Quality of Life – Does Not Apply

June 1, 2025 ~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

Various questionnaires / tools can be found online for sampling quality of life and the perceived quality thereof. I like quizzes. Some assess physical disability and pains as an attempt to “quantify” decision for surgery, inter alia, for hip replacements. There are mood questions which probe how much of a victim one feels, how hard done by one imagines self to be and the quantity of social interaction. Many of these questions are comparative to “others” which are a bit iffy. They should perhaps be rephrased “by comparison to your perception of how others are or might be”. They are all deeply rooted in a socially conditioned view of society. Some ask about satisfaction.

“How satisfied are you with your….”

This is probing dissatisfaction, dukkha, suffering, in terms of Buddhist thinking. It is probing how well accustomed and acclimatised you are with the social illusion. It evens asks how happy you are!!

Scanning through these questions there is no box for “does not apply”. In many cases this is the one I would tick.

I am sure that many of my answers born of detachment might solicit a diagnosis of depression. Though I am far from depressed. I am not goal oriented and obsessed with comparative “success”. I do not want to shag like a rabbit. I don’t give a shit about my appearance.

They ask how lonely you are, how much help you get from friends….

They do not ask how easy it is for you to get away from hordes of loud irritating people, to find some peace, silence and tranquillity.

My self-perception is that I am no longer able bodied. Yet I can do things a desk-jockey cannot do. I can still chop wood with a four and half pound axe. I cannot walk for much more than a kilometre before the pepper-mill hips grind to a halt. Technically speaking I am at least partially disabled.

I don’t feel particularly ill or unwell, but others may consider me to be that way. Normal for me may be unwell for others. That is the thing about personal normality, it creeps up on you, you become accustomed to your day to day physical reality. Your normal may differ from that held by the eponymous “they”. Some may even pity me, slightly.

“He should be out socialising in a large group walking with a tour guide, with conviviality. He should be a member of social societies, mixing and having fun! At his age it is a shame…Poor man…”

“Humanity” likes to foist its ideas and preconceptions upon others.

In my mind there are some health leads pertaining to blood and osteoporosis that need followed up. There is the possibility that I might be allowed to have hip replacements. This is not a given. I read today that the BMI Nazis in the UK are trying to force people to lose weight before operating and that a high BMI increases waiting time.

Great logic, someone is fat, stop them exercising because of pain and expect them to lose wait before you enable them to exercise. Vicious circle – methinks. Well done NHS accountants…top job.

I do know intellectually that increasing co-morbidity number points towards a decreased life expectancy. I am well in that camp.

Should the time come, I imagine myself ready.

What would a psychologist make of that statement?

Soul Retrieval – Soul Disconnect

April 20, 2025April 20, 2025 ~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

I can make a statement here which will put me at odds with modern “scientific” thinking. It has no material impact on my life because it can no longer impinge on my academic credibility nor university career advancement. There is no way that I can prove this statement. The flip-side is that it cannot be disproved either, it can be designated anecdotal or opinion.

Since the early nineties I can recall instances where I have met “residues” of people who are no longer technically alive and incarnate. They have “visited” me most often nocturnally, sometimes in dreams but more in waking. I have had visitations in quiet places and times during the day. In most cases these individuals have/had some kind of bond with me and in others a strong sense of debt {karma}. They did me wrong. These instances, whether real or imagined, have coincided with me teaching physics and chemistry at universities or high school privately. Some have been a once only short duration. Some of these have lasted days on and off. Other visits have had a duration of months with irregular and increasingly short visitations, until the visits stop. Some have seemed curiosity driven others by way of penance. Unfortunately, it is not possible to assist “people” to overcome problems which they caused. I cannot help them in their troubles. It is too late.

In some cases, where appropriate, I have done full blown Phowa practice, over several sessions, of visualizing a white Amitabha Buddha field for them and over them. A kind of spiritual WD40.

I had one visit last night. The sense of searching for me by this individual has increased over the last week or so. I do not know for sure if that person is dying, already dead or just having regrets. The feeling is that they are currently still alive in the mundane medical sense.

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In some cases, these visitations are soular, of the soul. In others they are more some kind of emotional / physical residue. At the consciousness level of souls there is a group consciousness. If you like, the white light diffracted into a rainbow, re-members that it was once a part of white light. Contact is soular and although wholly abstract the “brain” constructs a facial facsimile of the meaty body in order to “put a name and face” to the instance. After death these are nearly always more youthful than earth time / age would suggest.

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I have had shamanic training in so-called soul retrieval and have done a number of such rituals myself. The person on the receiving end always reported a pleasant experience and a feeling of being more “together” afterwards. There was an elastic snap of sorts. They seemed beneficial.

Technically speaking the soul cannot be lost from the form except in extremely rare circumstances.

The soul cannot be retrieved because it is the “real” you. It is never lost, it knows what it seeks to do. A reconnection with the wayward personality/meat vehicle might be achieved and enhanced, ritually, by magic. If the soul is fully disconnected that means death of the physical vehicle. A tenuous link can get stretched and the wayward personality vehicle disobey the soul or inner being. A weakening or very weak linkage might allow the soul to wander far from the vehicle on the soular or buddhic plane / level of consciousness. Space in a Cartesian sense does not have meaning thereupon. Geographic, earth bound distances, are no barrier.

