Repetition

This quote from Haruki Murakami in 2004 is one of my all time favourite quotes (emphasis mine):

When I’m in writing mode for a novel, I get up at 4:00 am and work for five to six hours. In the afternoon, I run for 10km or swim for 1500m (or do both), then I read a bit and listen to some music. I go to bed at 9:00 pm. I keep to this routine every day without variation.

The repetition itself becomes the important thing; it’s a form of mesmerism. I mesmerize myself to reach a deeper state of mind. But to hold to such repetition for so long — six months to a year — requires a good amount of mental and physical strength. In that sense, writing a long novel is like survival training. Physical strength is as necessary as artistic sensitivity.

Left to my own devices, I happily sink into routine—eating the same food, doing the same tasks—day after day, year after year. When I worked full-time in town and caught the same early train every morning, Eve could tell the time down to the minute based on where I was in my morning routine. It wasn’t just habit; it was rhythm.

When I was young and first read about what life was like inside a Monastery, it sounded like a dream. ‘When I’m older maybe I’ll be a monk’ is still a thought I haven’t ever fully taken off the table. There’s great appeal in the structure: rising, working, and living within a pattern that repeats beyond you, in service of something far bigger than yourself.

I’ve done a lot of meditation in my life—experienced a lot of mantra, practiced ceaseless prayer. Repetition carves focus, creating clarity and stillness.

For me, writing a daily journal isn’t about streaks or hitting milestones, nor are the 1,000 consecutive photos I’ve taken. It’s about doing the doing. I’ve told people learning to meditate or pray before that i think routine and repetition are scaffolds we build around ourselves to climb higher. Doing the same thing over and over keeps the chaos of the world at bay, and allows us to rise above it and reach beyond.

It’s not about ambition or some imagined outcome. It’s about the present moment: showing up, doing the work, and letting the repetition reshape me.

OTB

On this blog this week:

Yaelokre’s Meadowlark

I wrote about ‘worlds as a medium’, though the lens of Meadowlark a world created by the artist and musician Yaelokre.

worlds are not just collections of stories or multimedia projects but shared realities held together by narrative rules or systemic coherence. They invite participation, co-creation, and deep engagement from audiences who are eager to inhabit spaces that aren’t fully mapped out.

However, as these worlds capture the imagination, they present unprecedented challenges for creators. Artists find themselves juggling multiple roles—world-builder, community manager, moderator, and copyright enforcer, legal department etc etc. The enthusiasm of engaged audiences brings not only energy but also complexities that require careful navigation.

This is why world running should, and needs to become a discipline.

You Copied Me

No podcast, but I still wrote and posted something. If I had made an episode this week, it would have been this:

It’s surprising how quickly “You copied me” appears in a child’s vocabulary. It’s one of the first phrases we learn to defend ourselves—not our bodies, but our ideas. A drawing, a turn of phrase, a knock-knock joke recycled too soon. The accusation is swift and cutting. To be copied is to feel seen—but in the worst possible way.

It’s a primal reaction to a perceived infringement on ones identity, creativity, and autonomy. Whilst imitation is essential for learning, as we develop our sense of self, we begin to guard our ideas as extensions of our identity.“You copied me” reflects a deep fear: that one’s uniqueness is being diminished or stolen.

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Photo 365

The Ministry Of My Own Labour

• Two writing sprints on PROJECT FORK
• Got totally lost in the depths of python one evening this week working on PROJECT DIVE
• PROJECT ENTRY: Published some marketing copy, 2 hour design review meeting, had a long call with the funder and started research for what’s coming next
• Tearing my hair out on the edit of Issue 12 of my zine.

Terminal Access

Really recommend you click through and check out against the dark forest by Erin Kissane.

Global mega-platforms under capitalism are structurally incapable of handling the business of civilization: of governance, of providing genuinely public infrastructure, of making knife-edge decisions about the balance of liberties and securities. It’s not what they do or what they want to do, and in many cases it’s in opposition to their actual interests. But even if they wanted to, even if they pulled off the trick of freeing themselves from the gravitational pull of capital and extraction,

Reading

Still reading: Playing with Reality: How Games Have Shaped Our World, Wisdom – Letters of St. Joseph the Hesychast, Puppets, Gods, Brands: Theorizing the Age of Animation from Taiwan, The Solace, Nourishment, and the Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words by the poet David Whyte. A lot on deck.

Respite For The Tulpamancer – Colin Self

Colin has a new single out, signalling the sound of the new album next year. We haven’t spoken in a while, but I emailed them immediately after listening to it. I know ‘Operatic Art Pop’ isn’t for everyone but I think Its just incredible, the video is beautiful too. You won’t know what is being sung however, as the whole album is going to be in Latin and Polari.

Here’s the creative statement about the upcoming album:

In a statement about the new album, Self said: “People around me might not know what [the Latin and Polari vocals] mean, but all of these trans or queer ghosts that are listening to the music or watching the performance are having a really good time,” Self says. “These songs sound gorgeous, but they’re all about police, eating ass, and sex work, these profane things. I wanted to find a way to breathe life into this act of hiding the explicit in the quotidian-sounding atmosphere of pop music.”

Remember Kids:

The post Repetition appeared first on thejaymo.net.

I am quite busy at the moment. I have contract work to be getting on with. This Wednesday I fly to Lisbon for 3 nights to attend a summit on Autonomous Blockchain Worlds where I’m giving a talk. 8th of June is the first meeting of Season 1 of the writing group I’m running with Wassim Z. Alsindi. My new Centre Talk on Writing the Impossible Object later in the summer is peaking over the horizon and the initial idea for that sprung into my mind this morning and before i knew it I had 1000 words of notes. I have an idea for the first proper Youtube video I want to make. I have another bit of writing called ‘Rules of Engagement’ I want to write. I need to finish ‘Mother of All Chains’ essay on Bitcoin being a living machine, I need to finish my novella, I need, I need, I want, I want.

Need to do the doing, when it needs getting done.

You know this week (other than Zelda), I’ve been thinking about ‘where we are’ with meditation in culture. 11 years ago when I began my practice it was seen as a bit of a kooky thing to be doing. Something I was dedicating time to for no apparent benefit.

I’m not a big fan of mindfulness tho, well, not as it has been deployed and understood by culture. Especially when mindfulness is pitched as some sort of HR afternoon off work. “It’ll make you work harder and feel less stressed” they tell you. Bullshit, more time of and better pay will do that too.

For those people close enough to me to have been shared a copy of my ‘On Meditation’ PDF that I’ve been writing on and off since 2015 will know I say the following about mindfulness:

Mindfulness as its understood by wider culture is almost the only kind of meditation there is, which is a bit annoying. It’s like people are going around believing the Rose is the only kind of Flower.

The biggest upshot of mindfulness’ ambient spread though culture is its now socially acceptable to say you meditate in polite company. But what said polite company isn’t prepared for is a conversation in the context of 11 years and ~5000 hours of having done it. We actually sorely lack a language to speak about the purely subjective experience of what happens in the mind. I mean I have no visual images at all.

Meditation (and prayer) is actually a kind of science. We have these texts, some of which are 1000’s of years old which say: If you do X a lot, for an extend period of time, then Y will happen.

The Yoga Sutras, or Christian mystical writings are sort of road maps, documentation of personal journeys peoples souls have taken. You too may walk similar paths and find these things helpful. The yoga sutras are also instruction manual. Almost everything you need to know about the experience of deep contemplation is in that text.

Anyways.

What remains in culture I find – because mind-fullness is so easily understood and accessible – is a deep scepticism about what’s next. What happens if you do more. This is crazy tho. No one is skeptical of the reality of a musician’s playing ability. In my opinion the best way of finding out if people who have done a lot of meditation are talking complete shit or not is to do a bunch of it and find out for yourself.

I bring this up as someone recently mentioned my recent show on Machine Touch and asked if I’d gone crazy.

Permanently Moved

Tears of the Kingdom

I fully expect to see Succession get more words published about it on the front pages of online media outlets in the coming weeks than the new Zelda will.

Full Show Notes: https://thejaymo.net/2023/05/13/301-2317-dial-m-for-metaverse/

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Photo 365

The Ministry Of My Own Labour

• Calls
• Prep before I head off to Lisbon next week for a conference
• Finished slide deck for research for a client
• Finished editing a 1h20min interview for my new podcast/show
• Book planning

Weird that i’m really busy, and i’m getting MORE done each day so I can play Zelda before bed. So motivating LOL

Terminal Access

ARB and GVN has their fully on chain game ‘Eat Drain Arson‘ written about in Wired magazine this week.

JDO is back blogging over on Broken River. He’s been off social media for a few months now, feels like his return to blogging is an exploration of what his social should be in the new post Web2 environment.

AI and Virtual production tutorial queen Prompt Muse recently interviewed AI film and music video makers Sagans. Super good.

Dipping the Stacks

It’s a Mud, Mud, Mud, Mud World – Techgnosis | Techgnosis

As Sherry Turkle wrote, in MUDs, “the self is not only decentered but
multiplied without limit.”

The Imperfectionist: Rules to live by

there’s the strategy I sometimes employ for multi-step projects, which involves figuring out the milestone you’d like to hit each day, starting a few days from now… then diving into the first one today instead, so that rather than struggling to keep up with the schedule, you’re way out in front of it.

Essays the size of cathedrals – by Henrik Karlsson

When the budgets writers have at their disposal increase, and the cost to iterate on code and visualizations drop, there is an opportunity. The code-augmented essays we’ve seen so far have been one-off experiments. But it feels like you could now, realistically, set out to do ten pieces like this a year, maybe twenty.

