I wasn't laughing at you, Kori.
Korel Laloix: I know.
Bruce Mowbray: I understand.
Eliza Madrigal: ah...can see what you meant to express... hope I didn't offend
Korel Laloix: Not at all.
Bruce Mowbray: One of the biggest challenges in my dream work is when my dreams persist in bringing up the first half of my life....
Korel Laloix: Just caught me off guard.. but I can see they way you took it.
Bruce Mowbray: but I have discovered something recently . . . something that I wish I'd known about decades ago.
Eliza Madrigal: I made some rather severe breaks with myself, and parts of my life in early years.... but it was amazing to reach some point and want to turn back and integrate / unpack
Eliza Madrigal listens
Bruce Mowbray: me too, Eliza.
Eliza Madrigal: break ups are natural :)

Bruce Mowbray: Well, what I discovered was that self-esteem issues have a lot to do with how positive my dream life is.
Eliza Madrigal: hm?
Bruce Mowbray: so, I have been doing a sort of 99 bottles of beer on the wall exercise. . . (like Wol's 99 days exercise.)
Bruce Mowbray: I have been training myself to do a knee-jerk reaction every time I think a negative thought about myself.
Bruce Mowbray: I immediately turn it into a positive thought, with a positive mantra: " I am a good person." A very simple mantra.
Bruce Mowbray: so it takes just a second to do it.

--BELL--

Bruce Mowbray: and I don't get hung up about it.
Bruce Mowbray: wb, Kori.
Korel Laloix: That was very odd.
Korel Laloix: What is wrong with negative thoughts about yourself as long as they are honest? You have to realize your faults to fix them.
Eliza Madrigal: some are like vampires though, draining energies
Korel Laloix: That is true.
Eliza Madrigal: and many aren't really based in reality, just habits
Bruce Mowbray: Well mine were obsessive -- not sure they were even honest, actually.
Eliza Madrigal: like if you grew up with someone who repeated certain things and then you continue to hear that all your life but sometimes think it is 'you' thinking that...but , just echoes

Korel Laloix: I grew up with deep verbal abuse... I still have not got it out of my soul in some ways.
Eliza Madrigal: for some it takes a lifetime just to hear the difference between that abuse and a normal amount of perspective or humility
Korel Laloix: And worse is when some of the names you were called, you grow into.... self fullfilling? or just coincidence?
Eliza Madrigal: right, definitely
Bruce Mowbray: nods and nods and nods.
Eliza Madrigal: messes with relationships too, because you not only hear things as if you are saying it to yourself, but as if the other is too
Eliza Madrigal: (projection)
Korel Laloix: Yes... or when someone you are supposedly attached to starts using those things as leverage to get their way with you.
Bruce Mowbray: so, Kori, I agree totally with everything you've said. . . but have you discovered any effective ways to avoid these echoes from the past?
Eliza Madrigal: humans can be really sharp and targeted out of their pain and protectiveness, nods
Korel Laloix: Being and overachieving, bossy, overly type A control freak.
Eliza Madrigal: hehehe
Bruce Mowbray: [btw, that thing in the background is my typist's clock... the one he uses to predict "drops"]
Eliza Madrigal: I know you're serious again, but I think that is a reasonable strategy Kori
Eliza Madrigal: ah,wondered. Okay Bruce
Korel Laloix: It works.. but the sad part is....
Bruce Mowbray: ;-)
Eliza Madrigal: it isn't foolproof? :)
Bruce Mowbray: [it is a Java program that my typist wrote.]

