Dienstag, 31. Mai 2022
Geometry of Electric Universe
Montag, 30. Mai 2022
Sonntag, 29. Mai 2022
Samstag, 28. Mai 2022
WOMANHOOD ≠ MOTHERHOOD
https://www.tarshi.net/inplainspeak/i-column-womanhood-motherhood/
“Just like any woman, … we weave our stories out of our bodies.
some of us through our children or our art; some do it just by living.
It’s all the same.”
– Francesca Lia Block
After checking my vitals, Grace, my much-loved acupuncturist, looked at me with concern in her eyes. I had walked very fast in searing mid-June heat to her office, just over a mile from my home, and arrived hot and sweaty for treatment on my lower back. Grace didn’t mind the sweat. It was my cold belly that concerned her.
“How are your periods these days?”
“They’ve been mostly regular but since last year, they’ve been becoming erratic.”
“Your chi flow is uneven. There’s a lot of heat in your body and your oestrogen levels seem to be off. And I know you haven’t been sleeping well for some time now… I think we should treat this aggressively for a few months and see what happens. How old are you?”
“Thirty-eight.”
“Ah, yes, so… But maybe it’s too early for you… Let’s treat and see what happens.”
I felt a jolt through my body, the foggy-headedness that accompanies a steamy New York summer’s day quickly lifting. I knew what Grace was referring to. As I lay on the treatment table, I tangled with my feelings about the suspected prognosis. I felt some grief, a sense of loss, the likes of which one would feel on the cusp of any rite of passage. But I was not devastated. In some ways, I was relieved.
I love children and have at various times in my life flirted with the idea of adoption. But I have known since I was a child that I did not want to birth children. I have never been vague or ambivalent about this decision. I have never minced my words nor veiled my attitude about motherhood. I have been consistently clear and concise that this is not my calling. It’s not that I don’t value it or have ‘more important things to do’ with my life. I simply have no desire to bear children and it is not for want of experiencing pregnancy. I was pregnant in my late twenties and did not enjoy one moment of it. When I miscarried, I mourned for the soul that would have incarnated through me but I felt tremendous relief. For me, and many other women like me, my creative function can be expressed in a multitude of ways that may never involve my reproductive capacity.
When asked – confronted, actually – about my maternal status, I have been met with equal levels of criticism, gainsaying and disbelief from people known and unknown: “But why?!” “Really? Are you sure!” “Ah, you still have time! Maybe you’ll change your mind?” “Well, clock’s ticking! You better get a move on before you lose the opportunity altogether!” “Oh, but a little Remy would be so cute!” “But look how great you are with children! You’re a natural!”
And this: “It’s when you have children that you really learn about unconditional love!”
Despite my outward confidence, my belief in my right to choose how best to live my life, it is the continuous and often relentless questioning about my maternal status that serves to undo me. It entails such a profound denial of personhood that I really wonder how free we women are to be who we want to be. The subtext seems to be: womanhood is synonymous with motherhood.
A woman with children is more woman, and so I, childless, am less than. In that context, a woman’s personal wishes/choices seem to be neither here nor there. Any other contributions we make to society are cancelled out by our unwillingness to participate in womanhood’s most sanctified role. It would seem to me that despite the significant gains made by and for women, the myth of Motherhood continues to be used – collectively and interpersonally – as a subtle weapon of control, of policing women’s function in society. It is yet another location in which we are reminded that our biology is the beginning and end of who we are and what we can contribute to the world.
If the growing popularity of the NoMo (Not Mother) movement is any indication, I’m not alone in feeling these sentiments. And according to various studies and reports, more and more women around the world are actively choosing to not have children. What does this mean for womanhood in the 21st century?
Though we live in societies geared towards families, the subject of motherhood is fraught. On the one hand there is the fact that too many women around the world – including where I live in the ‘enlightened’ West – do not get the pre- and post-natal care they need. Outside of a few remarkable countries, maternity leave is abysmal, necessitating that ‘working women’ return almost immediately to the workplace or quit their jobs. Not to mention that reproductive justice and appropriate women-centered health care is hardly the norm. It is additionally by and large women who are the primary caretakers in society, not just of children but elders too. On the other hand, society tells us we have a duty to procreate. It’s as if women who choose not to bear children are straying so far from the natural norm that our actions could serve to ultimately upend the human race!
My mom was made for motherhood. She raised my younger brother and me by herself, making ends meet by cleaning neighbours’ homes and taking care of other people’s children. Because cash was always short, I know she often went without in order to provide for us. Despite how difficult conditions were, there was a constant flow of lost souls passing through our kitchen – young people who’d left home early or were kicked out and needed a bite to eat and a sympathetic ear. My mother still talks about how much joy she had in carefully choosing our names, in exposing us to the world at large, wanting to make sure we had the best of all opportunities. She would scrimp and save to send us on trips overseas each year, to pay for language, sports and dance classes and expensive dental work, so that we could live out the fullest expression of who we are. And if she could have had more children, she would have made room for them too. It’s as if despite the struggles and hardship, motherhood and caretaking was a road to discovering more about herself.
