links for 2009-07-30
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Electronic Music Scene in Egypt and wider Arab World.
links for 2009-07-26
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Fascinating site and blog. This guy has some interesting ideas.
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200 Drum Machines
links for 2009-07-20
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Elements series by Abre Ojos. Need to finish watching these.
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Orchestral and awesome piano samples.
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The affect of various keys, (musically) and their supposed effect.
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Check this out later, lots of good sounding folks.
links for 2009-07-19
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Download some of this stuff.
links for 2009-07-11
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neat summer reading list
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Rules for wwII air combat simulation.
links for 2009-07-09
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Anxiety self help program
links for 2009-07-08
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A link I found on Z'ev's website about Shamanic journey work. I've done the work before but needed this little kick to have a go again. It's also a good introduction for anyone wanting to get into this form of meditation. Very gentle.
Exercise
A handy exercise I just did, sort of adapted from Bandler (NLP). I’ve been having trouble getting calmed down from yesterdays panic attack. I had to be driven to work today because I tried to drive and was rather frightened that I wouldn’t be able to breathe properly (or whatever this thing is). Here follows the excercise that seemed to help me find a center again, I sort of ran through this in my mind:
Standing outside is easy, it’s simple to relax out here with the earth solidly under you… it’s easy to breathe.. it’s easy to just let your mind gently drift to a place where you felt calm and in control, you can feel how solid everything is… now think of the feeling you have right now the opposite.. make it a picture to put alongside the other one, make it smaller as the other one grows larger and larger until it fills your consiousness …. now step into the larger picture feel the calm, control, feel how easy it is to be in this particular place and .. now feel it, make it bigger turn up the feelings of calm and control be in the picture. Take a deep breath and let it out in this picture… bring it to where you are now sink it in.
The attacks..
…are continuing, last month I began having what could be described as ‘panic attacks’. They were severe and almost always happened on my drive home. To the point I felt like driving myself to the hospital the first couple, I felt as if I was having asthma attacks or something. When I was able to calm myself using deep breathing and visualization I realized that may not be the case. I spent a week or so analyzing what might cause them and got them fairly well under control by fighting them off at the onset.
I’m beginning to think there’s more to this though, and that’s unfortunate because I’d like it to just go away. I’ve decided to document an attack here (for future reference when I talk to my doctor again):
- I’m driving, or not particularly doing anything useful. Mainly this seems to happen when I’m driving, specifically when I’m driving from work. Once it happened when I became abruptly angry about something, and once when sitting at work.
- I might or might not be focusing on my breath.
- I hit a point where my breathing feels labored, or shallow. Then I get a ‘butterflies in stomach’ sort of feeling (tingly) in my gut. I feel scared that my breathing is messed up.
- Sometimes taking a drink of water or burping alleviates it temporarily.
- If I try to take deep breaths it seems to help, but sometimes it makes me feel more exasperated for breath, I basically have to begin letting myself know I can breathe; if that makes sense. However chanting seems to help for some reason, and it doesn’t matter what as long as resonate the sound.
- When I get home sometimes it’s hard to calm down. I do deep belly breathing and rooting and that definitely helps.
I’m at a loss. I have a follow up appointment with my doctor at the end of this month, he gave me a brief once over and asked me to describe what happened last visit. He stated that it did sound like “Panic Attacks” and he also listened to my lungs and did blood work. He felt that if I could control this I shouldn’t go on any type of medication because it might just make aspects worse, I do enjoy being in full control of consiousness at most times so I agreed. He put me on a Vitamin D regimen because the blood work said I was deficient. I was ok for a couple of weeks, now it’s back.
The Garden
So I have this love/hate relationship with my backyard. The ‘idea’ of a backyard is appealing, yet somehow getting around to mowing or working in it is difficult. Last year I tried doing a Square Foot Garden
Today though, as I murdered the tall grasses in the backyard, while the gears in my head turned over and over. I realized something: The garden would make a nice altar, with the goal to weed out my consciousness. This is rather trivially simple idea but to me it’s kind of profound. My magickal work has slacked off, I’m undergoing a fairly deep study of the tarot but I don’t do a lot of trans formative work. After finishing the mowing I grabbed the shovel and began the task of turning the soil and pulling the tall weeds. I realized if I did this everyday eventually the bits of weeds and things left over would decompose and I could begin planting for fall. The same thing needs to happen with me, I need to spend the time (daily) to clear out the weeds that are plaguing my mind. The little nitpicks, like with the planting, the nitpick of ‘it has to be done right’. There is no right doing, only doing.