Korel Laloix: I just wish I was more internally motivated vs living down my past abuse.
Bruce Mowbray: the thing that I have found most effective it is a sort of separation that is done with compassion both for myself and for the person who abused me.
Bruce Mowbray: but the separation is extremely important.
Bruce Mowbray: I have compassion for whatever it was in that individual abuser that caused them to do that.
Bruce Mowbray: but also have compassion for myself and my need to be separate from that abuse.
Korel Laloix: I still have not figured out a way to forgive my mom... but I do try. But then again, proving her wrong is a very good motivator.
Eliza Madrigal: another buddhist concept (though not particularly buddhist but this way of describing may be), is merit... and sometimes we really do benefit from works and acts that give us the sense of generosity and abundance

Bruce Mowbray: I don't regard it as forgiveness.
Bruce Mowbray: I don't think I could ever forgive some of the things that she (my mother) did to me as a young boy.
Bruce Mowbray: The best I can do is have compassion for the predicament that she was in when she did those things.
Eliza Madrigal: that's pretty good, Bruce :)
Bruce Mowbray: It's the only thing that is worked for me.. in seven decades.

Korel Laloix: My only soft spot for my mom is thinking about what abuse she had to grow up with to treat us the way she did.
Eliza Madrigal: I think the three of us here all have "complicated" issues with Mom. Pretty deep, primary bond, or not.
Bruce Mowbray: But equally important is the affirmation that I give to myself: " I am a good person!"
Bruce Mowbray: absolutely, Kori.

Korel Laloix: The thing is.. I am still not sure I am a good person.
Korel Laloix: And I don't say that in a silly manner.
Bruce Mowbray: me neither, and that's why I am taking it on as a 90 day project: Whenever one of the old tapes comes up that is negative about me, I replace it with a positive affirmation.
Korel Laloix: I just look at myself in my own ways of thinking and see myself doing things I don't consider safe or good or even sane sometimes.
Eliza Madrigal: Hi Rosalyn, welcome, if you'd like to join us
Bruce Mowbray: so far it is having a very very clear effect on my dream life.

cannotremember Resident: 's current display-name is "Not sure".
Korel Laloix: Osiyo
Bruce Mowbray: Welcome!
Eliza Madrigal: we all have different keys... I feel the same about 'good person"...that it wouldn't unlock me the same way
R0salyn22 Resident: Thank you!
Bruce Mowbray: Welcome, Not Sure!
Eliza Madrigal: Hi Not sure :)
Korel Laloix: I never remember my dreams as I said, so no idea.
Eliza Madrigal: I want to let you both know that we record these sessions about the nature of reality and place them on a public wiki at playasbeing.org
Korel Laloix: I just know from talking to people that have slept with me that I am very animated and vocal in my sleep and I don't seem to have good times in dreams.
Bruce Mowbray: That's another thing that's happening in my dream life, Kori. . . I'm remembering them now!
Eliza Madrigal: is it OK to include your comments Not sure and Rosalyn?
Bruce Mowbray waits.
R0salyn22 Resident: That's fine with us
Eliza Madrigal: great, thank you!
Bruce Mowbray: (Drop approaches in about ten seconds.)
Korel Laloix: Ok.. brb

--BELL--

Eliza Madrigal: today we've been talking about memory and childhood voices that won't quite go away
cannotremember Resident: hello
Eliza Madrigal: :) and every 15 minutes we usually pause for 90 seconds... as a way of keeping contemplative
Bruce Mowbray: Kori and I were discussing childhood abuse . . . and how some of the verbal tapes from those experiences have stayed with us into adulthood. . . in my case LONG into adulthood. But also, how we are now taking steps to health, emotional health.
Eliza Madrigal: freshen our minds

Bruce Mowbray: just before you are arrived I had said that I am engaging on a 90 day project...
Bruce Mowbray: as soon as a negative thought about myself pops up, I replace it with a positive affirmation, " I am a good person!"
Bruce Mowbray: Although I've only been doing this for a couple of weeks, it has already started affecting my dreams . . . and the fact that I can remember them!
Eliza Madrigal: maybe you are softening yourself a bit Bruce, to be more open and accepting
Eliza Madrigal: would make sense that you'd then be able to be more available to what comes up in dreams
Bruce Mowbray: well, I sure hope so! But a very important part of this is making some distance between the abuser and myself -- and the best way I know to do that is through compassion for that abuser's predicament when the abuse was done.

