Wednesday, June 27, 2012

OUT OF MY MIND: The Great Unknown

Please go here to learn about and order my unique novel:   







The SELF is the final, limitless frontier. We have been intrigued with outer space for decades, but I believe the more significant area of exploration is inner-space.

Hello, call me a voice from the edge of town, from the outer (or inner) limits.  I stretch my mind into unfamiliar territory from time to time.  The familiar gets dull, and at times I've had a sneaking suspicion that there's a world just beyond our grasp where the miraculous is possible. 


I explore my relationship with my own unconscious. My conscious mind is me.  But my unconscious is also me, just a more mysterious part of me.  It seems that my unconscious is there to do the bidding of my conscious mind, like an idiot-savant genie.  The only problem is that my conscious mind , which is in control, is faulty, full of delusions, neuroses and false information.  Dreams are another story, where there may be clues to this tangled puzzle that is you and me.
     

Consider that the unconscious controls the smooth functioning of millions of activities in our bodies every second.  It records everything we experience, every action, every thought, and stores it all.  You've probably heard of witnesses providing important information they didn't even know they knew, under hypnosis.  And how about those astounding feats where the normal laws of physics seem to be suspended;  like yogis piercing their bodies without any bleeding, or slowing their heartbeat down to less than ten per minute?  How about ESP, premonitions, walking on coals, or any of a thousand other strange mysteries that occur which make some people so uncomfortable that their knee-jerk reaction is to dismiss this huge area of human experience by heaping scorn on it.  Scorn doesn't change what is true, it just makes it easier to kid yourself about it.
Changing your own destiny and finding wisdom may not be as hard as we think.  They may be as easy as asking your unconscious for guidance and listening and valuing the insights, inspirations and revelations from that voice within. 
Through meditation or self-hypnosis I can reach an altered state where brain activity is in the alpha and theta states, as opposed to beta (normal waking consciousness). What I do with my time in that altered state is entirely up to me. I am finding that my unconscious seems to be limited only by my own imagination and beliefs.  That's a heady thought.  So to truly stretch my horizons I need to flex my imagination and expand my beliefs.

            I'm venturing into the great unknown . . . from time to time I'll report back. 



 For some fantastic inner adventures read my new novel:

                                               This Moment Is My Home




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Wednesday, June 20, 2012

This moment

. . . this moment is all we have . . . yet each moment is brimming, bursting full of all that is . . . everything we would ever need or want . . . infinity . . . eternity . . . limitless possibility . . . and imagination is our key of entry, our tool of creation . . .


                    Want to see what pure love and beauty looks like?  Go here:
                                  http://www.wimp.com/stopnightmare/

Haiku anyone?

       
                                  unwrap your present
                                awaken to this moment        
                                      and burst into now


                                                   stepping out in dreams
                                              asking what and who and why
                                                    and how deep and high
 


      I wrote a  novel:     This Moment Is My Home
     



            View info about my new novel:

  




          A little about how I came to write This Moment Is My Home


It took me almost twenty years to complete the novel.  It started as a short story about a man meditating by himself on a mountain.  The idea of a prolonged vigil of meditation had captured my imagination in my college years when I first studied Zen Buddhism and learned about Bodhidharma "staring at the wall" for years.  Years later, in meditation retreats I got a taste of what it was like to spend week after week just meditating, honing the skill of becoming aloof to my own thoughts instead of identifying with them. 

Till I learned and practiced Vipassana meditation I was not aware that it was possible to free myself from the tyranny of the ego mind, that is, the everyday chattering mind that keeps most of us in a trance through most of our lives.  It was an exhilarating revelation!  It changed everything for me.  And eventually I wanted to share my experience and understanding with others, so began my short story. 

The short story developed and deepened and grew.  Around 1990 I became acquainted with some of the people at Book Creations Inc, a book production company near my home in the rural community of Canaan, NY.  My wife Jan and I had the idea of pitching a book together about the children's crusade of the 13th century.  We wrote a few chapters and it felt promising.  But then I met Jean Tyler, who had been looking for a writer to tell the story of her family's ordeal with Alzheimer's Disease, and we hit it off.  Jean had been very active in educating the public about the disease and helping caretakers directly forming many support groups.  She was eventually appointed to Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis's fact finding committee on Alzheimer's and gained considerable notoriety.   

When the editors at Book Creations heard about Jean Tyler they encouraged me to write Jean's story in a full length book.  So the children's crusade project was shelved, and Jan and I, sadly, never took it up again.  The Book Creations people found a publisher for the Alzheimer's book when it was still just an outline and a first chapter.  So all of a sudden I had a deadline and an editor.  The editor turned out to be a disaster.  It was her first time editing a book and she didn't have the faintest idea how to help me.  And since it was my first book too, I was working at it blind.  She was replaced by an experienced editor named Laurie Rosen.  She helped me finish the book successfully, editing out a lot of extraneous material. 

After The Diminished Mind was published I gradually returned to my short story about the solitary meditator in the woods.  At some point I realized that the story was swelling out of short story territory, threatening to become a full blown novel.  And I decided to go for it. 

