namuhhtrae

from here to there
any and no where
should i seem to damn
or should i seem to care

two things, duality
complexity and simplicity,
whether its the past or the future
it's all our history,

good and evil
the tree of knowledge
should I drop out of school
or should I go to college?

what our choices?
do we know what our decision is?
am i holding it together
or merely shattering it into pieces?

fear or love?
am I going below or above?
am I a bird of prey
Or make peace like the dove?

Who do we want to be?
Who is this soul who's me?
What do you declare
When you are neither from here nor there?

i guess that's the difficulty about today's modern world when it comes to spirituality these days.

On one half you have the traditional side which believes in there being a spiritual world, a world of mental existing above the physical, which creates things, which we can connect with.

And on the other half you have the scientific view which views everything as being physical, and the ideas of spirituality as being merely an extension or psychological projection of mind onto non-thinking things.

As some of you may know, I consider myself to be spiritual, but I have also the case of wondering if maybe my spiritual experiences are simply psychological which could be just a manifestation of my own imagination.

I believe I've 'seen' images when I think about people in my mind's eye. I also believe that the indeterminate world of physics could also be organized by certain principles which could be considered an analogy or an analogue of consciousness. The thing is of course making it hard to determine about whether I'm just imagining these things.

I believe I have a spiritual guide, a brown haired female self called Amanda who just wants me to go out there and have fun and enjoy the game of life. But I don't know if that is merely a projection of my own feminine way of thinking and my own innermost desires merely put forth.

How is one to get their head around this?

Any suggestions?

I made a mistake today
I made someone who was in an already fragile state worse and I hate myself for it.
It was a fucking mistake, scuse my french, I wanted to write something saying someone like them was loved and cared for and understood by someone who knew what they did, which was cutting. Not loving them because of cutting, loving as in supporting them through the hard times. I triggered it and I feel like a total shit.
Thing is I've felt like cutting before.
But for me its not to make myself feel better, unless you consider killing yourself a way of making yourself feel better.
I've already posted about panick attack levels, right now I'm level 2, dropping to depression and thoughts of just deleting myself out of LJ before I do too much damage. It's times like this I wish I was psychic, so I could tell what was right to post and what not to. I know I'll probably make them feel worse if they read this, and would probably draw to them unwanted attention. But I guess I wanted to give them the feeling that someone out there would care for them and love them and support them through the hard times. Not me, but someone close to them at least. It's not that its their fault for not seeing it. It's my fault for not thinking clearly before posting. I only hope they can forgive me.
I just wish there was some way to undo what I have done.

I have personally gone through all 7 stages of a panick attack, going from very low anxiety to the worse that can be described as almost psychotic anxiety to suicidal anxiety.

The stages I'm writing down as 7 with 0 being normal and 7 being the worst imaginable. But based on my personal experience I think it's based around for me. Others may have similar reasons but this list I feel is important for others to know about.

The stages are as follows:

0: Normal: One is self aware in the moment. Any anxiety up here would be random based on events that happen to you outside your control.

1: Aware and Nervous Separation: You now notice your self-awareness with an increased feeling of separation as you think of yourself as panicking in a noticable way. Low level of anxiety felt in the backgruond.

2: Increased separation and pressure building: This separation makes you feel pressure from everyone around you watching you, judging you and making you feel judged, scrutinized, or feeling bad, just because you're panicking. Strong background anxiety.

3: Paranoia and memory guilt trip: You become paranoid, beginning to imagine there aer people watching and judging you. All bad memories of mistakes you have made and thought are dredged up and you feel terrible. Very strong background anxiety.

4: Dissociation: Unable to take on the pressure you begin to dissociate and see yourself outside your body. You now feel that you are splitting away from your reality and are now beginning to go crazy. THis is extreme anxiety.

5: High fear and anger stage: You scream at everyone to go away from you, even if there's noone there in the room. You want to run away and hide under your bed and not be seen by anyone. This is suffering level anxiety.

6: It doesn't stop: And nothing you seem to do seems to stop it. You get really anxious thinking you'll never be the same again, and that you'll go insane. You can't sleep at night. Dangerous Anxiety.