The fact of a wandering soul suggests that its control or infusion of the physical personality vehicle is failing. The in toto being is not listening to its soul, its inner-tuition and is governed by materialistic personality whim and desire. The soul is losing the fight and may cut short the life, to wipe the slate clean and start again. The will, the stubbornness, of the lower carnal vehicle is simply stymieing the soul’s learning journey.

It is dark to prevent the soul from imbuing matter. The materialistically oriented personality vehicle thereby lacks a connection to higher purpose and hungrily consumes as an ersatz. This never satisfies for more than an instant. Dissatisfaction pervades.

Often the soul demands things which are inconvenient for the socio-political consuming materialistic vehicle. The small inner voice of calm is ignored and drowned out. The connection to the con-science, that which understands the higher soul group weakens. Behaviour deteriorates and becomes ever more self-centred. The illusion of ME grows more concrete.

The soul is disconnected. The soul is not lost but the vehicle is. Soul retrieval is a misnomer, a reconnection with personality vehicle is better terminology. The stronger the connection, the more profound the infusion by soul, the clearer sense of purpose the in toto being has.

If you, in honesty, are going through the motions of life, then you are not allowing or following the guidance of your true self. The soul.

Goal Orientation – Suffering and Dissatisfaction

December 13, 2024 ~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

If you search for “coaching” you will find many people offering their services as coaches and often a part of this is setting goals or targets for success and advancement. Few notice the similarity of goal and gaol. People can become prisoners of their goal orientation. Society is obsessed with measurable metrics and tick lists of things to do, to the extent that life can be a wearisome endless list of devoirs. It is de rigueur to have goals and ambition it seems.

Siddartha wanted so badly to end suffering for all sentient beings, suffering, or dukka, can be translated as dissatisfaction.

I’ll make a statement: goal orientation is directly causal of dissatisfaction.

If you fail to make a goal you are dissatisfied, if you make a goal, you are temporarily done but the next goal awaits lurking on the horizon. Any “satisfaction” is fleeting. This measurement obsession more often than not suggests some measure of inadequacy, could do better.

People then have massive internal dialogue about whether of not they are meeting their goals. Internal dialogue is nearly always negative and hence the being suffers unnecessarily because of this internal “mental” cacophony.

Goal orientation and rush often skip hand in hand. Focussed only on the goal there is a tendency to finish quick and this can cause poor application to task and lower standards. Goal orientation can prevent impeccability. Eye on goal one does not fully absorb into whatever it is one is doing. There are distractions from other pending goals. Quality suffers on the noose of measurable quantity. Goals hang.

The antithesis of spiritual development is rush. It is impossible to rush it, but many try and seek milestones to prove progress. The hangover of societal obsession with goal orientation is difficult to ease.

Striving is a form of suffering.

Relaxation and complete absorption is the antidote. Complete absorption brings completion but without obsessional suffering. Complete absorption quietens the internal dialogue and therefore reduces dissatisfaction. Everyone knows when they have been impeccable. Impeccability is not an absolute. If you give completely of your current very best that is all you can do, this never brings dissatisfaction. Subsequent comparative internal dialogue can cause the nine headed hydra of dissatisfaction to rise again.

Internal dialogue is a primary cause of dissatisfaction and suffering.

Endless measuring is causal of dissatisfaction and suffering.

Comparison mind is directly causal of dissatisfaction.

Rational thinking causes dissatisfaction. Therefore, rational thinking is an irrational unwise thing to do. It does not make sense.

Of course, under certain circumstances one needs some rationality.

If one is ever goal oriented one never experiences the moment, the eternal now, because the goal is very distracting. Not being fully present causes dissatisfaction. If one lives in the twin worlds of what if and if only, there is rarely now. The past whether melancholic or rose tinted, the future whether idealised or catastrophe is not now, it is mind-stuff often of the nature of internal dialogue. Trash.

Goal orientation causes impatience which is a form of dissatisfaction. Goal orientation when one is driving a car is a cause of road rage.

Letting go of goal orientation is liberating.

Try it, having no goals is harder than it might seem, because societal habituation near worships them.

Hence there is suffering and dissatisfaction, which we might call samsara or saṃsāra, which is another term for endless human folly.

The Waking Dream – Saṃsāra

August 23, 2024August 23, 2024 ~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

“Saṃsāra in Buddhism, states Jeff Wilson, is the “suffering-laden cycle of life, death, and rebirth, without beginning or end”. Also referred to as the wheel of existence (Bhavacakra), it is often mentioned in Buddhist texts with the term punarbhava (rebirth, re-becoming); the liberation from this cycle of existence, Nirvāṇa, is the foundation and the most important purpose of Buddhism.”

From Wikipedia.

If you are not aware that you are dreaming during nocturnal dreams, what chance do you have of being awake during the samsaric waking dream which people assume is the day to day socio-political reality?