Ever since I can remember, my mother has told me stories of her mother, Bhiji, who died at the tender age of 50, eight short years after migrating to London from the Punjab. My mother took to saying that “Bhiji died of a broken heart”. Though a very talented seamstress who played several musical instruments and practised homeopathy, like many women of her generation, Bhiji’s was not an easy or happy life. Her own mother died in childbirth and Bhiji was “married off” to my Papaji when she was still young. Papaji’s family was less than welcoming of her, often reminding her that she was an orphan and treating her like an outsider. Bhiji ultimately became mother to five children though it’s possible she successfully aborted several others. Her memory can vary on this, but my mother has said more than a few times that Bhiji tried to no avail to abort her. She is supposed to have apparently thrown herself down stairs, sat in steaming hot water until she could barely stand it and eaten foods that were known to trigger miscarriages. This would have been in 1949, just two years after the Partition of India which forced my family to leave their ancestral home in West Punjab for East Punjab.
It was Bhiji who I saw in my mind’s eye when I miscarried. It was as if she was with me, in spirit, to reassure me that I was not wrong for wanting this to happen.
Though my mother remembers Bhiji as a deeply loving and committed mother, it’s hard not to wonder what Bhiji would have done with her life if her life had not already been decided for her, if she lived in a place and time that respected her personhood and supported her in more meaningful ways. I can’t say I know because I don’t think that even in 2016 we live there yet.
Here: three generations of women with three distinct attitudes to motherhood. Because womanhood is not a uniform experience and it doesn’t necessarily involve a calling towards childbirth.
There are as many reasons why women don’t have kids as there are for why they do. But that the latter is normalised while the former is ‘otherised’, shamed and rendered suspect is a flattening of womanhood. It is the shoving of womanhood and, by virtue, all women into horribly tight spaces, denying us recognition of the full expression of our creative offerings.
At the same time, for all our veneration of motherhood, we do an awful job of honouring mothers. We systemically fail them by short-changing them, denying them material support and meaningful recognition and making a space for them at the highest levels of decision-making. And so we must collectively rethink our attitudes around motherhood and womanhood, checking any tendency to conflate the two but also going beyond semantics to honouring all women and, in turn, raising the consciousness of humanity. This need not just be the role of mothers. In this sense, we are all mothers because we all have the duty to uplift humankind.
“’Cause I’m a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That’s me.”
– Maya Angelou, Phenomenal Woman
Donnerstag, 26. Mai 2022
Yoga Journal - The Dark Side of Meditation
So people get too much trauma and even psychosis from meditation. I did little meditation at first in the 90s getting started with mantra beads. Later I could not concentrate and found it boring. Later as my kundalini got overactive, which triggered emotional trauma as described by meditators, I could not meditate due to headaches or similar. The last year and a half I have done it rather successfully to balance and develop that very kundalini energy and it seemed to help. I hope this can continue positively for me. Speed bumps come but they are a challenge. Each chakra and the merians along the body need to develop relatively equally. In yoga there are several basic directions: ' bhakti(heart centered), jnana( wisdom or mind centered), karma yoga( action centered perhaps from gut, arms and legs), tantra( erotic). I suppose that too much emphasis on any one path creates imbalances, just as in normal life one has a geek, jock, ladies man, sentimental person. Yoga means union, which emphasizes balance of the whole person. We all go through life phases where we change interests entirely, sometimes becoming a romantic or a bookworm or becoming very athletic or sensitive in love( pets, children). Through chakra and energy work we can accelerate these phases. Obviously the modern meditation craze focuses on mindfulness, a purely jnana type mental control practice like vipassana. Overdone this can throw people off balance. If they are easygoing and affectionate this might go against their habits and disturb their mental balance, especially an intensive course, as are often on offer. Heart based meditation might be better. For someone with childhood sexual trauma or a strong intellectual bent, heart based meditation could open up all sorts of problems. This must be approached slowly and with caution to avoid overtraumatizing oneself too rapidly by opening oneself up too quickly to normal loving and sexual feelings that an average person would be quite used too. Karma yoga is simply doing good deeds for others like volunteering in social causes but also opening up your body through sports, yoga asanas, wg
hich is at any rate extremely important to balance your energies, regardless of whether or not you do any type of meditation.
This article sounds good. Do research and try different types of meditation, yoga, etc to see what works best for you.
