visualizations
Exercise: in the middle of your day, as soon as you become aware (or, as soon as you remember this exercise), just freeze mid-motion. Don’t think, but just look at whatever is in sight and notice the details you were oblivious to. It’s like how it’s hard to process details in a video, but easier in an image.
Michael Dean added 6mo
MYSTERY SCHOOL: What could this look like? How could a group of people share and co-develop these practices?
L1, ATTENTION: What are the actual practices to train your attention? Do breathing exercises. Try the different types of meditation (eyes open/closed, mindfulness, mantras, and void states). Add symbolic meaning to how you eat, wash, and show
Michael Dean added 6mo
Real-time stereotype inversion: as situations come into play, try to shape a stereotype as fast as you can, WHILE ALSO forming the inverse of that stereotype. See a person, situation, appearance, or etiquette as a set of opposites that are both true at the same time. That guys not rudely blasting shit music in a quiet neighborhood. It’s a party! Et
... See moreMichael Dean added 6mo
The sphere of the alchemist:
Like Horus I see prosche forward,
An inverted ray of myth shoots back,
To the right is imagination chains,
To the left is architectural pattern,
Left and right rotate,
Counter-clockwise,
All sides stretching,
Creating a sphere,
Of attunment and being,
Of fusing the opposites,
Of doing and seeing,
Michael Dean added 6mo
Took a break from restructuring a long-form essay and meditated for a bit. The mind naturally went back to essay form. Instead of trying to “center,” I just let it run, and it was neat to see how I could resolve knots in the flow by stepping away. I could come back to the page with some concrete steps: ah, do A, B, C, etc.
Michael Dean added 6mo
Starting to get “chakras” beyond woo. The literal truth isn’t the point. The goal is to spatialize emotions and feelings. By saying, X feeling is located in Y place, and by doing that 10 or 100 or 1,000 time, you build an association. If you want to tap into that feeling, you can focus your attention to that spot of the body. So it’s a combination
... See moreMichael Dean added 6mo
On that big escalator going up into Grand Central, and I visualized a full longitudinal section of Manhattan (from Battery Park to Central Park, showing the bedrock differences, and also the famous facade of GC). I imagined myself as a little scale figure in that architectural drawing, and as I moved my hand in real-life, a little pixel updated in
... See moreMichael Dean added 7mo
Look into lotus visualizations on the throat and what that has to do with dream recall. Chakras can be cringy when explained to be scientific, but maybe they make sense as symbolic. Meaning, there are archetypal (built-in) reasons why the mind likes to associate certain parts of the body with certain things.
Michael Dean added 7mo
Coming through and out of Grand Central, I experienced something like “alien thought” for the second time in this place. It was exotic, amoral, strangeness; a weird mix of color and shape-sifting sci-fi scenes. Then there was something like “snare drum shamanism,” where I could hear and see the buzzing rolls of wooden sticks on a tight drum head, a
... See moreMichael Dean added 8mo
7 sounds at once, wide-eyed, the fly comes by, layering visuals, almost all senses but forgot taste… I imagined I could see visuals behind me and saw a 360 degree view; became the room; I thought I saw a light in front of me in the sky (out the window), but I broke trance and it was gone.
Michael Dean added 8mo
Ideas related to this collection