Book Club: Angel Tech

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

*I leave a .01% chance open to the fact that at least one parent may actually become subserviant to an infant.

I think it happens a lot more often than that. Two year olds are very demanding, and in some circumstances it makes more sense to give in.

Yeah, I was immediately thinking of the "little emperor" kids in China's one-child policy (they still have that, btw?)

But it's not a real well-developed type of alpha dog program, more like a spoiled brat program, which usually just has one way to exert its dominance, by throwing a tantrum. Which really only works with people that got an underdog imprint in the same situation.

I read somewhere recently that they're abandoning it, but I can't find my source.

[Rumckle]

I seem to remember hearing something along those lines, too.

[LMNO]

"Our emotions go on Broken Record where we make something so important it obscures our relationship to the whole."  Apparently, this is often the result of a trauma, but the obsession is often unrelated to what caused the trauma in the first place.  So, if your mom dies, striking a heavy emotional blow, you find refuge in Jesus, and become Born Again.  Essentially, like a bone spur or a broken elbow, when our emotional ego is so hurt, we over-compensate in an effort to get back to "normal", but the over-emphasis ends up dominating your personality.

"Being stuck in Second Gear also happens when we over-emphasize the importance of our emotions. This kind of immobility tends to occur when we expect others to take our emotions as seriously as we do ourselves and they don't.... In a collective situation, the most emotional person dominates everybody else. In order to survive emotionally, others must react to the dominant person or be dominated or... leave the room, physically or emotionally."  Back to the drama queens, the howling monkeys, and the Teabagging Town Halls.  We've got to keep in mind that 2C isn't so much communication as it is expression.  If you're not careful, you'll wind up "expressing" yourself all in your pants.  What bugs me is that even though the best thing to do is walk away, that doesn't help all the people who don't understand what's going on.  They'll get sucked into the same escalating emotional shitstorm, and then we end up with... Congress.

A.A. gives us a possible solution to this... And, interestingly enough, it's laughter.  "Negative emotions only have the power we give them. They become negative by the sheer condensation of belief that makes something more important than anything else... Lighten Up and Laugh More Often."  Please note that we are taking screaming and turning it into laughter. 

"Too many unprocessed, unfelt emotions have a way of immobilizing our capacity for self-expression. This is especially true where the emotions we're absorbing are not our own." Basically, don't start matching emotions when interacting with people.  When you do, you're letting them invade your territory, and then you can't stand your ground.  But that doesn't mean that you should ignore their expressions.  You should be able to understand them without joining in.  "The secret to developing a sense of personal boundaries rests within our capacity to permit emotional differences. Emotional responses are unique to each person."

There's another took necessary to establishing your own borders.  "In order to live with people who respond differently than we do, a certain amount of solitude is necessary. If we are afraid of our essential aloneness, it's easier to define ourselves in terms of how other people feel, instead of how we feel."  It's way too easy to simply go along with the pack, and allow their emotions to become yours.  Slight tie-ins here to mass psychology and the madness of crowds: If a large group of people start sharing and adopting everyone else's emotions, and the loudest monkey has the floor, then things just escalate on their own. "The more we find out where we are at emotionally, the better well be able to read other people's emotions without becoming them. When we are feeling ourselves, there is less need to project our emotions onto others, i.e., feeling their emotions because we're unwilling to feel our own."

He holds forth on the subject of winning and losing, and I have to say I didn't agree at first.  But I think I'm coming around. "Both winning and losing are highly charged emotional polarities and opposite sides of the same game. In order to transcend the Game of Loss and Gain, it's crucial to understand how winning and losing are both appropriate and when they're not depending upon their context."  That last line is what sold me: He doesn't want you to abandon the win/loss game; he just wants you to think about when it may or may not be appropriate.  Too many times some collaboration or another goes down in flames because someone decided they wanted to "win", even though there was no competition involved.  They were stuck on the 2C thrill of "winning", which crashed the whole program. 

At the same time, being stuck in the "win/lose" game can give us an obsession of "winning" and a fear of "losing", even though the scientific method tells us that the it's the act of re-evaluating our theories after observation that gets us to the truth: That is, if we give ourselves permission to fail, we can learn a hell of a lot more that if we try to force the win. "Freedom turns to frustration when it's defined as Always Getting Your Own Way."  Simply put, if you obsess on winning, and nothing but, you'll turn into a real asshole who will never learn anything.

He finishes this section off with what I think are pretty weak suggestions on how to tell if your second gear is fucked.  I will now attempt to rephrase them so they don't sound as foppish:

1) Make Subjective vs Objective checks regarding your Second Gear.  Sometimes problems arise when your inner script doesn't match what's going on around you.