Meditation Observations from Others and Myself on Body Sensation, Visuals
https://www.dharmaoverground.org/discussion/-/message_boards/message/101959
Forum: Dharma Overground Discussion Forum
hi everyone,
i started this thread because i want to get a feel of how impermanence is perceived via the visual field. since there are a lot experienced and advanced practitioners here, maybe a few of you could describe your experience of impermanence in the "sight space" no matter how fleeting.
to get an idea of what i'm talking about here's a link to Shinzen Young's description of impermanence via the visual field in one of his retreats. ~http://bit.ly/31ionE (mp3)
check it out and feel free to riff on it and compare it with your experience.
in my case, i find it difficult to detect impermanence visually, at least for now. the easiest way for me to experience the micro-level of impermanence is via somatic feel (bodily sensations). i don't always experience this during meditation, but whenever i do i feel that my whole body is tingling, shifting, expanding, contracting, vibrating, and flowing like a seaweed under water. overall, it's a pleasant experience. i usually experience this during lying down meditation when my body is fully relaxed. however, as of now, i have yet to perceive impermanence in my visual field. maybe because i don't do kasina practice
in the meantime, i'd like to hear from those who are already experienced in perceiving impermanence through vision. what's it like? how does it impact your day to day life? can you perceive it at will or does it just comes and goes? maybe i could pick up some pointers and apply it to my practice.
https://www.dharmaoverground.org/-/message_boards/message/5807824
It's my first post here, welcome everybody.
Little background, I've been doing vipassana for few months on and off, max 20 minutes a day. A month ago I discovered concentration meditation and have commited to become good at it. I started doing 30 min. sessions daily, now I'm up to 60 minutes per average.
My concentration is very good and I just don't get distracted, if a thought happens I simply notice it and continue watching my breath.
Few questions:
1) Every time I meditate now, after few minutes my visual field slowly turns purple. First it's like a little purple disk, but when I focus on it it tends to get bigger, eventually my whole visual field turns purple. Any thought on what that is and what that means? When I first got it (like 3 weeks ago) I though that I'm entering 1st Jhana and felt amazing, but as time passes I feel that this euphoria was self generated, not something linked directly to this experience. Just an idea of getting better that made me feel good.
I don't think that it's mind-generated state, because I don't cling to it anymore and it still happens every time. Then throughout my session this effect goes away and then comes back again.
2) Last 2 days I decided to meditate for 2 hours to see what happens, I was able to access pretty remarkable state but I'm not sure what it was in terms of Jhanas. After about an hour my concentration was extremely strong and one-pointed so I decided to expand my focus from breath to breath + visual + sounds + my whole body awareness. I was able to do this with no problem. I felt good, content, not really euphoric. No thoughts. My breaths were basically: in breath, slowly out, about 5 seconds break, then repeat. I felt like I could meditate forever.
From what I've read this description looks a lot like 3-4 Jhana (correct me if I'm wrong) but if that is to be the case then at some point there should be the second Jhana along the way, characterized by intense joy. The problem is that no such thing happened. So it makes me wonder what it was and I would like to get some ideas from you, more experienced meditators.
end quotes
I looked this up as after a year and a half meditating where I can' t really stop all thoughts but mainly concentrate on bodily sensations, i.e. developing more and more intense energy flow throughout my body, something upon which I focus in yoga, tai chi and daily life anyway, that today I focused more on my visual field whic I noticed could be all blue, then it goes away to being very bright and after a while returns to blue and at the end tends to purple. I think this is a good practice. Just focusing on body energy flow means focusing on feelings. If this iis mature enough I might get away from that to the energy phenomenon itself, being light processing through brain and body, and thereby its control and the control of emotions or the dispassive observation of such. I imagine going to different areas of focus is good for growth, learning.
Mittwoch, 25. Mai 2022
Dienstag, 24. Mai 2022
Montag, 23. Mai 2022
Sonntag, 22. Mai 2022
Samstag, 21. Mai 2022
Freitag, 20. Mai 2022
Donnerstag, 19. Mai 2022
Preventing Alzheimers and Functionalist Holistic Medicine
Mittwoch, 18. Mai 2022
Dienstag, 17. Mai 2022
Montag, 16. Mai 2022
Sonntag, 15. Mai 2022
2: Receptive Power - Iching
I got this reading a week or so ago.
https://divination.com/iching/lookup/2-2/
Great receptivity attracts great gifts and great blessings. A natural responsiveness attracts success through support and perseverance rather than bold action. Thus, a wise person demonstrates strength like a powerful but gentle mare. This auspicious hexagram, consisting of all yin lines, represents the power of the feminine principle, which has not been honored in our modern world; however, such receptivity is much more powerful and healing than we think.
