the timboucher experience

Just spent about an hour in a loose meditative state with various ritual environmental factors I tend to invoke during such things. Had a realization during it that I was interfacing with my subconscious during that process in a way that is altogether similar to how I use the internet these days.

If you’ve ever looked over somebody’s shoulder, you may notice that each person uses a computer differently and uses the internet differently. People have different shortcuts, different operational techniques to get them from here to there. Depending on their skill with the interface and knowledge level, it may be quite frustrating to watch someone stumbling through a UI. Imagine the hundreds of thousands of human potential hours wasted on having to read cryptic alert messages and click away all kinds of useless advertisements. Effort that could be more effectively redirected towards positive goals.

Anyway, I’m not sure how it all got started. Maybe with a Steve Pavlina installment about, essentially, querying your subconscious. He advised getting into a meditative state, such that you can close your eyes, ask the deep dark quiet part of yourself a question - and receive a response. Typically, in my experience, when this technique is successful, the response is instant and in the form of a picture (though I’ll also sometimes have a word that comes along, almost like its been stamped out). Sometimes the picture will move or develop into some other state. It can be difficult to get used to this method of transconscious communication, because it’s not delivered in the kind of language most people are used to. It’s the language of oracles, of symbols and of references and associated chains of meaning. It’s an electrically-charged web of potentiality, the breeding ground of poets and philosophers transforming energy into matter with their actions.

My question had to do with the whole distance bike trip concept: basically trying to suss out from that still-small voice inside whether this is one of those situations that you can “get away with” a sort of ritual/creative replacement for an action, or whether the spirits and ancestors are really demanding sacrifice on some higher level of intent and action. So, I think what I did was close my eyes, darken the theatre of my mind, and then inwardly phrased the question: “Should I bike to Cape Cod?”

TRANSCENDENT, the word arrived almost of its own, accompanied by a visual representation of a star that eventually changed into a chakra. Kind of reminds me of ther Super Mario Bros. star that turns you invincible briefly.

You may begin to see how this works from my example. It’s kind of an inexact science, because your subconscious tends to communicate in these really fantastically grandiose and arcane images and concepts. Once you get it really fired up and working with you, it tends to want to communicate with you on the grandest level possible. One, its easy to get swept away in that feeling of being inwardly compelled towards a course of action or an idea, and two, it can be difficult to decipher what the actual meaning is, because you can usually interpret it in many ways. Which is what makes orcales and the artistic process so maddening at times.

In any case, the word “transcendent” is something which I will typically pop over into a utility like Google Image Ripper to generate a gallery of images ripped out of their original concept which relate to my text search. Most of the seemingly-random images posted to my site have been culled from such subconscious sources and leadings. I usually start with one word like that, pick a few which strike my fancy or fire my imagination in the right way, and then do a few lateral searches from that: things related to imagery that came up, or variations on the original concept.

I’ve found with the use of oracles that its best not to test them. Don’t ask the same question over and over again. I tend to avoid even follow-ups to the original question and let the thing just sit and recharge. Better to use it least, like in ham radio: use the least necessary power to complete your contact. However, in this case I asked my inward self for clarification. You have to phrase things correctly and with the right intent. I asked it to show me what it meant by “transcendent” and ‘it’ displayed basically the mathematical image of a wormhole. Pretty much like this, except facing the other direction (this one was actually found in GIR):

Which isn’t an answer at all on one level, but on another level is quite “clear”. Okay, maybe that’s not even the right word. But I immediately connected it to the notion of two points in space being interlinked somehow. Right now, when we interlink points in space, what we’re usually doing is mapping or charting our a route or course. This point in space is visited first, this one next and so on in a sequence. This kind of data can be stored in a GPX file.

An interesting revelation conceptually, but not necessarily an answer to my original question, as posed. So I tried rephrasing my query with a more direct point about the proper level of reality, of en-fleshing, these impulses, urges and images should be given. I asked it, “Is the bike trip a metaphor for a personal inner journey, or something that I should do in reality?” Not expecting any answer at all actually, I distinctly perceived the word “CARGO” and immediately broke the connection.

Cargo? What could that mean? Carrying - the things you’re carrying. Something you’re carrying. The image of the bike trip itself is something I am carrying around with me, cargo. Literally, I have a map and a book about bicycle repair in my bag. Mentally, I’m obsessed with it. Using it very consciously a focusing lens to look at myself through and look at the future. But does it need to be real? Do I actually have to do it? There are other ways to get from here to there. Stow myself as cargo, for example. Pass myself through the supply chain, like no more than another consumer good.

Via GIR, I came up with this great “amplification”, to use a Jungian term which says something else about cargo. That maybe I can take way more with me than I thought I’d be able to. That I can lift more, that I can go farther than I’ve ever given myself permission or felt like I had license to do before.

transcendent [STAR]

It’s so clear I can almost taste it…

• The Star Trek Kabbalah
• The Cloud Minders
• “Eat me,” planets say to star.
• Reminder
• Hero’s Journey & Star Wars