You should consider yourself exceptional – by Gonzalo Nuñez

The default state of your world, from a subjective point of view, is motionless. Or even worse, everything moves in only one direction and that direction is backwards. Sit still and do nothing, thinking nothing in particular about yourself or even in some cases just taking what others may think of yourself as objectively true, and not only will literally nothi…

This is an interesting point. Tho I do think sitting still and meditating reveals the worlds momentum. You don’t go backwards

The Origins of Creativity | The New Yorker

“creativity,” as the name for a personal attribute or a mental faculty, is a recent phenomenon.

Reading

I finished Cal Newports’ Digital Minimalism.
Despite all the books and my endless attempts at dealing with attention – even writing that zine about it I still have my own problems. Newports advice was really helpful in rearranging some of the mental terrain. Things that I was trying hard at doing and exhausting myself, suddenly becoming easy. My phone usage / screen on time is down over 1.5hs a day.

The other day it was just 1h20mins for the whole day – most of that podcast listening. Happy

Music

thejaymo.net Spotify Playlist

Swing Low – Miharu Koshi & Haruomi Hosono

Still in Japanese pop music world over here at Jaymo industries. This week’s album reccomendation is Swing Low. A 1996 album from the mind of Haruomi Hosono with Miharu Kosji. Whilst it really DOES sound like the mid 90’s it also is a truely global album. Mixing American Blues, Rock and Roll, French Jazz, Surf Rock, and of course Japanese Pop. All the styles aren’t divorced from on another from track to track tho. The album is coherent throughout. Its so good.

Review of the new Sleep Token LP coming next week! I know it’s out, but I’m saving it for a plane journey. I’m just going to sit there and listen to it in full from start to finish.

Remember Kids:

The post Quite Busy appeared first on thejaymo.net.

After the meditation/mental rupture occurred last year, the one that brought about Lost in the Woods – things have got … interesting on the mat.

In the last few months I have become acutely aware of, and sensitive to, the types and qualities of attention/mental states that I can achieve and experience.

The Buddhists, Hindus, or the Saints, all have their own words and technical terms for the different types of attention you can experience/give/receive. I’m not going to name them as they’re not that important. What’s important are the actual experiencings. The difference between them, the contrast, the cycling of registers and modes. We all pay different types of attention to things throughout our daily lives but rarely are we aware of which kind, and how deeply we are paying attention in the moment. Are you aware of the register of attention you are paying to a TV show whilst browsing your phone at the same time? What about when chopping onions, mopping the floor, working hard on a spreadsheet or driving.

Things are happening to/inside of me that unless you have been though it all yourself (and we can compare notes) it’s not worth talking about or trying to articulate.

Anyways,

I say all this as I spent all day today at a 6 hour band practice. I have (IMO) this year suddenly become a *much* better musician. After 30 years, a music degree, concert grade flute performances, I’ve finally learnt to listen properly. I’ve learnt or discovered that it’s important to pay attention to what is going on in the room. LOL.

As I type this, I realise I spent hours today in a mental state I can only describe as being adjacent to mantra. I was playing my bass sure, but I was listening – really listening – to everyone else in the room. I was feeling the music rather than just using my ears to hear it.

Just as with meditation, I would be playing and then catch my mind wandering – and I would fuck up. Or the other way around – I would fuck up and realise I’d been thinking about how much the gas bill is going up soon. I was not been giving the correct or due attention to the task at hand.

It also dawned on me that I was in a room with 3 other friends communicating the whole time. Communicating and interacting in way far more rich and less socially exhausting than if we had been talking to one another all day. I’ve always felt that I’ve played along with my band mates or orchestra. Today (when the headspace was right) I felt like I was playing with them. The guitar part wasn’t being played by Paul, it *was* Paul.

I makes me wonder. If listening in this way, paying deep attention, is where dancing comes from inside of other people – something I have never been able to do. I’ve always danced like a janky jangley marionette. A simulacra of a creature with rhythm.

I am suddenly interested in playing jazz and improvising with people. Something I’ve traditionally been hopeless at too. I feel like I’d like to be in a impro noise or drone band or something.

Since the ‘event’ on the mat last year, and the instruction to turn the touch around, I’ve realised that giving my whole attention to things makes me feel alive. Never more alive than when I pay attention to God.

The words of the Eucharist instruct:

The Prayers of Penitence include the following lines:

Maybe, just maybe at the age of 37, I have finally understood and experienced what this means in practice.

Permanently Moved

How to Listen to a Podcast

Unravel the concept of attention density, and learn why it is essential for a valuable podcast experience. Seek out shows that offer more.

Photo 365

The Ministry Of My Own Labour

• Went to Berlin and back!
• Calls and booking in further workshops
• Research
• Writing
• Correspondence. So much correspondence. EMAILS

Terminal Access

After reading Blood’s “The weblog handbook’ I’ve been experimenting with proper old school linkblogging using my public pinboard rss feed. It’s zero effort to add a bit of colour and commentary to the bookmark as I’m saving it. Making an effort to link blogg reminds me of ‘the good old days’ when I had a big following on Google Reader and was Bigg on Digg as we used to say.

In a recent newsletter, author Edward Rathke mentioned his love of Tom Waits’ song Make It Rain from the 2004 album Real Gone. God damn. That song soundtracked my life for years.

Dipping the Stacks

Cyborgism – AI Alignment Forum

This post proposes a strategy for safely accelerating alignment research. The plan is to set up human-in-the-loop systems which empower human agency rather than outsource it, and to use those systems to differentially accelerate progress on alignment. 

A Compound That Reverses Gut Inflammation Developed – Neuroscience News

Researchers have developed a new compound, dubbed FexD, that can prevent and reverse inflammation in mouse models of inflammatory bowel disease.

I tried to buy a Rolex and fell into a grey market for luxe watches | Financial Times

I wondered if my local Rolex dealer was secretly sitting on a cache of watches, somewhere out back, behind the empty cabinets.

A 3D Printing Renaissance Is Coming for Tabletop Games | WIRED

You don’t need to print thousands of units of the product at once and live with the results, basically being a disempowered client of the plastics industry

Here’s me on this 2 years ago

Indexing, filing systems, and the art of finding what you have

I have a ton of material that never makes it online, and I need to get it out of my notebooks and into an indexed and fully searchable system. I think this will be easiest if I do it as I go, and keep it simple: the minute I finish a notebook, go back and type the whole thing into a .txt file and save it. (And back it up.)

Reading

I read ‘Wow to Write Useful Books‘ by Rob Fitzpatrick. It’s a practical guide for doing what it says on the tin. I like its focus on iterative, data-driven and reader-centric process approach to non fiction.

Started listening to Monolithic Undertow: In Search of Sonic Oblivion by Harry Sword on the plane this week. This book is so much more than the history of extreme / drone music. But about drone itself and its relationship with humanity. It references Pandit Pran Nath in the same breath as Sunn 0))))) in the introduction. Can’t wait to explore this book!

Some other books came into my possession this week. I posted photos on my tumblr.

Music

thejaymo.net Spotify Playlist

Ryuichi Sakamoto (1952-2023)

In honour of the passing of Ryuichi Sakamoto, here are my two favourite Yellow Magic Orchestra tracks.

I first heard YMO at university in 2003/4(?)ish. In one of my many pop music lectures. I was instantly hooked, like nothing I’d ever heard before. YMO were so far ahead of the curve. Sakamoto, along side YMO founding member Haruomi Hosono they transformed the cultural zeitgeist of Japan.

Technopolis – Solid State Survivor (1979)

Whilst not the most famous track off YMO’s second album (that has to go to Rydeen) Technopolis has got to be one of the most famous uses of the Roland VP-330 vocoder (brand new in 1979). The song sounds like driving in a neon lit cyberpunk world. Unlike other YMO tracks of this era, this song is mostly performed live, not manually sequenced.

Chinese Whispers – Service (1983)

Chinese sits in the middle of the A side of the album Service. It sounds like a Bowie song. This track’s instrumentation also sounds *very much* like a megadrive soundtrack. Something like Wimbledon Championship Tennis. Love this song. its so good.

Remember Kids:

The post Types of Attention appeared first on thejaymo.net.

January 7, 2023

|

Meditation 🌀, Permanently Moved 🔊

After 10 years of meditation, I’ve concluded it’s not an act of self care. It’s an act of colossal self indulgence.

Full Show Notes: https://thejaymo.net/2023/01/07/301-2301-lost-in-the-woods/

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Permanently moved is a personal podcast 301 seconds in length, written and recorded by @thejaymo

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Lost In the Woods

The following image is a page from my most recent zine – posted to paid supporters in Dec. If you’d like to join the mailing list head over to www.thejaymo.net/support.

I’ve been asked to explain myself. So Episode 1 of 2023 is about the single most important life lesson I learned in 2022.

Meditation

For the foreseeable future if anyone asks me: How much meditation have you done?. I’m going to reply: I’ve done enough to know you have to Turn The Torch Around.

Meditation, when done correctly, is like wiping condensation off a pane of glass. For the briefest of moments you catch some detail or other before it fogs over again. It is hard to even know what you saw, were you looking through a window, or were you looking in a mirror?

Wipe that same surface enough times – every single day of your life – and you will polish it. Eventually you forget about trying to look through the window and instead just focus on wiping the glass. You become about the business of meditating.

You’ll still wonder every so often though… Are you seeing anything on the other side, is it a reflection? Perhaps you’re actually grinding a lens? Pick a tradition and you’ll find an answer. In the end though it doesn’t really matter.

