Life Is Such A Sweet Insanity.

I have discovered a way to calm myself down when I get stressed at work. Yes, I am still plugging away at the binaural beats experiment that I mentioned last week but occasionally at work I need an image for me to focus on so that I can re-center myself.

Naked photos of my favorite guys would do wonders but would probably not be appropriate for work.

Instead I have a photograph of a sunset as my desktop background. I recently discovered this particular photo and I found very quickly that it helps me find an inner peace. In this photo the landscape is simple. There are a few scraggly mountains with a plain off in the distance. It all seems so natural and untouched, just as nature intended. There’s no one around, instilling a quiet in the photo. The sky even seems quiet as it is filled with muted hues of blue and red. The sun sets off in the distance, gently falling below the horizon, with the promise that it’ll return the next day.

The special thing about this sunset is where it was photographed, for the photo I focus on is a photograph of a Martian sunset, and I find it amazingly beautiful.

A larger version of the photograph is available here.

In this season of “goodwill toward men”, the same season that has been highlighted by the fatal trampling of a man trying to do his job at a Black Friday sale, all in the interest of purchasing a deeply discounted gift to give another in remembrance of someone else’s birthday that most likely took place in the spring or fall, I would like to address a misconception about my religious beliefs.

There are some that believe that because I am not afraid to question some of the idiocy that people spout all in the name of religion that I therefore do not believe in some sort of higher power. This is not true. To think that human beings are the most evolved and highest power in the Universe is not only naive but greatly insulting to whomever designed this whole master plan. I do not believe that there is a White Man with flowing robes and a beard sitting up in the sky somewhere ready to damn his creations to eternal damnation because they have made errors during this whole learning process called life. I do not believe that there is a whole “pick and choose” process of who gets into paradise and who doesn’t. I do not believe that any man that was granted and therefore wielded such awesome power would have such failings as hate, bigotry and revenge.

These are human emotions, dahling.

I am a reincarnationist. I believe that we come back to learn more and more about this whole human experience. In between human lives we get to hang out on “the other side” for a while, discuss, study and reflect as to what we learned during out last life and then go back and try again. I also believe that there is a higher power that we can only strive to comprehend. This higher power isn’t “male” or “female” but the some of both. This higher power is constructed of love and is all encompassing. It can be seen all around us, in nature, in each others. Some choose to tuck it away but it’s there.

Many organised religions do their best to scare their followers so that they’ll just keep following them. Such organisations are nothing more than a grand attempt at controlling the masses. Those that are controlled fear what lies beyond that control and that’s why they do their best to keep the “free-thinkers” down. They are afraid of those that step outside the box and actually take time to think for themselves.

Do I consider myself an atheist? I do not, but I consider my beliefs to be “spiritual”, not “religious”. My primary belief is that we were designed to think, and thinking is what we should do.

There is a bit of an uproar over an atheist display in the state of Washington. While I fully support this display, simply because I believe anyone should be able to speak their mind, I really like the simple message that they are sharing with the world.

“Just be good for goodness’ sake.”

Browsing through the “App Store” on my iPhone the other night I noticed an application called “mindWave”. This particular program is designed to help the listener with meditation techniques through the use of sounds, a sort of shortcut into a transcendental state. Think of it as Zen with a technological twist.

The mindWave program, along with many other products out there, use a technique called binaural beats. Using a pair of headphones and stereo sound, certain brainwaves are triggered by the difference in frequencies in the sound that is being played by the program. The tones are masked in pink noise so that you don’t go mad from listening to something akin to the old Emergency Broadcast System two-tone warning sound. This Wikipedia article explains the theory much better than I ever could. The mindWave program uses different frequencies to start up different types of brain waves depending on what you’re trying to achieve: deep sleep, mental clarity, focus, energising, etc.

I tried the program yesterday morning and found myself to be a little more energised than usual for the early shift at work. Granted, this could be just a placebo effect but nevertheless, I felt good yesterday. Last night I tried the “get ready for sleep” tones and found that I slept right through the night until the alarm went off. I haven’t done that in a few weeks. Again, it could be a placebo effect but I must admit that I feel well rested today.

Similar more elaborate and expensive programs have much more to offer in the types of binaural beats produced and what it can do for the human mind. Some caution that because of the meditation-like qualities from this practice, one can find old ill feelings surfacing as the mind rediscovers this negativity and tries to purge it. The same thing happens during traditional meditation. I must admit that I am finding myself a little cranky today and I’m curious as to if this is the reason why. It could be that I’m just in a cranky mood. I have a few demons in my closet that could use a good exorcism, though so maybe some of those cobwebs are getting cleaned out from parts of my brain that I haven’t visited in a while.

Suffice it to say that I am very interested with this technological twist on meditation. While I have no intention (nor the funds) to invest in some elaborate program, my little mindWave iPhone app is quite intriguing.

I look forward to continuing the experiment.

It is the afternoon of Thanksgiving day and Earl and I are playing it low key again this year. We have relatives scattered all over the Northeastern United States and parts of Switzerland this year, so we felt it was best that we just enjoy each other’s company for a quiet Thanksgiving celebration at home. Dinner isn’t until 5 p.m., so right now the delicious scents of Earl’s cooking efforts are wafting through the house as I type. It invokes many feelings of contentment.

A number of years ago my mother tried to start a family tradition where we would all say what we are thankful for as we sat at the dinner table and as the steaming, delicious food cooled down. I don’t know what inspired her to indulge in this Walton moment, but my aunt and uncle and my cousins didn’t feel the same sort of inspiration. I guess they didn’t buy into that mush. My mother still declared all that she is thankful for and though I never admitted it, I appreciated her efforts that year. Today It seems to be out of style to say what we are thankful on our blogs, as I have read several blogs today that featured news reports, deliberate efforts not to get mushy and bare body parts being suspiciously blurry and/or blacked out. I think I’m going to stick to my mother’s tradition this year.

I am thankful for a number of things. First and foremost is my partner, my soul mate and my husbear, the one that I call “the big guy” on Twitter. That would be Earl. After all these years he still puts up with the eccentric and erratic behaviour I bring to the table. We laugh at things that few would understand and he is always willing to take part in any scheme that I have cooked up. If this were a Bette Midler song I would have to say that he is my hero and the wind beneath my wings. I love my husbear in ways that I can’t describe, can’t express and just know to be.

I’m thankful for many others in my life. Though I tend to be a loner of sorts there are a few that I truly cherish and sometimes take for granted: Steve and Tim in Buffalo and Tim and Gordon in Cheyenne. I miss all of them and look forward to the next time we can get together. I’m also very thankful to have Greg and Dave as part of my life. Life is truly an adventure and should always include personal evolution, humour and a sense of destiny. It is good to be able to share the adventure with likeminded individuals.

There are many other things that I am thankful for including a warm home, a comfortable existence and a loving cat that adds his own paw print to The Manor. There are other folks too numerous to mention as well and for some reason I feel like I should get some sort of gold statue at the end of this entry so I’m just going to say this: Happy Thanksgiving and Blessed Be.