2) Try to catch yourself when you ignore other people's egos so you can impose your own.  You may be acting like a complete asshole. Sometimes that's ok, but you should be choosing to act that way, instead of stumbling into it.

3) If you've chosen your friends correctly, listen to them.  They may be telling you truths about you that you're refusing to hear.

4) The size of your Ego is the size of your Territory.  Remember what happens to nations whose borders grow larger than their ability to sustain.

[Cain]

They end up becoming hegemons and dominate the international system.

MY EGO IS A GREAT POWER!

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

They end up becoming hegemons and dominate the international system.

MY EGO IS A GREAT POWER!

I never got that hegemons thing... do the hegemons live in the little red and white balls that the players throw, or do they just hang out in there before the fighting or what?

Egochoo! I Choose You!

[LMNO]

So, when we talk about "Short Circuit" in the Second Gear, we're talking about what happens to you when the 6th Gear opens up, apparently.  But what he seems to be getting at isn't so much the usual RAW C6 idea (though we do get there, eventually), but the realization that your mental and emotional territories are relative.  A.A. goes into a short, blunt explanation of this relativity (mostly thinker/prover stuff), and at first seems like pure moral relativism. But then you start to see that, when speaking only of 2C, it is.  Divorced of semantic or rational intelligence, or morals, whatever bias 2C has is True, at least to the Second Gear.  It's why some people say, "I understand that all A's are not B, but I still feel B every time I see an A."  All the screaming mad people you see on the news will never be changed to a new perspective through evidence, because their emotions are the only thing that KNOWS 100% TRUTH.

So, the first impulse would be to reject an emotional bias in favor of relativity, right?  Apparently not.  "One of the misconceptions common to individuals presently entering Sixth Grade (hereafter called "Baby Psychics") is the apparent need to deify the "transpersonal" while condemning and trying to do away with their emotional, opinionated self. This naive, yet well-intended, attempt at annihilating the ego in order to achieve "enlightenment" only crystallizes a more repressed and dogmatic bias than before."  The goal isn't to reject your emotions, it's to accept them, while understanding that they are indeed relative.  We have to become personally strong, so we don't lose ourselves when we drop into the ocean of "All is One".  If you know who you are and where you are, then you won't be so afraid to let go and explore other territories... and then you can start to decide if you want to incorporate some of those other territories into your own.  In case you didn't catch it, we're talking about Metaprogramming, or re-writing your map.

So, how do you strengthen 2C? "The Performing Arts, notably Theatre and Dance, provide a provocative arena to challenge the soul's development, expression and need for discipline... We learn to stay true to the particular bias, or integrity, of an action, character, dance or ritual until we're comfortable enough with it to project the illusion of our authority... The professional performer knows it is an illusion and thereby, is able to leave the stage after performing to return to his/her own bias."  Again, it's only by having a clear view of our own bias that we can explore others'.  "If our bias has become so repressed as to be almost completely unknown to us, perhaps we can discover it by the way we project it onto those outer authority figures spouting spiritual dogmas reflective of our inner immobility."  

Which leads us to a really great line, "The truth will set you free but first it may make you miserable."

I think we should skip the part about "reading energies" and "psychic energy"... except to say that in order to overcome a 2C Short Circuit, we have to redefine both our mental (psychic) territory and our physical.  So, for every hour you spend in self analysis (or, fine, spiritual meditation and/or prayer and/or energy invocation and/or chanting to the goddess), go for a hike, or a bike ride, or lift some weights, or throw around a Frisbee or something.  

So, he goes off here on a rant about serotonin, endorphins, mental illness, and LSD.  I'm not a biologist, so I can't say for sure, but this sounds like it's running dangerously close to the "there's no such thing as clinical depression" party line, as well as the "Acid triggers a natural response" gambit.

Plus, he mentions the pineal gland.  'Nuff said.

One final quote though: "Relativistic consciousness can be emotionally immobilizing in that there are too many options and possibilities to feel strongly about any one of them. Psychics can be very low-key people in this way, unless emotional balance has been reset and their passions renewed." I think we all know at least one person like this in our lives.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

Again, fantastic commentary LMNO. You're really catching a lot of the bits I found amazing, and poking the bits I felt were probably fluff or newagespeak.

[LMNO]

Ok, let's move on to the Third Gear, and what happens during Confusion Alert.  "Conceptual Confusion shows up when our ideas about ideas, thoughts & concepts fail to coincide with their true symbolic nature and purpose... One example is when we are identified with our thoughts and are unable to discriminate who we are from what we know."  Or, to use a phrase that Roger loves so much, "eating the menu".