7: Suicidal Risk: You want to escape from this, but no medicine works, you can't sleep, and you want the pain to stop. You feel humiliated from your guilt trip and no longer want to be alive. Most people here at this stage could commit suicide. Most dangerous anxiety.

I have been through all of these, and I was wondering if others had been through similar stages?

under matthew.david.bowron

LJ Cut for length

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I've decided to put my writing on haitus for the time being. It's not that I don't have ideas. The story of a person who's stages of life mark also the stages of development of one cycle of civilization, from scavenger hunting through to posthuman world government. One of my oldest ideas was to just write a story about a person and show the world around them slowly changing as technology changed and developed and as their own culture grew and altered over the periods of change. I also wanted to have the cycle of one life also be a period where people were feeling near suicidal based on their struggling to exist and survive in the foraging times, to a feeling of posthuman enlightenment where one could upload one's consciousness to the universe and become one with it. That idea still intrigues me, but what confuses me is how to set it out. Do I just set it out like a biography and write each chapter of the two main character's lives as they go through these stages, or do I try to do something else? The old idea of a biography of a person or two people in the case of this story, that mirror the life of a civilization still intrigues me, the only thing I worry about is if its original enough, or if I should try something else.

I'm having now again problems with starting my story.

I know I've asked the question before if my story is original, and I don't expect people to give me answers right away.

I just know that I haven't read a book that uses Spiral Dynamics and Progressive Revelation and Developmental Psychology connected to the History of the World before. If I'm able to write said book is the question I would like to answer.

The only problem is there's a lot of worldbuilding that needs to take place, as in a lot.

The first story is based around the idea of beige, of people who are basically on the brink of extinction, think the apes in 2001, fighting amongst one another, living in very small groups, often on their own, fighting to survive in a world of drought, perhaps brought on by an ice age. It is here that man is a scavenger, eating small animals, roots, tubers, and sometimes meat off stolen carcasses. They're more like homo habilis or homo erectus than homo sapiens, not that they've changed in appearance.

The question that I have to ask is, is a story about the survival of a couple on the edge of extinction an interesting story?

Stories of couples trying to survive after a cataclysm have been done before. Take The Road by Cormack McCarthy for instance. A boy and his father are surviving what seems like a nuclear winter, struggling to find food and people in a post-apocalyptic america. It was a best-seller just in how it wrote about the basic story in the way it was told. Thus could that mean my story of 'beige' be as good?

This is a question I leave to you to comment on. The idea is to bring it into either a savannah like land, leading up to a post-apocalyptic city through the various interlinks with various wandering tribes.

Maybe I should just start it with the people facing extinction and just go from there.

I don't know, what do you think?

If anyone from the public, livejournal or whereever wants to contact me regarding my story Namuh Htrae or any of my posts feel free to do so at my Windows Live Messenger at Matt_2019@msn.com

You can also contact me at my Myspace page at www.myspace.com/matthewbowron
Or you can search for me as Matthew Bowron on Facebook.

I'll be happy to make your acquaintance. :)

I've been having trouble with creativity. It's not coming up with ideas that I have a problem with, it's about being creative enough to actually write a story that I think others will find interesting. Most of my ideas have been based around cerebral topics, but they also need conflict, something to get the ball rolling.

And I was thinking, that with so many few ideas being considered up for grabs, what if I made my story idea public, so that everyone could contribute their own stories based around this world I was making?

Basically this is the idea: the history of the world is cyclical, there are 9 periods of history that are each based around different beliefs.

Basically the nine stages are this:

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I was thinking of writing a bunch of short stories that are linked inside one another to make up the story of the history of the world.

I keep wondering however how I'm gonna do it.

I could do it where the first story is recalled by the second and so on and so forth.

So far I have an idea that is a bit like this.

1) in beige, an immortal lives in the ancient ruins of a fallen age

2) purple remembers the story of beige, as they struggle in a tribe hunting the wild animals in the new jungles that have replaced the city

3) red recalls the story of purple as an orally told story told by a master of ancient history, who is currently waging war against other communities

4) blue recalls the war of red in a play that is performed by the actors of a medieval village, that is currently controlling people with its religion

5) orange recalls the history of blue in a book printed by merchants who are spreading their wares in colonies in new lands

6) green recalls the orange world as a televised history series as revolutions break out among the new-age populace to the aristocrats.