I want to stress: ‘the doing’ of meditation is not in any way shape or form an act of self care. Unless you think of eating, sleeping, or drinking as acts of self care – which for some in certain circumstances, I suppose they are.

Anyways, you’ll tell yourself that all this meditation, this polishing, this lens grinding IS self care. This is a trap. But it’s helping you survive your stressful job, so whatever. But it’s also sending you insane. Absolutely alienated and adrift from the world around you.

Totally off-your-rocker-crazy.

Then one day you wake up in the dark. Lost in the woods, adrift in a storm.

All that remains is a familiar light.

It’s the light you used to glimpse through the window, in the mirror, (or the lens) that you spent half a decade obsessively polishing.

Scared of the dark, you grab the light and shine it towards yourself to check that you are still there – to check that you exist. You can only see your feet, your arms, your legs, and your hands. The light is too narrow. You can only sense one part of yourself in the dark at a time.

After the panic recedes you realise that the same things you used to do when sat upon the meditation mat makes the light a little brighter. It makes the beam a little less narrow. 

You still don’t know where you are though. Other than knowing that you are somewhere in the abyss, lost in the dark.

But the world keeps turning.

Politics happens, a pandemic happens, history continues to be written. The sun comes up and the sun goes down. But day by day, you’re still stuck and lost in the dark.

Then slowly and surely, like opening the shutters of a room, or twisting the end of a touch, more mediation results in more light.

Weeks, months and years pass. You feel a little less crazy. Everything incrementally gets a little better, a little brighter. You are still lost in the dark but you can at least see more and more of yourself unfolding in space and time. Eventually, after a lot more meditation, you become aware that you know exactly what – or perhaps who – you really are. Pick your tradition. Then decide what it was you were seeing through the window, in the mirror, or through the lens. 

You are the light.

Yet you’re still the same person you’ve been all along. 

Then, and this is hard to do.

You have to admit to yourself and come to terms with the fact, that you are someone who – in a colossal act of self indulgence – thought it wise to shine a light upon themselves when lost in the woods.

Ignoring the obvious point that doing so would not in any way resolve the issue of not knowing where one was or where one were supposed to be going.

To do that, you have to turn the torch around.

Turn the torch around.

And when you do, in an instant, the brilliance of the world is reflected back at you. in proportion to the brightness of your spirit. 

A world in full colour. Full of emotion, sights and smells, other beings, and other souls. It’s been unfolding around you, day by day, moment to moment all this time. An immense riot of things coming and going, illuminating their own worlds – just as you do.

Everything that exists makes the world a little brighter, a little better.

After so long in the dark it’s dazzling. But you keep meditating, keep praying, and you keep paying attention to the world. 

You are in the woods, amongst the trees.

Then you start to see the paths that could be walked – if you choose to walk them.

Watch

The script above is the original script written for the episode. It may differ from what ended up in the edit.

If you’d like to support this blog and my various projects, please consider making a regular contribution here. Any amount helps me keep things up and running!

The post Lost in the Woods | 2301 appeared first on thejaymo.net.

December 11, 2022

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Attention 🎯, Meditation 🌀, Permanently Moved 🔊

Perhaps things that are meaning-less can be made meaning-full by stepping away from them?

Full Show Notes: https://thejaymo.net/2022/12/11/301-2244-step-away-from-noise/

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Permanently moved is a personal podcast 301 seconds in length, written and recorded by @thejaymo

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Step Away From Noise

The end of the year is rushing closer. Attempting to avoid the inevitable, for me the run up to Christmas always becomes a time of self reflection. I look back at all the things I did and didn’t achieve. 

Which is why I’m usually in such a bad mood for most of December. I get all my disappointment and woe-is-me self-flagellation out of the way. 

This year my advice to myself is that I should not wait until January to make New Year’s resolutions. The optimism that comes with a new calendar year is unfounded and interferes with critical thinking. The direction of travel for next year must be identified amidst reflection on the current one. 

Meditating on the vast ocean of wasted time that I sailed over this year. A sentence blossomed from inside me whilst sat on the meditation mat.

Step Away From Noise

It’s koan like ….. almost. 

It may take years or even a lifetime to understand a universal fragment like this.

But let me attempt an initial unpacking.

The world is a loud and chaotic place. We’re bombarded by noise from all sides. A constant stream of notifications from our phones. Information and advertising. The never-ending chatter of our own thoughts and inner conflicts.

We could name all this noise mental clutter.  All the thoughts, the emotions, and distractions that arise in the mind. Noise interferes with our ability to focus and think clearly. Worry, stress, anxiety, fear, doubt, or other negative emotions. Racing thoughts, mental chatter, or self-criticism.

Step away from them.

Noise could also be literal loud and distracting sounds.

Leaf blowers are noisy, impact drivers, scaffolding, construction, builders, doors slamming, plates dropping. 

If you are having a conversation in the kitchen and someone turns on the blender – you step out of the room. Or, stop speaking for the duration of the noise. Like waiting for a plane to fly over when recording. 

The blender analogy breaks down when referring to social media however. You can step away, but you can’t stop speaking. Saying anything on social media makes you complicit in the operation of the very machine you find noisy. 

But what else could be meant by noise?

Have you ever been so absorbed in something that you haven’t realised someone was speaking to you? Like the teacher from peanuts, the words are just modulated frequencies – noise. Then all in an instant a strange thing happens – you realise someone was speaking. The words snap into focus. The sound of that person’s voice goes from meaningless noise to words. 

Perhaps to step away from noise means to make movement towards meaning?

Alternatively perhaps things that are meaning-less can be made meaning-full by stepping away from them?

I’ve recently been reading more of the writings of R.Murray Schafer and Pauline Oliveros. Deep listening, sonic awareness and sound culture. Both speak of the need to be present in the moment and the need to see (or hear) things through to their conclusion. 

Which raises another question: what is a moment and how long does it take to reach its conclusion? Moments exist in both clock and plot time. 

Have you ever sat down at a piano and played a loud chord with the sustain pedal held down? This is a moment. 

The chord sounds out. But the wires continue to vibrate. The individual notes blend and merge. Frequencies shift and evolve. Overtones appear and disappear as the vibrations of the wires succumb to entropy.

Is what happens after the sounding of a chord on a piano just noise? This potential harmonic dance is almost always ended early by the application of the damper. So eager are we to move onto the next chord, or musical idea.

I’ve been thinking about my Dream, Doing, Done spiel from the other month. I now wonder if the doing of the work is also a process of bearing witness to the dream.

Maybe stepping away from noise means to sit with the consequences of one’s actions? Ideas must be fully expressed and taken to their conclusion before you can move on to the next chord.

I began the year with “Fear of Finding Out’.

An episode about my hopes for the year. I spoke about my chronic procrastination and the long term personal crisis of my own making.

It was a show about all the things I wanted to create and make in 2022. How I wanted to actually do all the things that needed doing. So to bookend the year, I ask myself the same question I did in January. 

Am I the Person that I Believe myself to Be? 

The honest answer, I must admit, is, I do not know.

That universal fragment is an idea that is yet to be resolved or fully expressed to its ultimate conclusion. I am A person certainly. Now different from the one who asked the question back in January.

Perhaps I wonder. If the answer can be found by the sort of person who believes they must navigate by intuition. Acting upon the things that arise inside them.

The sort of person who bears witness to his dreams. The person who moves towards things that are meaning-full. The sort of person who can discern in the moment that the thing they are dealing with is actually noisy and meaning-less?

Does this mean having less dreams or more?

The person who finds out next year will be one who steps away from noise.

Because when the universe tells you to do something – you do it.

Watch

The script above is the original script written for the episode. It may differ from what ended up in the edit.

If you’d like to support this blog and its various projects, please consider making a regular contribution here. It genuinely helps me keep things up and running, so thank you!

The post Step Away From Noise | 2244 appeared first on thejaymo.net.

February 12, 2022

|

Meditation 🌀 | Permanently Moved 🔊

I just found out that most of you can just shut your eyes and see a pyramid any time you want? What the hell?!

Full Show Notes: https://thejaymo.net/2022/02/12/301-2206-aphantasia-experience-pt3/

Watch 301 on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/jayspringett

Support the Show! https://thejaymo.net/support/
Website: https://thejaymo.net/

Permanently moved is a personal podcast 301 seconds in length, written and recorded by @thejaymo

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Aphantasia (Experience pt3)

In the May 1977 issue of American Psychological Review there is an article called Telling More Than We Can Know. Verbal Reports on Mental Processes. Whilst it differs from person to person is concludes that most people are unable to accurately communicate their inner lives. And yet, it says, we should not dismiss arguments made from introspection. Subjective certainly can be shared across many people.

Last weekend I found out I have Aphantasia. It’s taken 36 years to realise that ‘mind’s eye’ isn’t a figure of speech. Or the metaphoric space I have always believed it to be.

Aphantasia, for those who don’t know. Is the inability to voluntarily create mental images in one’s mind. The phenomenon was first described by Francis Galton in 1880. But the term wasn’t coined until a 2015 study conducted by the University of Exeter.

I’ve known about Aphantasia for years. But I always assumed lack of fantasy meant something else. Like, not having an imagination or something.

Mea culpa.

Back in episode 18-05, a true deep cut, I spoke about my Synesthesia. I said I “see’ and “feel” conversations in my mind’s eye. I am aware of the existence of, or rather presence of, a shape, colour, or texture. But I don’t see or picture anything.