"...It is never really possible to report more truth than we can experience through our Central Nervous System and our interpretation of same. However, if we are aware of our conceptual limitations, we may begin to understand its shape and propensity towards language... Interpretive skill depends on becoming familiar with our own filters, so we may learn to tune into those of others."  Black Iron Prison, anyone?  Our filters limit our perceptions, but if we understand the limitations of our filters, we can learn how to build different kinds of them.  "Think of concepts (and for that matter language) as a code. Codes need to be deciphered before releasing their goods."  Essentially, the things we talk about are not the things themselves, and language is not robust enough to be anything but an approximation of the thing itself.

I think we're all pretty clear on this point, so we'll move on to Pretty Vacant.  "To the degree intellect remains unclaimed, we will look to others for our conceptual maps to navigate our lives. This kind of mental inertia stems from an inability to think for ourselves and come to our own conclusions."  Yeah, we're pretty much up to speed on this one, two.  If you're too lazy to use your brain, you give it away to whoever wants it.

If you think someone else has control of your brain, A.A. offers a good trick.  Even if you think your brain is your own, this is a fairly relaxing exercise. "One method of organizing your concepts is by recalling everything that happened during the day, right before going to sleep at night. Verbally, express the events from the time you first woke up that day. Speak through them, one by one, until you remember each one. As you follow through in this, notice which events demand your attention the most and come back to them when you're finished going through them all. Then, return to those events requiring more thought from yourself so that you might be able to understand and digest it easier. Leisurely, spend your last lingering moments processing these events so when it's time to sleep, you can let go knowing your dreams will take care of whatever you could not. The important thing here is to take the time to organize your thoughts about those events requiring your attention. This will get you into the habit of having a say and developing a point of view about your own life."

Though he gets kind of Freudian at this point, there is a strong underlying message: Unless you are confident in yourself as a physical presence (C1 and C2), it is hard to come to your own conclusions and draw your own maps.  I don't mean you have to be an Alpha Male ass-kicking douchebag, I mean that if you consider yourself a Lesser Human, or Not Good Enough as a person, then your ability to Think For Yourself will be greatly weakened.  This is how some people can be very very smart and incredibly book-read, but they still can't come to their own conclusions, and are still led around by other people's ideas, instead of their own.  So, our instructions on how to be a biped at this point are: I am Safe, I am Here, and I am Thinking.

"When Conceptual Intelligence over-emphasizes, we become priests and clergy in the Church of Reason." Basically, he's talking about Information Overload.  You're over-thinking it, you're getting bloated with symbols and what they "mean", to the detriment of the other gears... your territory has all but vanished, and you physical body is being neglected.  So how do you fix this Broken Record?  You simply need to get silly. "When one can no longer take any more information, things can get pretty silly and nonsensical, unless there's some way to make sense of it all. If there isn't, one is left confounded, perplexed and potentially disturbed until one sees the humor of it all."  We all need to be Pinealists, sometimes. 

Ok, so it kind of annoys me when he goes off on these little tangents, like how the Fear of Going Crazy makes you actually crazy, and your Third Gear goes into Broken Record as a response to the Fear, and you have to have Faith that the Craziness will go away eventually, but Faith runs contrary to 3C, and what the fuck is he talking about and why is he conflating information overload with actual mental disorders, or at least treating "crazy" as some sort of general state of confusion rather than an actual mental disorder and what the hell does any of this have to do with this chapter anyway?

Anyway... With the Short Circuit, A.A. now begins to match up C7 with C3... Remember that a Short Circuit is what happens when an unstable lower gear gets overloaded to the point of breaking with information from a higher matching gear.  The only problem I have is that the very existence of C6-C8 is iffy for me.  I'm 70% ok with C6, but after that, it drops sharply.  Of course, some people might say that this is because I haven't experienced it yet, and someone who has not experienced the full-body rapture of C5 probably doesn't believe it exists, either.  Fair enough.  Imma gonna let A.A. finish, and then we'll see who has the best model of consciousness of all time.  Of. All. Time.

So, C7 is connected to Jung's 'Collective Unconscious', past lives, and all that 'We Are All One' junk.  So, when we are opened to the so-called "Vast Mythic Consciousness", our Intellect shorts out.  Cuz of all the vastness.  Anyway, if you find yourself in this position, it's up to you to stretch your personal intellect to include Universal Truths.  "To the degree our concepts (of the world & ourselves) are obliterated by the impact of universal truths, we are obliged to adjust our thinking to include their reality, if only to put our minds at peace."

Another way to overcome your intellect being stunned into immobility "...can be found in the practice of Silent Witness.... people go crazy or go sane depending upon how ready they are to include themselves. If the intellect is going to include itself, it will have to surrender its tendency to Figure Things Out until it knows more. We can do this by referring to another function of the intellect, namely, its capacity for just paying attention or portraying the Silent Witness."  In other words, the gears got jammed because the symbolic pattern maker in your head just saw all the pebbles transform into one Big Fucking Rock, and doesn't know what to do.  So, put the pattern-making on hold for now, and just observe.  Soon enough, you'll be able to assimilate the knowledge of the BFR, and go back to the pebbles, while keeping the BFR in mind at the same time.