The receptive force is sensual and subtle, and can be overlooked by too much thinking, talking, and planning. When spring comes, does the grass “plan” to grow? This is a time to concentrate on realities rather than potentials—with how to respond to a situation rather than how to direct or manipulate it. The mature feminine allows herself to be guided by a higher power and is skilled at graceful acceptance. Spiritually, her quiet contribution is highly effective, bringing a deeply felt kind of success.
Do not be too assertive at this time. If you try to direct things now, you are liable to become confused or alienated. Opening yourself to receive what you attract should be your primary concern. Be patient, and take your time. Draw strength from mindfulness, and you will be doubly fortunate. Focus more on feeling than on action. Be broad and deep in your attitude so that you accept everything that comes with grace and equanimity. Be receptive and spacious like the ocean; let the river of changes flow to you. You might allow a partner to take the lead for now. Strive for a natural responsiveness that is based on inner strength rather than outer show. You will be able to go further by letting go of control rather than forging ahead under your own steam. Receptive power arises through alignment with creative power, not in opposition to it.
Samstag, 14. Mai 2022
Freitag, 13. Mai 2022
Donnerstag, 12. Mai 2022
Western Devil Came From Greek Gods
3 Major Transits yesterday concretely and building up over time
Mars conjunct Sun- Learned about anger management
Jupiter conjunct Mercury- felt my whole brain in skull while meditating
Sun Conjunct Moon/ Jupiter- dealing with my shadow, subconscious more thoroughly
All very primal, sinister, atavistic stuff here then the eclipse
Lunar Eclipse Conjunct Moon
https://www.astrolada.com/transits/lunar-eclipse-in-conjunction-with-the-moon
This comes on Sunday. Sometimes your planets get a direct hit from Lunar nodes and then an eclipse happens with longer effects.
Positive manifestations:
- Bright emotional experiences that enrich the personal emotional world and experiences.
- Emotional maturation, which elevates the personality and the relationship with the reality around at a higher, fulfilling and satisfying level.
- Developed instincts, an intuition which leads to bigger possibilities, overcoming possible obstacles.
- Outcomes, a lot of opportunities which a person is emotionally involved with.
- Emotional satisfaction due to the support that a person receives.
- Everyday life, which is accompanied by many opportunities for which he/she has made efforts before.
- Becoming popular, building full relationships, a lot of opportunities resulting from the support a person receives from others.
- Strengthening or building emotional connections.
- A lot of opportunities, positive outcomes related to home improvement, relocations, residential or property case studies.
- The family is filled with more care and empathy, gaining more harmony at home, through common goals, empathy and mutual assistance, sometimes by making the family bigger and by having a child.
- Caring for loved ones, beloved or important people – brings happiness to a person...
- Positive changes in the relationship with the mother.
- Changes in the habits, especially ones related to nutrition, but not only - have a positive impact on health.
- All the houses that are ruled by the Moon, the house in which the Moon is located - are filled with opportunities, a chance for positive outcomes and achieving desired results.
Negatives to be aware of:
- Strong, bright and exaggerated emotional experiences that are hard to master and pose a health hazard.
- Emotions are so intense and vivid that they interfere with rational thought and objectivity, so a person responds spontaneously, unconstructively, extremely and with the corresponding negative consequences.
- A feeling that the others are challenging you, causing distress in your soul, they are testing your patience, leading to crisis situations.
- Too emotional connections, depending on the support and approval of others.
- Strong emotional experiences that without strong and inborn intelligence can cause loss of strong support in life.
- Disappointment or ending of emotional relationships.
- Dangers of loss of prestige and lack of support.
- Multiple engagements that burden a person more than usual and are related to home, family, household, and property case studies.
- Unpleasant disasters that concern home, family, real estate.
- Problems related to the mother.
- Increased care for loved ones that can lead to emotional failure.
- Bad habits, especially ones related to nutrition, which may result in weight gain or other health problems.
The Lunar Eclipse is associated with a Full Moon, the difference is that the impact is much stronger and has a longer-term reflection, it may refer to the next half-year or a whole year, according to the individual horoscope. The full Moon leads to outcomes, in which case they may be related to basic security, which includes health, family relationships, the environment and the emotional background of existence, consumption in everyday life.
The Lunar Eclipse includes the Nodal Axis, so this is a karmic event, respectively - we can get a reward for past efforts, dedication, caring for our own personality or what is most valuable to us. We can get a lot of opportunities, emotional satisfaction, empathy and support from others.
Now we can get a reward for our past actions. If we have not shown enough sympathy towards others, if we have stopped dealing some duties or care, we do not follow some kind of destiny that we have, then - the result may have triggered a series of difficulties accompanied by emotional crises. It is then useful to make analyzes in order to remove past mistakes that have led to this disappointment, and so on.
Abonnieren
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