I thought the place that this synesthetic awareness occurs in was the mind’s eye. Which is why I had assumed I didn’t have aphantasia. But no. People can literally visualise shapes, and colours, and do it all the time. 

I only found out because I was watching a video of people doing an Aphantasia test and was blown away by their responses. 

Let’s do it right now.

Close your eyes. 

Imagine a ball sitting on a table.  

*Some Time elapses*

Ok, we’re done. What colour was the ball? What material was the table?

Post your answers in the comments on my blog.

In the video without hesitation people would say “I saw a silver ball on a wooden table”, or “the pixar ball on a laminated school desk”.

What the hell!!??!!

I close my eyes, and there’s nothing. Just blackness. Just the concept of a ball placed on the concept of a table. Hanging there in the same mental void as I feel, navigate and think in. The same mental space that my synesthesia manifests itself in.

It’s not that I don’t have an imagination, I just don’t visualise thoughts or even memories.

So Mea Culpa. I’ve been using the term ‘mind’s eye’ wrong my entire life.

Several times in episodes, 1915, 2023 and 2040, I’ve talked about manipulating platonic solids in the mind’s eye.

Years ago, I spent hours of my life, day after day, trying to visualise the platonic solids. I worked so hard at it, week after week. I managed to get some of the solids to a level 2 on the Aphantasia scale.

I was so happy, so pleased.

THIS I thought is what all the pythagorean cult visualisation exercises are all about.

Now I find out that most of you can just shut your eyes and see a fucking pyramid any time you want?

What the hell!?

Really?

Apparently people read books and see it like a movie playing out in their minds? Most people can close their eyes and picture the face of a loved one? I can recall the details of what people look like, but I can’t imagine up a mental photo of them on demand.

This has caused me to reconsider my own claims about my perception of the world and how I understand them. I will have been meditating for 10 years this year. In 2019 I began to no longer experience myself as being inside my head, behind my eyes and between my ears. I moved into my own body. But what does this mental spatialization even mean when there’s people out there who can think ‘think shapes’?

I’m honestly blown away. Shocked even.

I have 1000’s of hours of meditation under my belt – I’ve done a great deal of it. And honestly,  I have always thought there was something fishy about guided meditation and visualisation exercises. “You’re standing in a forest. Inside the Heart Chakra. The green of the Anahata”. I’ve never been about to do it. I can be inside the concept of the forest, nested in the concept of the heart chakra. But why make me walk through a wood in my mind to get from one to another. I’ve never understood it. But now i realise that everyone else in the room was fucking walking though a wood in their mind I totally understand. But It’s not for me.

I don’t know what to make of it all.  A spirit is something you can see with your eyes closed – I agree. I’ve had all sorts of intense visions and experiences when meditating and I’m now more convinced of their validity. I’ve seen all sorts of shit in the looking glass when doing psychomanteum work too.

I also wonder about my hyperreal memories of DnD games coexisting, co-located between the world we’d conjured and the kitchen we would play in. Remembering the game world and the world.

I think about all the people going about their daily lives just.. assuming that their experience of the world is similar to others. When something as fundamental as even having a mind’s eye can be so different from person to person. 

We must all do better to cultivate deeper understandings of others’ goings on in this world.

Watch

The script above is the original script written for the episode. It may differ from what ended up in the edit.

If you’d like to support this blog and its various projects, please consider making a regular contribution here. It genuinely helps me keep things up and running, so thank you!

The post Aphantasia (Experience pt3) | 2206 appeared first on thejaymo.net.

November 27, 2021

|

Attention 🎯 | Meditation 🌀 | Permanently Moved 🔊 | Writing ⌨️

S04E45

The horror as my depression lifted at the beginning of the UK lockdown. It wasn’t depression stopping me. It was something far worse. Me.

Full Show Notes: https://thejaymo.net/2021/11/27/2145-dealing-with-procrastination/

Watch 301 on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/jayspringett

Support the Show!: https://thejaymo.net/support/
Website: https://thejaymo.net/

Permanently moved is a personal podcast 301 seconds in length, written and recorded by @thejaymo

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Dealing With Procrastination

Thanks to everyone who sent messages about episode 21-43 Do the Things That Need Doing. I’m glad that it resonated with people. That episode skirted the surface of a much deeper personal crisis I’ve been wrestling with.

Just over 2 years ago I released the zine Your Attention Is Sovereign. It’s had over 10k downloads since. In it I talk about an important two-step process..

1. You, personally, get to decide where you put your attention.
2. By acknowledging this you have to take full responsibility for where you have put your attention in the past, and where you will put it in the future.

It seemed simple to say these words out loud in Episode 18-24. But it is of course much easier said than done.

Deciding that you are going to stop fucking around on the internet, arguing about nonsense on social media or watching crap tv etc is not a one-off decision. It’s an ongoing one. One that has to be re-commitment repeatedly and constantly, every time you catch yourself at it.  They aren’t decisions that can be made just once.

It is also impossible for me to talk about my struggle with procrastination without talking about meditation. 

It’s a way of being, living and acting in the world that has woven itself deeply into my day to day, my writing, and creative life. I’m coming up on 10 years and 5000 hours next year. The results so far indicate that my life is better and immeasurably worse for having done so much of it. 

In 2018 I was feeling good about what and where I was taking responsibility for my attention. But it was ultimately vainglorious and temporary. Telling everyone else to do the same was somewhat hypocritical.

Trying my best resulted only in being constantly aware of how much of my life I was wasting by procrastinating. And just how much of that I’d done since I was a teenager.

The struggle to take responsibility for my attention over the last few years has resulted in an extended period of personal crisis. Exacerbated by other competing anxieties 

The horror I experienced as the fog of a years-long depression broke at the beginning of the UK lockdown last year was intense. The transparent fact that it wasn’t depression that was preventing me from doing the things I felt needed doing.

It was something far worse. Me. Depression was just a blanket I had wrapped myself in to calm other anxieties about my lack of activity.

The Yoga Sutras talk of obstacles and consequences.

There are 9 kinds of distraction:

• Illness (Vyadhi), 
• Apathy (Styana), 
• Doubt (Samśaya), 
• Negligence (Pramada),  
• Sloth (Alasya), 
• Imbalance (Avirati), 
• Delusion (Bhranti-darshana), 
• Self-depreciation (Alabdha- bhūmikatva), 
• Instability (Anavasthitatvani)

Each of these obstacles result in consequences:

• Mental or physical pain, 
• Sadness or dejection, 
• Restlessness, shakiness, or anxiety, and 
• Irregularities in the exhalation and inhalation of breath.

This gives one a wide palette with which to interrogate one’s mental and behavioural obstacles. The solution (of course) involves a circular logic: Make the mind one-pointed. Focus. Then to use that focus as self reflection to tease apart the bundles of consequences one is experiencing. Working them back to their cause – the obstacles.

My own experience of chronic procrastination are made up of a set of compound consequences. Restlessness, anxiety and anguish. 

Examining these things without the blanket of depression was difficult. My sloth causes restlessness, anxiety, anguish, but the sloth is caused by self doubt, resulting in apathy.

“Take responsibility for where you have put your attention in the past, and where you will put it in the future”. Says nothing about the here and now in the present.

Awareness of where one’s attention is being placed can only be noticed in the present. Looking backward one finds the work of body. Looking forward is to fantasise about the size and scale of possibility that lies ahead. The best intentions as it were. 

Only in the present can procrastination and its causes be addressed.

I’m also acutely aware that talking about these things doesn’t actually solve anything.

“Failure to execute” is the term I would use to describe my creative life ever since I was in my late teens. Lots of talking and thinking, very little doing and finishing.

I’ve always been affected by self doubt. Which has lead at times to accusations of lack of ambition. But finally being honest about it all out loud is a start of the solution..

When meditating just as one becomes aware that their mind has wandered and acts up it. So too one must act as soon as they become aware that they are procrastinating. 

You have to be honest with yourself at that moment. I am procrastinating. Then you either close the web browser or you don’t.

Either way you take full responsibility whatever decision you take.

Finding rhythm is about making these small decisions in the present and then being responsible for the consequences throughout the day. This results in doing the things that need doing when they need getting done.

Or not. 

For me personally, the isolationist experience of the last pandemic years have been an extremely useful environment for introspection and self honesty. There has been no choice but to face one’s own demons.

I am for my part just going to continue my deal with my life in the present as it unfolds. 

Acknowledging engrained 20+ year old behaviours. And trying to be more responsible for where I am placing my attention. Each time I am honest about my behaviour smooths the surface of the way ahead slightly. 

I know I will get there eventually. No point being eager for it to happen sooner. The only thing of concern ultimately is what you are doing right now.

Watch

The script above is the original script I wrote for the episode. It may differ from what ended up in the audio due to time constraints.

If you’d like to support this blog and its various projects, please consider making a regular contribution here. It genuinely helps me keep things up and running, so thank you!

The post Dealing With Procrastination | 2145 appeared first on thejaymo.net.

June 19, 2021

|

Meditation 🌀 | Permanently Moved 🔊

S04E24

Moments of psychic intensity generate what we can think of as ‘Big Feelings’. That we then carry around with us as unprocessed loops that keep us awake at night.

NOTE: This is my first *real* video episode. As a result it came up 30 secs short.

Show Notes: https://thejaymo.net/2021/06/19/301-2124-big-feelings-are-like-beads-in-a-bowl/

Support: https://thejaymo.net/support/
Webshow: http://comeinternetwith.me
Website: https://thejaymo.net/

Permanently moved is a personal podcast 301 seconds in length, written and recorded by @thejaymo

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Well, the first proper ‘video episode’. It was an interesting exercise.