It follows that in the limit a genuine dreaming practice has the goal, the purpose of liberation, Nirvāṇa.

The common socio-political mundane “reality” is a different assimilation of world from that of a being who has attained much of Buddhist philosophy. The mind of one of these follows the advice of the diamond sutra and is not anywhere near as gripping nor as adamant that the assimilated and evangelised version of reality is both factual and the only true reality. They would not kill anyone who has a different opinion.

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If you are awake in your night dreams you can wake up in the samsara day dream and see things for what they are. If you understand dissatisfaction {suffering} has a large mental component it is possible to not want to be reborn. Carnal rebirth requires a carnal re-death. If you are obsessed by the form, your meat, then you will desire another piece of meat. Letting go of obsession is a stepping stone toward liberation.

I’ll speculate that many people have had a conversation with me and been totally unaware of how differently I view the world from them. People assume a commonality of socio-political interpretation. The world is encapsulated by the boundary conditions of should and ought.

In order to wake up in the samsaric day dream one needs to quieten the mind and to really know oneself and not simply at façade level.

A very common modern form of delusion is called fear of missing out, FOMO. It stems from group mind and wanting to be “in” on whatever it is that is going on. Not being up to date with gossip can risk social exclusion. Newspapers rely on juicy titbits to sell. But nobody has ever died from not knowing what Harry and Meghan have been whinging about today. If you are awake to this you will not waste your life worrying about them and the gigabytes of gossip generated.

Some of the things in nocturnal dreams are clearly not real, likewise many of the things in the samsaric daydream are not real. There are a lot of delusions which people advocate and defend. People tend to forget that image, self-image, is explicitly imaginary yet they work to prop it up and defend it, they can get psychologically ill because of image.

The basic truth is glamour is not real, simple reality is simple and unglamorous. Yet people spend vast sums on “glamorous” things and travel. They document it in vast energy ravenous server farms and destroy the planet to take selfies in famous glamorous places. People want to show off in ultrahigh definition gigapixel style.

They are asleep in the waking samsaric dream.

Being awake aware and lucid in nocturnal dreams aids waking up in the samsaric daydream/nightmare which we call modern 21^st century living.

The Waking Dream and Visions – Hallucination?

July 6, 2024 ~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

Modern psychology might have strict views as to the nature of reality. It rests firmly in the “common” sociopolitical construct and uses frameworks like self-image. Deviation from normal becomes an illness or disorder. Having a vision could be seen as a hallucination, something not real. Yet visions and religion are entwined, entangled even. There is a disconnect where psychology might see “religious” vision as psychosis, prophets could be deemed mentally ill in retrospect.

In the limit of Buddhist philosophy, the entire sociopolitical construct held as normality is, suffering. Attachment to status and possessions causes dissatisfaction, apparently many are unhappy about how they look. Is your cognitive assimilation of appearance reality? One could suggest that modern psychology encourages samsara. Whereas Buddhism works at the eradication of the notion of self, psychology seeks to prop it up.

You pay your money and join the club that suits.

I’ll comment that I have had a number of visions, waking dreams if you like. None of these have completely removed the physicality of what might be called physical plane material reality. Though the event flow in vision was markedly different from the event flow on “earth”. I perceived them as an extra overlay with a very different sense of spatiotemporal perception.

I have always been able to visualise, to hold and build images in my “mind’s eye”. I can do this, as I am now, and continue to type reasonably accurately on a different subject. In terms of the Toltec aphorisms on dreaming. I am dreaming and typing at the same time.

As a rule of thumb, I am open minded. I have been meaning to thank someone {on LinkedIn} who nearly forty years ago helped me to open my mind. Initially I thought he was a pretentious prick, it turned out it was me who was the pedant and knobhead. He did me an enormous favour in introducing me to David Lynch.

Writing a business plan could be said to be a visionary practice. In order to plan one has to have, at least in my case, a picture or vision of how things might work or look. It has to be en-vision-ed. A patent application can be seen to be a vision of something not yet real. By concretising it into text and diagrams, one starts to materialise a vision or dream. Is something subjective and not yet real like a patent, a hallucination?

Some of these visions I have had are not of the same time as when I am having them. These visions with a sense of “ago” are explainable by invoking the notion of past life recall. Some come in full smell-o-vision. Of course, you could just say that I was hallucinating. My awareness of surroundings, though slightly reduced, remained operable. I was able, for example, to walk along Upper Tulse Hill to catch a bus for work. I did not get run over or walk into a lamppost.

When I dream passively at night, I know that I am dreaming. When I en-vision during the day, I am in control. Some of my visions were not that well controlled but I knew where I was and that something “else” was taking place.

If we call the common sociopolitical construct a samsaric dream, I am aware that I am dreaming it and can participate roughly along the lines of the “rules” of the construct. I have a whole lot less fear of missing out, FOMO, than most people.

In the desire to overly categorize and rationalise things, it is possible that humans “throw the baby out with the bathwater”. Concrete mind can be very concrete and fixated. It can be very wrong, group insanity like Brexit can seize the minds of millions.

I’ll develop this a little more using the same subject header at another time.

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