Ok, so... How do we form symbols while under the influence of Universal Myths?  By developing our own theories about Reality and "god"... That is to say, Guerilla Ontology.  Ah, RAW buzzwords.  How we love thee! Of course, A.A. goes a bit further, and introduces "Gorilla Ontology" as a counterpoint. "Gorilla Ontology are those theories of God generated and sustained by our so-called civilized masses. They include the Fundamentalist, Creationist and any other "ist" ideologies most popular with the majority and involve various methods of social control, primitive wish fulfillment and herd instinct strategies. Guerrilla Ontology are those methods by which innovative individuals manage to bypass the influence of the previously mentioned Monkey Business."  See, I can get with that.  I don't need Mythic Universal Consciousness to get there, either. 

"Whosoever understands the metaphor also controls the mind. Metaphors are symbols, emblems and buzzwords which trigger a chain reaction of associations in our minds. Depending upon the symbol or buzzword, an entire language can be accessed and set in motion."  See, I wish he would spend more time on this kind of stuff, and less on...  well, this: "...every culture has produced exceptional individuals capable of entering the Mythic Realm with the purpose of returning to humanity and sharing their impact through various "powers" of healing, seeing and teaching . . . these are the 'shamans'."  You know what I mean?  He has an idea that I consider more broad that just ways to interpret the mystical experience.  So, when he says, "During those times when we are still recovering from the shock of Mythic Intelligence...we are controlled by the ideology of those who have Been There before us and have found ways to think, write and talk about the experience. These are our Influences and they sometimes determine the style by which we start designing our own Mythic concepts, or Ontology. In order to ground the short-circuited conceptual mind, we [should] begin by scripting our own myths... It is time for us to start scripting, casting, directing and starring in the epic of our choice..." he could just as easily be talking about entire functions of society, not just our personal myths and understanding of Mystic Truths, whatever they might be.

What's that you say?  You haven't had a meditation exercise in several pages?  Well, you're in luck!  We just happen to have one right here, designed to help you understand how your thoughts may or may not be connected (hint: they're not).  Once again, I will attempt to rephrase his new-age-y spiel into a language that's a bit more pragmatic.

So, start with the grounding exercise from a few pages back: Sit up straight, oxygenate the blood, and pay attention to your body.  Now, instead of the traditional Buddhist "no mind" meditations that tell you to STOP THINKING, try to get into a stream-of-consciousness thing.  Don't force your thoughts, just pay attention to them.

Then, and this is the weird part (apologies), try to see what happens when one thought leaves, and another thought shows up.  Try to pay attention to what happens between thoughts.  This can get unsettling, as you may find that your thoughts seem to be completely fragmented, and not a cohesive unit at all.  If you choose, you can call that space between thoughts as Chaos—that Chaos we keep referring to, the one that the illusions of Order and Disorder arise from. 

The point being, we can say that our languages are merely symbols and metaphors that we invent and then impose on the Universe, but in this way we can actually experience it.

Moving into Fourth Gear next.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

Quick question LMNO, are you doing the exercises listed? If so, I'd love some commentary on that as well

[LMNO]

I have been, or I used to do (crusty old man).


I'm not giving insight, due to the subjectivity involved.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

I have been, or I used to do (crusty old man).


I'm not giving insight, due to the subjectivity involved.

Oh sure, I'm not expecting "It Worked" more along the lines of "I found this useful" or "this exercise didn't seem to do much for me" kind of stuff

[LMNO]

As of this point, I've done the exercises in one form or another, and I've tried to synthesize the experiences objectively.


A.A. tends to go a little hard on the Mystical Knowledge trip, so I'm tending towards the Pragmatic at the moment.  Makes me sound clinical, but if this were a Cold Logic/Mechanical Therapy tome, I would probably way purple about the amazing brain states I reached.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

As of this point, I've done the exercises in one form or another, and I've tried to synthesize the experiences objectively.


A.A. tends to go a little hard on the Mystical Knowledge trip, so I'm tending towards the Pragmatic at the moment.  Makes me sound clinical, but if this were a Cold Logic/Mechanical Therapy tome, I would probably way purple about the amazing brain states I reached.

makes sense

[Bu🤠ns]

I'm finding the pragmatic trip quite helpful, fwiw.

[LMNO]

It's interestng in a way-- he talks about mapping your own interpretation on top of your experiences, and then he goes and imposes his own trip on what should be as objective as possible.