Totally fucked it thinking I’d need less script if I was speaking slower for a video.
But actually it didn’t matter at all. So for the first time in 4 years the episode came in short – at just over 4.5 mins. Usually it’s way too long and needs cutting down.

I don’t actually care. Next week needs another Episode, which presents a fresh chance fuck up in some other new and different way.

Please do send comments, thoughts, opinions via the contact form, or how ever you usually contact me. I mean.. Is producing a video episode even worth all the bother?

Big Feelings Are Like Beads in a Bowl

In 2019 I made an Episode on Depression. About how poorly served we are by the English language when it comes to communicating our interior states. We often lack exact words to articulate what we are feeling. 

Whats the word for when you feel like you are disappearing?

One solution may be to poetically suggest a concept by placing words in relation to each other.

Despite it being a big part of my life. I realised recently, that I don’t talk about meditation as much as I thought.

The main reason being that meditation is ultimately a personal, and boring subject. 

It’s sitting on a chair day after day and dealing with your own shit in silence. I COULD talk about it more but why bother?

Anyways.

In Episode 20-02 – Crying Whilst Meditating. I described how your body processes old buried emotions that you had no idea you’d been carrying around.

To day I want to briefy talk about the importance of being able to recognise and name specific feelings you are experiencing.

As one of the things that meditating on old truma reveals, is all the smaller emotions you experienced at the same time as part of the big one.  Like sorting through beads on a tray or untying a complex knot. 

Moments of psychic intensity generate what we can think of as ‘Big Feelings’. That we then carry around with us as unprocessed loops that keep us awake at night.

Let’s take a time when you were angry as an example.

In the first:

The anger was  somatically experienced. The tensing of muscles, a clenching of the jaw. An increase in the rate of breathing, a rise in blood pressure. Maybe your red went face. 

Your attention narrowed, and you were mentally ‘locked on target’. It lasted 5 or 10 minutes max.

It is the narrowing of attention during emotional intensity that creates the psychic baggage that you carry around with you. 

I should note. That this narrowing of attention could be anything from an argument with a partner, to someone cutting in front of you in a line.

When you meditate with the technique I was taught on  (for example) a time when you have been angry. What slowly is revealed are all the other emotions that occurred at the same time. The beads in the bowl.

Like the elements of an exploding star – as you pick the experience apart – you find the other emotions in the experience’s orbit. There’s: Ire, annoyance, maybe there’s disgust, anxiousness, regret, maybe a little fright.

Eventually that big emotion. That psychic wound you have been carrying around for half your life is unpacked and recontextualised. 

The unpacking is done by sitting on a chair, by yourself in silence and re-experiencing the original emotional moemnt.

This isn’t some unhealthy dwelling on the past. A quiet seething. As its time bound and limited to the time that you are sitting. When you are done meditating, you set it aside and get on with the rest of your day.

If you do keep coming back to it, you should probably consider getting a therapist. Because despite what the app says, all meditation is dangerous. 

Anyways, what happends month by month, is that the time your mind likes to remind of in the middle of the night – wasn’t all anger. Maybe it was made up of frustration, depression and a little resentment too. All these were lost in the initial explosion of adrenaline. Eventually as you more fully understand the memory it becomes too complex for the mind to pick up and throw at you just before sleep.

I’m not going to explain how you actually do any of this, as I said, it’s really rather boring.

The main thing is type of meditation on old trauma allows you to do is to more fully understand emotions when you come across them in your daily life. You become better equipped to understand what you are feeling and experiencing. 

For example: Imagine being on zoom. Someone says something that elicits an emotion in you. A slight leadening of the fingertips and a tingle that runs from the throat across the chest and down into your pelvis.

These sorts of things happen to you a million times a day, but usually we don’t pay attention to them. Usually too caught up with formualting our response.

If you can decern the experience of small emotions clearly. You can pick out that touch of annoyance, and the dash of irritation. And note them on the DnD character sheet of life and move on.

I’m not claiming that meditation stops you from experiencing emotions. In fact it’s the exact opposite. The more you do the more you become aware of the things you are feeling. Knowing exactly what kind of anxiety you are experiencing doesn’t stop it from grabbing you by the throat in the soy sauce aisle in Sainsbury’s.

But it does give you a better understanding of the you that is doing the experiencing.

Watch

The post Big Feelings Are Like Beads in a Bowl | 2124 appeared first on thejaymo.net.

January 22, 2021

|

Meditation 🌀 | Permanently Moved 🔊

S04E03

Maybe ideas don’t come fully formed, instead they are a sequence of ideas that pour out of you one after another in a cascading instant.

Full show notes: https://thejaymo.net/2021/01/22/301-2103-thinking-out-loud/

Support: https://thejaymo.net/support/
Webshow: http://comeinternetwith.me
Website: https://thejaymo.net/

Permanently moved is a personal podcast 301 seconds in length, written and recorded by @thejaymo

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Thinking Out Loud

This week Matt Webb over @ interconnected.org posted ‘The feeling of percolating on stubborn problems’. He wrote that occasionally he will be thinking about a problem, or an idea and he will get stuck.

He can’t write, can’t make slides, and can barely articulate what’s interesting about the subject.

During this period which for him can last for two or three days he’ll find it hard to focus on other tasks. Becomes short tempered and disinterested in his todo list.

Its as if, as he puts it “there’s something occupying 30% of my CPU, if you know what I mean”

Then suddenly the entire thing will pop into his head. A structured articulation of the idea, key goals, next steps, the whole thing.

It’ll then come out of him like automatic writing.

Webb then asks what’s going on during those 2 days?
What is this “background processing” feeling?
How come it’s a black box?
What’s happening, brain-wise?

I don’t know at all, but since he threw the question out there I thought I’d chime in. 

Firstly, this phenomenon is covered really well in A Technique for Producing Ideas by James Webb Young. It’s only 38 pages long and 2 quid on Amazon. If your a creative type its definitely worth checking out.

The essay can be compressed down to a 5 step process. 

1. Gather material
2. Work the material over in your mind
3. Step away from the problem
4. Allow the solution to come back to you
5. Test your idea in the real world and adjust based on feedback.

The period of irritability that Matt experiences is what Webb Young calls “the mental digestive process” – or step Three.
Step Four is the flash of insight, that only occurs after you have stopped straining for it.

He goes on to quote the 1932 locked room mystery novel Miss Pinkerton by Mary Roberts Rinehart.

And it was while I was folding up that copy of the Eagle and, putting it away for later reading that something came into my mind. I have had this happen before; I can puzzle over a thing until I am in a state of utter confusion, giving it up, and then suddenly have the answer leap into my mind without an apparent reason.

Miss Pinkerton by Mary Roberts Rinehart.

When speaking about creativity and ideas I once heard the notion of ‘Seedling Ideas’ 

Ideas are like seeds that lay dormant in the soil. At the back of one’s mind, waiting for the climatic signals to germinate.

Then it starts with a single thought. And then a few minutes, days or months later, another one will pop up and then another and another.

Maybe ideas don’t come fully formed, instead they are a sequence of ideas that pour out of you one after another. Flashings of insight as geminations happening in a cascading instant.

What is going on during this period of ‘mental digestion’, is anyone guess. Webb calls it a black box. It makes me wonder how Matt usually thinks. Is it in sentences? words strung one after another? An internal monologue?

I want to talk a little about where I am after 8 and a half years of taking a meditation practice seriously. 

I’ll be Upfront. I still have an internal dialogue and I certainly can’t claim to have killed mine. But it is however far less talkative than it used to be. More and more in my daily life, thoughts and ideas spring from below the soil.

My entire life up until about 5 years ago ‘thinking’ (for me) was sparring with my own internal dialogue. Literally having a conversation with myself. How about this – no – what about this – ah ha – ok then – that – i’m thirsty – let’s make a cup of tea.

If you think like this habitually, I belive it’s easier for other lines of thought or internal voices to chime in. Negative self talk etc. The citric or the watcher at the gates of the mind etc. This is what my inner life used to be like.

But after 8 years of sitting practice Its different. 

I still do have an internal dialogue, but it’s not a calamitous chatter. It’s usually a long stream of dialogue, with no second counter argument. It happens more often when I’m emotional or doing something on automatic pilot. I’ll be in the shower and realise that I’m er ‘thinking out loud to myself in my head’. I’ll remember to breathe and it will melt away back below the surface of the conscious mind. I don’t doubt that I’m still thinking about whatever I was thinking about – just not explicitly.

My inner world at 35 is very different from 25.

Sometimes I’ll be staring off into space. Eve will ask me what I’m thinking about and I’ll automatically reply ‘nothing’. Which is in fact not quite true.
What I should be replying is ‘no idea’.

I’m clearly having a moment as it were. That’s why she asked me. But it’s all below the surface. A roiling whirl of emotion rather than any one line of thought expressed as internal chatter. Its Abstract and non-verbal.

The idea that I used to experience never-ending, Virginia Woolf-esque trains of thought—expressed in language as full sentences — now seems like an exhausting Hell. Looking back it kind of was.

But as Jung said. People don’t have ideas; ideas have people.

You always have to make space for the thoughts to find you. So one has to organise ones inner landscape to encourage thoughts to geminate from the ether.

The script above is the original script I wrote for the episode. It may differ from what ended up in audio due to time constraints.

The post Thinking Out Loud | 2103 appeared first on thejaymo.net.

October 23, 2020

|

Meditation 🌀 | Permanently Moved 🔊

S03E42

The tip of the tail flicks unbeknownst to the cat. Its inner world betraying the stillness of its body. Just like our minds.

