Home
Meditation
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 2638
There's an article online about how men, given nothing to do for 15 minutes in an empty room, preferred to give themselves electric shocks rather than suffer the disquieting silence of their thoughts. You can read it here: http://www.spring.org.uk/2014/07/people-choose-electric-shocks-over-sitting-quietly-for-15-minutes-and-thinking.php
"Not me" I think, and I laugh. I'd be good at meditation. I had my own variety, which involved laying on the sofa or the bed and closing my eyes and thinking pleasant thoughts about cute girls. Time would fly by lickety-split. I never tried generating sweats, like the Tibetan Monks do, or the Yogic flying, but I'd probably be pretty good at that too, if I put my mind to it.
By strange coincidence, while at the therapists discussing the creative blockages that have dragged me there she suggests, in the course of our discussion, that I try meditation. Why not? She recommends me to a website - fragrantheart.com. I almost gag, she's got the right idea, but it sounds pretty .... well ...
In any event there's no rejecting the cure, and I'm obliged to try her advice, especially as I've paid for it, and I start with a couple of the introductory meditations, 2 minutes apiece.
The effect is noticeable, it increases productivity manyfold, there's no denying it's helping. Calm, silence the inner voices, calm, quiet, focus...
"Breathe in Love, breathe out Love, Breathe in Compassion, Breathe out Compassion, Breathe in Creativity...."
But it's not terribly manly, with the ambient new-age music in the background, and I puzzle over ways to improve it. Change the background meditation noises, add in things like jackhammers, saws, drills, engine noises, tools. A more manly narrator. Maybe this is where I can make my million dollars...
It's painful, this 2 minute meditation a day, and I find ways to avoid it. I've read some articles about tDCS, how running an electric current across your brain can improve flow, and I set about collecting the materials, wires, batteries, resistors, not so much shocking the brain, just a slight tingling...
Meanwhile there's the Violet Wand, an antique quack medical device which I fancy does the same thing, adjustable short shocks across my scalp, the visible arc of high voltage singing my hair, the smell of ozone, the meditation, I can come back to it, this will be easier...
Isaac Asimov on Creativity
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Link of the day
- Hits: 2510
A brief article featuring the late Isaac Asimov explaining the different means people develop & exercise their creativity:
Link: http://www.technologyreview.com/view/531911/isaac-asimov-mulls-how-do-people-get-new-ideas/
6 lb gold nugget found in California
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Found
- Hits: 2445
A 6 lb gold nugget found in Butte County, California, sells for around $400,000, around 4 times it's actual gold value (nuggets have a higher "curiosity" value and so sell for more").
Links: http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-gold-nugget-sells-anonymous-buyer-20141027-story.html & http://www.foxnews.com/us/2014/10/26/giant-gold-nugget-found-in-california-finds-secret-buyer/
- Thanks Ryan for that one
Note how the seller is keeping the location & his identity a secret. Smart man.
Nostromo
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Dreams
- Hits: 2240
I'm dreaming of some ancient celestial event, a comet, or meteor called Nostromo, that passed close to the earth in 1475. So close, in fact, that it's magnetism lifted into the air small keys and items of iron cutlery, carrying them with it until somewhere above the Arctic ocean it grew far enough away that it released them all, In the Arctic ocean now there's a giant mass of rusting keys dropped there by the passing comet, the history books are filled with accounts of this wonder, flickers in the clouds like lightening as it passes, people outside in wonder watching as their keys leave their hands and float momentarily in the air before being carried off....
Page 626 of 877