Eliza Madrigal: I wonder if any of us could function if we could really know the magnitude of the hurt we've inflicted upon others knowingly or unknowingly
Bruce Mowbray: FOR SURE!
Eliza Madrigal: when I think about how much we know as abuse now that was so normal before....wow
Bruce Mowbray: indeed.
Eliza Madrigal: Rosalyn and Not sure, what brings you here today?
Bruce Mowbray: When I was child corporal punishment was the accepted norm -- both at home and at school.
Bruce Mowbray: sometimes it became extremely vicious and violent.
Eliza Madrigal: right Bruce, and it is still OK in many places
Bruce Mowbray: But today, that would be considered child abuse.
Bruce Mowbray: ( in many places.)

R0salyn22 Resident: We were just roaming around and found this place .. it seems very peaceful and serene

Bruce Mowbray: I clearly recall when my typist -- during his teaching career -- refused to witness swats given to junior high age children.
Eliza Madrigal smiles
Eliza Madrigal: our Builder Storm will be happy for the feedback :)
Bruce Mowbray: He was the only teacher in the entire school that considered swats to be violent... and totally unproductive.
Eliza Madrigal: feel free to wander and play....there are some beautiful spots made by guardians (session hosts and others)
Eliza Madrigal: we've been at this for 6+ years :)
Bruce Mowbray: the boy in question, the kid receiving the swats, had received 144 spots since he started grade school...
Bruce Mowbray: I turned to the principal and asked, " If 144 swats have not worked, what makes you think that the 145th one will?"
Bruce Mowbray: and I walked out of the office.
Eliza Madrigal: an outlier of a teacher Bruce... I remember the big paddle that hung on the wall of the principal's office in my very small private school

Korel Laloix: But you have to have some sense of consequences.
R0salyn22 Resident: Thank you for your help Eliza
Eliza Madrigal: Oh, please ask anything
Eliza Madrigal: the wiki I gave a link to will tell you about the group
Bruce Mowbray: When I taught in California, all of the schools I taught in had outlawed corporal punishment, so coming to Ohio and discovering that violence was still being perpetrated against children absolutely nauseated me.
Eliza Madrigal: we're not always this serious ^^

Korel Laloix: It took me spending a night in jail for me to get msyelf on something like a good track.
Bruce Mowbray listens for more from Kori.
Eliza Madrigal: "scared straight" Kori?
Korel Laloix: That and the judge essentially sentenced me to mandatory counseling.
Korel Laloix: Being as small as I am in an open detention cell block was not a comfortable expereience.
Bruce Mowbray: (I can imagine.)
Eliza Madrigal: helps a lot to know there are witnesses to one's life
Korel Laloix: I grew up with no real sense of consequences as I got punish for everything.
Eliza Madrigal: punished based on the fluxuating emotions of the other with more power...
Bruce Mowbray: Even violence requires some gaps. . . some periods of peace.
Korel Laloix: So I had issues. But some I see that have no sense of consequences as they have never been inconvenienced for anything.
Eliza Madrigal: I don't think anyone escapes facing really hard things both internally and externally
Eliza Madrigal: some escape it showing as much maybe
Bruce Mowbray: What an irony! The person who was trying to instill a sense of " boundaries" actually destroyed the sense of boundaries altogether.

Korel Laloix: The woman that got fired of our team down in Africa was shocked that she got fired for breaching contract.
Bruce Mowbray: nods, listens.
Korel Laloix: Like she had never been held to her word in her life.
Eliza Madrigal: is it okay to ask what happened?
Korel Laloix: If you turn of the recording.
Eliza Madrigal: okay so shall we close the session then?
Bruce Mowbray: ok with moi.
Korel Laloix: sure
Eliza Madrigal: thanks for being here:) bye bye recording