But it was an immense uphill slog because plotting was not my strong suit.  And I had not planned the novel at all.  Instead I embarked spontaneously on high flown ideas about my character exploring consciousness through the vehicle of meditation, and what amazing things might "happen" to a totally determined seeker of inner knowledge. 

I was writing about a character, based loosely on an old friend of mine, and other characters who were in his life, friends, family, etc.  But I wasn't even sure who my character was, so I wasn't sure what his life was like.  I had a hard time separating myself from the character.  There was a lot of him in me, but a lot that wasn't.  But what to do with all the pieces I had created?  I tried many avenues and hit many dead ends.  I actually wrote the equivalent of three novels of material to end up with This Moment Is My Home.  I threw away a lot.  At an earlier incarnation of the novel the hero was a musician in a rock band.  I was drawing on my own experiences as a musician, and the dynamics and uncertainties surrounding egos and clashing personalities. 

Around 2004 I thought the book was done and even found an agent.  That was when the musician plot was still in effect.  Her first request was that I trim my manuscript by fifty thousand words.  It seemed impossible at first, but wasn't that hard once I got started, because I write by profusion.  I spew a lot of verbiage and edit it all down later.  No one has ever accused me of being at a loss for words, writing or talking. 

The agent tried for a couple of years but couldn't get a publisher interested.  They always came back with the comment: "There isn't enough at stake."  I guess they favored novels where someone is trying to take over the world, or something.  My theme was much subtler and didn't fit into any genre.  So my agent gave up and wished me the best.

I had to reassess the book yet again, and finally realized that I couldn't make the musician plot work with the central spiritual theme of the book, or the ghostly otherworldly subplot.  The musical life was a whole different novel from the one I was trying to write.  So I finally hit upon using my early life in New York City, when I started out as a construction laborer, drove a taxi for a while, but also worked with children at a few day care centers, and eventually as a gym teacher in private elementary schools.  That suited the inner life of my character better.  Also I decided to use an old enduring friendship as a central theme. 

Another stumbling block was whether to write in the first person or third person, or even second person.  I drove myself crazy, first it was one, then another.  I changed the entire manuscript from first person to third person then back again.  That's a lot of work.  But I don't shrink at work. 

There were many times I thought about just chucking the whole novel, because I couldn't seem to wrestle the plot into a workable form.  In fact my wife, who had to live with my frustration, suggested numerous times that I give it up and start on something new.  But I am stubborn, pig-headed even.  I really believed in the book, and was not going to admit defeat. 

I worked at it and worked at it, tried this plot line and another, and threw them away later, and tried others.  I don't remember exactly how, but through some magical, subconscious means, it somehow finally congealed into a form I could live with.  I persisted till it worked.


Many years ago when I was driving a cab in Manhattan I saw a quote on sign in a drug store window.  It was a quote attributed to Calvin Coolidge: 

"Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan "press on" has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race”



So I guess I took that to heart and stayed with what I believed in.

 . . . And now some relief from all this prose, a poem apropos of my novel's title:





                             A MOMENT


                        Melanie appears 
                        to glide from her house
                        into her yard

                        sun-drowsy dog cocks its ears 
                        sniffs towards her 

                        new green branches move to 
                        changeable air, intricate rhythms

                        old car with clattering engine passes 
                        on the road nearby

                        the breeze shifts
                        tossing phrases
                        a conversation of two children,
                        a jet is passing far up           behind
                        it falls a residue of gentle thunder

                        at intervals, faint radio music too
                        weaves its way to me
                        and I smell dark earth, moist bark
                        mingle
                        slightly with magnolia blossoms

                        off a ways 
                        white haired Mrs. Seraphini
                        is hanging washed sheets in the sun with clothespins,
                        I watch 
                        as Melanie receives the sun on her face
                        with closed eyes.





        We are all masters of our own lives ( though some of us don't know it . . . yet )  Don't let the chatterworld of your conditioning tell you you are powerless.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  Although if you believe you are powerless, that belief will make it so, until you WAKE UP!


         The Universe is Listening



            When new awareness sparks
            excitement
            in your playful soul, and you wake
            from sleep like lightning
            and the masks slip away,
            if you truly own your dreaming,
            creation is your genie,
            and dreams become the drama
            of the dawning day.

            When the universe hears a laugh
            or a sob or a shout,
            worlds are born like rivers
            flowing out of thoughts like mirrors
            from a sea of bubbly magic
            reaching out.



cosmic hallway


Tuesday, June 19, 2012

Haiku and not


    whimsically choose 
beauty truth and imagined 
        things to make haiku


( in 17 syllables, three lines of 5-7-5 syllables each ) 
            


     do read my novel 
 This Moment Is My Home, eh? 
            it goes far within 



why not learn to value and encourage
            our real selves within, because
                     we are precious, you know,
                  every one of us,
                                and contain wonderworlds



First Post


  First haiku


may you read my book
    it’s to grok and delight and
            maybe blow your mind


 . . .  or . . . the owl and pussycat