My new youtube show! http://comeinternetwith.me/

Show notes: https://thejaymo.net/2020/10/23/301-2042-sleeping-lions/

Website: https://thejaymo.net/
Podcast: http://permanentlymoved.online
Support: https://thejaymo.net/support/

Permanently moved is a personal podcast 301 seconds in length, written and recorded by @thejaymo

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Sleeping Lions

Sleeping lions seems like such an obvious game from an adult’s point of view. You get a room full of kids to lie down and stay still as possible. Participants need to lie motionless and are ‘out’ if they move.

As Wikipedia says 

It is used in schools as an exercise. All the children will play “lions” and the teacher will play the “hunter”. Usually, in this case, the teacher will make no effort to make the “lions” move, because in this case the real aim of the “game” is to calm the children down after playing other exciting games.

Sleeping Lions – Wikipedia

The game has an older name in the history of play: ‘Dead soldiers’.

The teacher as hunter does nothing. It is the first kid unable to stay still that becomes the first true hunter. An agent of play trying to wake up their peers. As the participants aren’t able to touch the others during the game. It encourages kids to be silly around their peers as the others try to stay “asleep”. 

The lions have to keep themselves focused on not moving a muscle—no matter how their peers try to distract them. 

Sleeping Lions encourages children to build mind–body connections. The balancing repetition and creativity.

In Games for actors and non-actors, Boal 1992. Sleeping lions is called “The Bear of Poitiers”. Redescribed as a bear hunting for woodcutters. Only in this version of the game: the bear can growl, touch, tickle, and prod, the woodcutters. Who are playing dead as bears won’t eat dead meat. What’s interesting is that this version is recorded as being played by adults too.

Boal observes the contradiction in trying to find stillness by playing dead.

The principle is: if the woodcutter can send his senses to sleep, if he can feel nothing, see nothing, hear nothing, if he can successfully play dead, the bear will not attack because bears don’t eat dead people. But the instruction ‘Feel nothing’ provokes exactly the opposite reaction, and all the senses become extraordinarily highly developed – you sense much more, hear much better, etc. Fear hypersensitises us!

Games for actors and non-actors – Boal 1992

It’s the hypersensitisation that is the most important somatic element of the game. Play for children and adults is an important third space that shunts us sideways. To be authentic and real temporary inside new rules of reality.

Playing Sleeping Lions at Infant School was the first time I remember being asked to find stillness around others. Forehead on my hands; nose hovering just above the floor. Hyper aware of the smell of, dust dinners polish that all parquet floor school halls have. A smell that I can still conjure in my mind’s eye more vividly than any other from my time at infant school. The hypersentistation effect of Sleeping Lions. Trying to do nothing resulted in fragment of intense memory.

We also used play sleeping lions at Junior Church growing up. I would always think of the angel shutting the mouths of the lions to protect Daniel from their jaws.

And Daniel was brought out of the den, and no harm was found on him, because he trusted in his God.

To be honest with you, it’s taken me 30 more years to even begin to discover what stillness even is. But it still think of Daniel in the lions cave. Stillness was not something that was ever explained to me. It’s something that you have to do. You can still fidget and be still.

Mindfulness as it’s taught at corporate away days and self help books. Is the process of choosing a focus for your attention. Then observing whatever thought processes that arise without judgment. You begin to focus your attention on say: Your breathing, and you quickly discover that you are repeatedly distracted and the mind runs off with worries and thoughts.

And so we learn to observe this process. Making no judgments. This is all very hard to actually explain.

Instead we can say meditation (and certain kinds of listening prayer) is like playing a game of sleeping lions with yourself. 

You are the lion, and like a cat it has a tail. I’m sure we’ve all seen cats laying contented in the sunshine. The tip of their tail flicks unbeknownst to the cat. Its inner world is betraying the stillness of the body. Just like our minds.

When asked about mindfulness or awareness meditation by beginners. I always explain that what you are trying to do is become aware of the fact that you are alive. The default state of being that we go through our lives largely ignorant of. 

If you are the lion then the mind is the hunter. An agency outside of the ‘be still’ rules imposed by the game, trying to distract and rebel. What the rogue mind ignores of course is that both hunters and the lions are participants in the larger game.

The more that you move closer to being aware of the fact you are alive. Truly alive. The less space the hunter has to distract you.

Meditation is not about emptying your mind, but about filling it up fully with the actual experience of being alive. Experiencing everything all at once. Cultivating the hypersensitisation that Boal observed.

Sleeping Lions is a far more complicated and important game in child development than we give it credit. It’s obviously a very old game, given its other names.

I think the fame is also the best reference point or tool to explain to children as well as adults the first steps toward developing a practice of stillness. Whether that be meditation or prayer. A space to experience what it means to be alive whilst playing dead.

The above is the original script I wrote for the episode. It may differ from what ended up in audio due to time constraints.

The post Sleeping Lions | 2042 appeared first on thejaymo.net.

August 14, 2020

|

Christianity ✝️ | Meditation 🌀 | Permanently Moved 🔊

S03E32

I’ve been reading a bunch of books that relate to several topics of interest recently.

You can now support the show at https://thejaymo.net/support/

Links:
Wounded By Love: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1532408.Wounded_by_Love
Move Without Pain:https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12786548-move-without-pain
An Actor Prepares: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18856935-an-actor-prepares

Permanently moved is a personal podcast 301 seconds in length, written and recorded in one hour by @thejaymo

Website: https://thejaymo.net/
Podcast: http://permanentlymoved.online
Zine: http://startselectreset.com
Support: https://thejaymo.net/support/

Show Supporter 📻

£5 MONTHLY 👏

Quarterly zine; my gift to you ✉️

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The Body Not The Brain

I’ve been reading a bunch of books that relate to several topics of interest recently. These include: A book about prayer in the Orthodox Tradition, several books about Somatic Movement Therapy, mainly concerned with the techniques of Feldenkrais and, An Actor Prepares by Stanislavski. 

It’s funny how one’s seemingly separate interests converge and are actually just all one thing and that realisation at this moment in time, is exciting. However, in the context of everything that is going on in the wider world, I have a certain mix of emotions and feelings about it all. 

Let’s take a quick tour and you can pick at the orthogonal flows between them.

First, Prayer.

I am, at this stage in my life, as interested in prayer as I am in meditation. 

I’ve said elsewhere that I don’t really see much of a distinction between the two.One leaves a window open for metaphysics to flow in and the other doesn’t. I am of course talking about Meditation as we understand it in the west and its the same as the same practices embedded in their local context elsewhere in the world. I would also point you towards McMindfulness: How Mindfulness Became the New Capitalist Spirituality by R Purser, a book I also read this year. It’s really good. Anyway.

In the 1930’s a young Saint Porphyrios author of Wounded By Love once asked a local bishop about Prayer. 

Buddests talk about Self-Emptying during meditation. But as far as i can tell in the living orthodox tradition they would say that Self-emptying is an act of love. And because God is love one is not seeking the loss of self but the gaining of a true self instead. You empty yourself with prayer until there’s nothing left but the divine. We are all made in God’s image. 

So then, Prayer is something that is experienced, not practiced.

Somatic Movement Techniques. It seems to me, are all about reconnecting or re-familiarising oneself with one’s own body in a way that impacts chronic issues like pain. What it isn’t is stretching. It’s more like Yoga in its truest sense. Union. To be conscious of the self inside one’s own body. Somatic movement techniques are simple movements that allow the body to recognise muscles that are suffering Involuntary muscular contraction. By moving and relaxing them consciously, with full attention. It allows them to relax past the usual baseline level of extension so that a muscle learns the new level relaxed extension. Again this something that has to be experienced, not practiced.

Now An Actor Prepares. I picked it up off a bookshelf in my old room when I was back on the chalk the other week. It’s not mine so it must be my Brothers. But seeing that he now lives 10,000 kilometers away, plus the fact anyone with siblings knows that possession is 100% of the law – it’s now mine.

Anyone who has studied drama will have read the book, so I’ll presume that a few of you are familiar with it. It is about the inward preparation an actor must undergo in order to ‘act’ in the world of the stage. I’m only 50 pages in so far but with each turn of the page,with the context of my other current reading I recognise a deep sense of spiritual embodiment within the book and the lessons it imparts. Flicking through the book it seems the word soul isn’t used. At least in my Translation anyway. I presume it’s because the actors of 19c Russia were born and raised in the Orthodox Faith and its principles were common knowledge with no explanation needed.

As such I’d like to point you towards the essay ‘The influence of Christian Orthodox thought on Stanislavski’s theatrical legacy‘ By Gabriela Curpan from 2019 which seeks to plug the book and Stanislavski’s work back into the Orthadox socket. As an aside i can’t imagine any GCSE or A level Drama Teacher having the time to put this book in context in today’s teaching environment.

Finally, a few weeks ago I finished Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art by James Nestor. It is one of the best books I’ve read in ages. Everyone listening should go buy it immediately.

So to close out this one hundred and first episode of 301 let’s return to what I said about the mix of emotions and feelings I’m experiencing. The subjects I’ve just skimmed I think you can tell, both excite and interest me deeply. The confluence of all these threads are a heady brew. Next, I think like to read a book by a dancer (recommendations welcome!). However there is still some small part of me that thinks my interest and practice of all this is somehow self indulgent. Is it some deep CofE protestantism that makes me second guess the importance of connecting soul to the body? Everything is terrible and I’m sitting at home breathing through my nose and concentrating very hard on the pain in my wrist and forearm. Is that self indulgent? Maybe for some. Certainly less so than sitting at home tweeting angrily about something into the void I reckon. Anyway. 

