Ginny,
For some reason I was always fascinated by your regular used ot the term 'inky," perhaps because my own experiences of darkness never had any depth, i.e. were never inky or velvety.
. In any case, your explorations of that state remind me of a claim by famed Harvard psychologist William James in the early 20th century. He experimented with nitrous oxide as an aid to explore consciousness and concluded that consciousness is divided into subtle and often elusive thin layers, each with its own characteristics and potentials that need further study. He wrote this before there were so many systems of jargon to label some of these "levels," jargon that can at times serve as a took but at other times can trap us in conscious or unconscious doctrines that limit the gains of research.
Like you, I often find it hard to concentrate on contemplative research that I sense might be very important. For example, in my early experiments with long fasting and prayer sessions I discovered the power of what the New Testament calls "praying in the Spirit." I would focus on self-directed prayer for about an hour, and then it seemed like the Holy Spirit took over and directed the prayer topics on which I focused. That shift was far more fulfilling and powerful in terms of paranormal "answers," but the process of getting to that state was so uncomfortable that I lost my discipline and felt guilty for doing so! The same weariness caused me to lose my enthusiasm with using TMI's Gateway tapes. I hope to go to TMI for a weeklong training. I registered to do so a few years ago, but then got closed out. Grrr!
As for how I'm doing, I'm absolutely drained because tomorrow will be my 2nd Memorial service in 2 days and I have more next week. I find it very draining to be around all that grief, even if the reflections on the deceased's life are uplifting. Sally, the lady we buried today, had some endearing quirks. e. g. She and her lady friends would throw parties for occasions like the replacement of her old toilet with a cool antique one. Her friends also kept celebrating wedding anniversaries with parties, years after their husbands died! Sally worked for a vet. One day, her granddaughter (age 11) went horseback riding and found a litter of abandoned puppies, with the Mom nowhere in sight. So she took them home as pets. Thing is, Sally discovered that they were coyote pups and their mother was a basket case and very angry; so the granddaughter coudn't sort of just return the pups up the hill. So she kept them until they got big enough to chase their chickens; then they gave them to a neighbor. They were no doubt too wild to make good pets. Sally took her children on a bus tour in New York City. They got off, walked half a block, until they reached a huge Coca Cola sign. Sally smiled and said, "That's where I first met your Dad on a blind date in 1946!"
Don
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Hi Don--the inky black void (Read 2517 times)