The one thing I can say for certain tho is that doing puts knowledge in your body and not your brain. 

Hagía Sophía

The script above is the original script I wrote for the episode. It may differ from what ended up in audio due to time constraints.

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January 17, 2020

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Meditation 🌀 | Permanently Moved 🔊

S3E02

Making judgements, runners high and embodiment.

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Permanently moved is a personal podcast 301 seconds in length, written and recorded in one hour by @thejaymo

Website: https://thejaymo.net/
Podcast: http://permanentlymoved.online
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Crying Whilst Meditating

I read an article recently in Mel magazine called “Should you be concerned about your physical health if you can’t remember the last time you cried?”. It has an amazing line in it from psychiatrist Judith Orloff

“You have to imagine what it would be like to have your body functioning at a higher level, one that allows for tears.”

 Judith Orloff – SHOULD YOU BE CONCERNED ABOUT YOUR PHYSICAL HEALTH IF YOU CAN’T REMEMBER THE LAST TIME YOU CRIED?

Before we get to crying. First, a little note on making judgements.

We all make judgements, snap decisions. We model the motivations of others based on our own experience. I don’t think this is necessarily a bad thing. But we should at least acknowledge that we all make judgements about people all the time.

For example. I know gym rats make judgements about others physical health when they hear someone else doesn’t do any exercise. Of course they do. There’s no point in pretending otherwise. Not that I think gym rats think they are better then other people because they go for a swim. They make a judgement anyway. Because it;s something that they experience in there lives and I for example – don’t.

Meditation takes about the same amount of time and commitment in my life as a running habit does in someone else’s.

There’s an undeniable commitment of time and effort . We have all different interests. And just as I said about fit people making judgements about others. I do something similar. If someone tells me that they don’t meditate, pray or see a therapist regularly. I’ll make a judgement about the state of their interior world. Again this isn’t necessarily bad, we all do it. It’s just a fact of life. 

I want to talk about crying and the release of emotion when meditating this week. For anyone that hasn’t ever meditated, you are just going to have to listen along and decide if im full of shit – more or less than usual. 

However, before we go any further I’d like to say that I think runners are full of shit too. I’ve never experienced runners high. Ever. But I totally believe that it’s a state of mind that exists and I’ll defer to anyone’s experience of it. But I still think its total shit.  The only thing that running makes me do is vomit and or kill myself. Running is as boring and it is a hell in my opinion.

I get it however…

Running is a mantra.

An embodied mantra. Putting one foot in front of another. People have told me before they sometimes feel emptied out by running resulting in an empty mind. Other times they’ll tell me that a feeling or emotion will rise unbidden and force out any other thoughts until they are placing one foot in front of another with tears streaming down their faces unbidden. Int he rain still 5k from home.

I’ve never experienced any of this I’m too full of rage about the whole affair. But I’m not about to deny that this happens. Especially one that is so common and attested to by so many. 

Everyone moves through their lives experiencing moments of emotional trauma at varying levels of intensity. Moments that are left unresolved or unaddressed as we go about our day. Eventually these moments are forgotten about. Pushed deep down into the psyche so as not to trouble the individual. These past experiences are loops of thought that the brain continues to hold on to and run like a subroutine. Mental baggage and clutter we haul around with us.

At some point in everyone’s meditation career they encounter an emotional experience thats like a stove top Bialetti hitting the boil. Tears will well up unbidden from the depths of your soul. A release. 

It is a significant moment. A reconnection of the mind with the body in a way that unless you have experienced it – is hard to describe. 

The tears just flow. Your body processes buried emotions that until that moment you have no idea that you have been carrying around. For the most part first experiences of tears seem to have no rhyme or reason to them. Simply the body unwinding and releasing the the buried loops of thought. Maybe it’s the small things. 

The unprocessed moment of frustration when someone cut you up in traffic a decade ago. Or when you thought you had lost your keys at the funfair. All these small traumas that it turns out you never let go of.

The reconnection of mind and body allows them to bubble to the surface. Sometimes its just be a few small tears, other times a flood with wracking sobs. But you might not be feeling anything. It’s a strange situation.

When it first happens, people can be shook by it deeply. Feel silly for crying etc.

You may feel a little more sensitive for a few days afterwards. Wearing your emotions a little closer to the surface than normal. Another small incident that otherwise you would have brushed off and left unprocessed can upset you. This is fine. Just let the emotions flow.

Its remarkable just how freeing this process is. Eventually if you are doing enough meditation, It makes your head explode and you can focus on old traumas specifically. On much deeper engrained loops of thought.

Your first terrible kiss. Or that time you said something stupid in a meeting. Resentment over getting picked last at school or whatever. These are more identifiable loops of thought that anyone who is kept awake at night by a busy brain can identify with. 

Instead of doing mindfulness and noting thoughts as they drift by, you can hold on to them like a mantra and re-experience them. Processing it as an adult and letting it go. 

A friend who runs was recently saying something similar. Sometimes they’ll get stuck on a thought as they are running. Every step fills them up with the memory, until they are completely full of it. Yes they are running but their mind is full and that’s when the tears start and they run it to its conclusion. 

Life is just the process of putting one step in front of another.

The script above is the original script I wrote for the episode. It may differ from what ended up in audio due to time constraints.

The post Crying Whilst Meditating | 2002 appeared first on thejaymo.net.

November 29, 2019

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Meditation 🌀 | Permanently Moved 🔊 | Politics ⚖️

This episode is guest hosted by Sci-Fi writer and Comrogue, Andrew Dana Hudson.
He talks about Mediation, Arm raising, Class Struggle and How Will We Live?

You can find links to all of Andrew’s published work on his website.
 
Links:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/AndrewDHudson
Andrew’s Website: https://andrewdanahudson.com/

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Midsommar vs The Buddha

 I’m a science fiction writer and sometimes solarpunk thinker, but today I want to build on some of Jay’s discussions about meditation. I’ve never felt like seated meditation was for me, but recently I’ve had better results as I deepened my yoga practice and had an opportunity to try more dynamic styles during a meditation weekend.

Some of these had the same goal as most seated meditation, to teach you to metacognite, to watch the fluctuations of your mind about, as the yoga sutras say, identifying with those fluctuations. But I also attended yoga classes. An arm raising workshop that engaged a different sort of technique. In arm raising, you simply stand together in a group and slowly lift and lower your arms.

The catch is, you only do it once, and it takes an entire hour. Yes, the facilitator talked us through stepping back from the pain in our shoulders and metacognizing about what was happening in our minds, but she also encouraged us, as a group, to recall moments in our life of being happy, sad, safe, vulnerable, betrayed, or loved.

Halfway through, we were all sobbing or laughing, both. I found out later, the technique came to our training by way of the notorious John McCaffey. For me, the real satisfaction in arm raising was collectivizing emotion and struggle, getting and giving permission to express pain and joy, sharing those feelings with a group, and literally standing in solidarity.

It made me think of the movie Midsommar, the feel good hit of 2019, where American tourists are weirded out by a Swedish commune’s collectivizing of pain and sensation through drugs, breathing, touch, and ritual. And yes, the tourists get murdered, but my hot take is that the movie would have worked just as well without that bit.

I, for one, watched Midsommar with a sense of longing behind my horror flick anxiety, because it reminded me that I don’t know my neighbors, I don’t feel connected to my community, I feel alienated. Alienation is in part a product of class society. It’s probably worst under capitalism, but I suspect people have experienced alienation as long as there has been class struggle, which of course is all of history.

Class society both separates us from each other and restricts our freedom to pursue what makes us individually happy. So I wonder, as a sci fi writer, how people will balance individuality and collectivity after we’ve finally overcome all the systems of oppression and exploitation. How will we live when, as my friend Stan Robinson wrote in his novel The Years of Rice and Salt, there is no more suffering than what life brings us for being born and having to die, and we see for the first time what kind of creatures we really are.

It seems to me the world’s spiritual wisdom offers two main strategies for dealing with that last kind of suffering. Individual journeys to enlightenment that help us step back from pain, desire, and ego, and solidarity, where others share your pain to make it more bearable and you have collective experiences that quiet the mind.

Most religions offer a bit of both strategies. You go to church to hear sermons on how to think about hardship and control desire, but also to sing together and lose yourself in the vibrations of voices becoming one. Both strategies suffer under capitalism. There’s alienation, but also so much anxiety and unfreedom.

I never forget that the Buddha was a wealthy prince who didn’t have to work to survive. He’s not wrong about desire, but it’s a lot easier to let go of earthly wants if you don’t have to worry about losing your health insurance or paying your rent. If we finally abolished class society, what would be the more effective or more popular strategy?

Would more people use their economic freedom to pursue individual journeys of enlightenment? Or would we walk back our alienated individuality and find satisfaction in being part of a group? Would it be more like the Midsummer Commune, where 10 billion individuals all becoming Buddhas in their own time?

Or both, or some combination, or neither? Sometimes I see people deride left ideals as demanding some hopelessly utopian destination. But if there are still such open questions about how we will actually achieve happiness and peace in our lives and what we do with these technologies of the self, how can the end of class society be the end of history?

These goals feel a lot more achievable if we don’t view them as an endpoint, but as just another step in a journey that we’re still defining, a forking path that’s still pulling us in different directions the whole way. Thanks for listening. I have a new story out tomorrow in Slate about AI and religion titled A Priest, a Rabbi, and a Robot Walk Into a Bar.

I’d love for you to read it. Find me on Twitter @AndrewDHudson and let me know what you think.

The post Midsommar vs The Buddha [Andrew Dana Hudson] | 1935 appeared first on thejaymo.net.

November 22, 2019

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Life 🧍 | Meditation 🌀 | Permanently Moved 🔊

S2E34

Recorded in the freezing cold on the sea wall at Saint Mary’s Bay Broadstairs. I talk about the accuracy of words and our completely lack of vocabulary when it comes to describing the experience of depression.
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Permanently moved is a personal podcast 301 seconds in length, written and recorded in one hour by @thejaymo

Website: https://thejaymo.net/
Podcast: http://permanentlymoved.online
Zine: http://startselectreset.com

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This episode has heavy sound design. It’s best listened to. This is possibly the best Episode I’ve made to date, and the single most honest thing I have ever put on the Internet.

Depression

I’m back in Thanet.

Down on the chalk.

I’m recording this outside on my field mic so apologies for the wind. I’m going to try and make this episode up as a go along. 

As I stand here on the sea wall. I’m struck at how we don’t have detailed words for some very important things.

I’m going to point things out as I see them.

Backwash.

There’s a billow coming over – literary a large wave of there in the sea

There’s the breakers, a wave that rolls over onto a beach

There’s the caps or top part of a waves.

If they are white like todays cold North Sea then they are crests or white tops.

It’s just gone low tide.

I can see the high water mark on the beach. Before it reached that point we would have called the water coming in – the flood tide, or reaching high tide.

Probably about 7 o’clock this morning.

There’s a new moon next week. There’ll be spring tides, when there’ll be the greatest difference between high and low water, also after full moons. In between the fathers phases we get neap tides.

I’ve moved a bit further down the coast. Behind me is the land, made of chalk and in front of me the sand, rocks, sea and sky.

I can see ripples on the surface of pools. There are rollers further out. Some break and spume across the sand.

Spume is the name for the bubbles waves make.

It’s not rough enough for white horses but the sea still swells, and heaves creating troughs between its crests.

And I know if I was up on the clifftop and not down here I’d see the undercurrent that pops round the coast just off shore. And if I was in the water I’d feel the undertow moving in the opposite direction to the water above it as the waves lap at the beach.

It’s early afternoon and the sun is nearly setting. There’s glitter on the waves from the light setting round the coast.

Words are there to confirm our realities, they are the scaffold by which all of humanity keeps a loose understanding of the chaos of the world together. There is a reason we have so many words for rain and for the wind.

When experiences are elemental you can be pretty sure that the person next to you is experiencing the same sensation as you are.

But it is not good enough to just say ‘it’s raining’. What kind?

Is it drizzle?
A deluge?
A downpour?
A squall?

By giving these things names we can confirm our reality to one another.

“Yes the thing i’m experiencing IS the same experience as you are having – its called X” 

It’s funny isn’t it. That I can stand here and name all these things about the sea around me. And yet we have so few names or terms for depression.

I said the word spume earlier, a word for bubbles that come from waves.

Why don’t we have a word so that everyone knows what it means when you say you feel like you are disappearing?

In her novel Alaska, Sue Saliba described another moment as:

…for a moment, she let herself be defeated, wished herself not exactly annihilation but into a temporary absence, into being nowhere and no one just for a little while.

Sue Saliba – Alaska

We (or I) needed a word for that too. Last year.

I have been through a weird emotional journey in the last 2 years or so. Since I quit the last start up I was working at full time because of stress. I was getting chest pains and was holding so much tension in my legs, I could barely walk. At the end of 2017 I fell into a deep dark hole and tried to dig myself a rest for most of 2018. This year was more like walking out the a long shadow. And I am pleased to say with confidence that I am much MUCH better now. But it has taken a long time. I am so grateful too Eve for her support.

But its weird isn’t it?

We have so many words to accurately describe and confirm the world around us but fall short when we reach for words to accurately describe how we are feeling.

Major, Chronic, Manic, Periodic.

These are all classifications that in my mind fall short and are inadequate to the truth of the matter.

It’s not just important for people to be more open about our mental states and mental lives.  But to find ways to evoke and communicate things that 1 in 4 people will be affected by at some point in their lives.

We need not create new words for words sake. But to develop and adopt a more poetic language around our mental and inner lives.
Our ancestors had the four temperaments:

Melancholic, Phlegmatic, Sanguine and Choleric.

Perhaps we could look there. Before the DSM stole melancholic and medicalised it. 

I’m away next week and have a guest attempting the 301 format. Look out for that and I’ll speak to you all again in Dec.

The above is the original script I wrote for the episode. It may differ from what ended up in audio due to time constraints.

The post Depression (CW) | 1934 appeared first on thejaymo.net.

July 11, 2019

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Meditation 🌀 | Permanently Moved 🔊 | Sorcery 🧞

S2E15

 

This week I discuss methods of increasing your ability to interact with the liminal and the imaginary.

Note: I set some homework.

—

You can subscribe to Permanently Moved in itunes: permanentlymoved.online/itunes or search in all your favourite podcatchers.

Permanently moved is a personal podcast 301 seconds in length, written and recorded in one hour by @thejaymo

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In (+) Through The Looking Glass

‘Let’s pretend that you’re the Red Queen, Kitty! Do you know, I think if you sat up and folded your arms, you’d look exactly like her. Now do try, there’s a dear!’ Alice got the Red Queen off the table, and set it up before the kitten for it to imitate: however, the thing didn’t succeed, principally, Alice said, because the kitten wouldn’t fold its arms properly. So, to punish it, she held it up to the Looking-glass, that it might see how sulky it was—‘and if you’re not good directly,’ she added, ‘I’ll put you through into Looking-glass House. How would you like that?’

Through the Looking Glass, by Lewis Carroll Chapter One 

I caused a few frowns and murmurings amongst close friends last year by posting on twitter about seeing things in the mirror. Specifically, seeing a woman sewing a shoe made of rough fibers that looked exactly one like one discovered in a cave in North America thought to be 9000 years old. Y’all might think I’m a crazy man too. But I don’t care. I refer you to the two shows I’ve done on experience.

I started with the Carroll quote as I really like the term ‘looking glass’ to describe all phenomena that can be produced by scrying, or doing mirror work. As the outcomes can be so much more than what’s most commonly described as ‘psychomanteum work’.

I’ve seen all sorts of trippy shit in the polished copper mirror we have. It’s so simple I’ll tell you how to do it right now: 

• Sit in a dark quiet room with only one little source.
• Have the mirror tilted away from you so you can’t see your own reflection or the light source in it’s surface.
• Stare into the mirror and in the gloom things will begin to cohere.

That’s basically it.

You’ll see psychedelic colours, fast expanding geometric forms and shapes that have wild leaps of logic. Once you get through the veil all the things seem to tune in.

If you get good at it, you can watch it just like TV. It comes so naturally to me that it’s impossible not to intuit that folks have done the same thing for millennia in polished stones and reflecting pools.

If you want to get better at mirror work, journeying or have tried lucid dreaming in the past here are two exercises:

Exercise 1: Homunculus Hands

In a darkened room, hold your hand up in front of your face with fingers relaxed. Have a light source behind your hand. This can be a candle or a window letting street light in from outside. But sure that its full brightness is covered by the hand.

Stare at it until you are well aware of the sensation of the image having been ‘burned in’. I’m sure you know what Im talking about a bunch of optical illusions are also activated in this way. Once satisfied. Close your eyes and drop your hand to your side. You should still be able to see your hand as it was in front of your face. As you recognise the outline of your hand – in your minds eye – try and close your fingers that are in the after image. Try opening them again. Try twisting your hand around at the wrist. These are all super familiar motions that your brain knows how to do and I think that you will be surprised at how quickly you can manipulate your hand in the liminal. 

At some point you’ll realise that your hand is both on your lap, and being manipulated in this ‘other’ space, the dexterity of your ghostly hand should feel natural like its actually there. 

I’m not suggesting you’ll be able to do it straight away but your mileage may vary. However, if you make it a practice. Do it nightly before bed – it’ll come. The more control you develop in manipulating this 3rd imagineal hand will translate across the imaginal realms. 

I think this technique works very well alongside the manipulation of the platonic solids in the mind’s eye you find in the early mystery cults: Spinning them around, turning them over or changing the viewing angle like a 3rd person video game camera

Build up these tools and your dreams can become fantastically liminal spaces.

Once you feel comfortable and confident that your hand can exist in this space – try this.

Exercise 2: A Bed Time Walk

Before going to sleep, lay on your back with your eyes closed. Regulate your breathing and try to feel everything: The sheets, the bed cover, the feeling of the pillow case against your hair etc.

Be as present as possible.

When you know where you are, in your minds eye pull back the covers, sit up, turn sideways and imagine putting your feet on the floor.

We all know that reality is a spectrum, but once your feet are on the floor it should feel quote unquote real as when you were manipulating your hand in the first exercise. The next challenge is to stand up, get out of bed and walk out into the liminal. Once you can do this you’re away. Who knows what’s outside the bedroom door.

Go for a walk, see what’s around. Hell, leave the flat and walk around the neighbourhood.

Things might get a little weird – that’s normal and even better.

Anyway, that’s it for this week. A big hello any and all new subscribers, i appreciate you listing. I’d love for all ya’ll to try this and report back your successes, failures, frustrations. I’m interested.  

The script above is the original script. It may differ from what ended up in the audio due to time constraints and editing.

The post In (+) Through The Looking Glass | 1915 appeared first on thejaymo.net.