7) yellow recalls the revolutions of green in a webcast video that is spread as the world deals with massive consumerism in society 

8) turquoise recalls yellow in a virtual world library that is interactive during the time of the formation of a world government 

9) coral recalls turquoise as a memory download as the new emerging transhumans want to abandon the world to the populace with its new religion, and ultimately unleash a swarm of nanobots to destroy the civilization and return it to the inhabitants of the planet. 

1) beige will recall coral as a series of dreams that floats embedded within the re-established natural environment.  

As you know from my earlier notes, spiral dynamics of the nine stages also has a specific note of what happens to one's character or personality in each of these nine stages.

Briefly they are as follows:


1) beige - instinctive self

Here where we struggle for survival, we are guided by our instincts. We have basic ideas such as ownership and selfhood and express these in words such as "me" "mine" "i want" and "no"

2) purple - self-protective self

Here now living in a community, we feel we need to protect ourselves by basically understanding others to manipulate them to get what we want while at the same time not letting others know what we're feeling so they can't manipulate us. We still have to obey rules and try not to get punished at this level.

3) red - power based but conforming self

We want power at this level, we want to be respected and cared for, but in the face of other powers stronger than us, we feel we need to belong to them in order to exist. We speak kindly about them, and try to suppress our own feelings while doing what we are told. We often express our inner problems as being external to ourselves.

4) blue - conforming but also self-aware

Here we want to conform to the rules of the world, but we are also aware of our own individual self, and how we want to be respected for who we are as individuals. We think we have our ideas about how everything works and usually try to up-man others and ridicule others based on their own problems.

5) orange - individualistic and conscientious

We try to connect to others who feel like we do, as we want to build ourselves up, get goals done, and become successful in life. But we also want to get along well with others and make good decisions.

6) green - pluralistic and individualistic

We take in other perspectives at this time, seeing truth as subjective for each individual. Thus it is how we view things subjectively as individauls that are important to us, as this will affect not only ourselves but how we interact with others.

7) yellow - autonomous and integral

Here we integrate our different sides of ourselves, and become focussed on our own self-development and self-mastery.

8) turquoise - construct-aware and holistic

here we become aware that our ego has caused us to not connect fully with the world around us, and so we become aware of the different states of the world but ultimately see ourselves as still separate from that overall energy state that makes the world around us.

9) coral - unitive

here we see ourselves as on the threshold of new evolutionary energy, riding the wavefront of progress, being open to all experiences of life and feeling essentially one and eternal with the world around us.

AS you know my story is also based around the idea of a cyclical civilization, where civilization rises and falls again due to its own problems, which are linked to the transcendantal nature of the climbing spirituality. Basically put it is the spirituality that allows people to co-exist with the cyclical rise and fall of civilization, while in the beginning they weren't co-existing with it, and thus created a civilization out of their need to exist with nature, which in itself became exhausted and falls apart because we're only human and don't know the way to create a perfect civiilziation.

THe story linked with the nine stages are as follows:

1) beige - no civilization

At this stage civilization of the past has collapsed. Survival bands exist that scavenge for food amongst the wreckage of the old civilization. They make shelters out of the wreckage and stay within the ruins of the old civilization to protect them from outside attackers. Those who are in power are those who survive the best, who fight for roles of power and who use the less powerful to do their bidding.  

2) purple - tribal civilization

At this stage there is the development of a culture that has a belief in how the world came to be. This creates a way of expression that creates art forms that resemble the world of nature that has replaced the ruins of the old civilization. The idea of how the world is made up or how reality is becomes important. This leads to a split between those who are in power and who want to use this knowledge of reality for their own personal power, and those who want to find out this secret and share it with everyone.

3) red - early agricultural civilization

At this stage the spirits of the early religon get replaced by the heroes of those in power, who become the basic design of the power gods. This leads to a limit in the creation of nature-resembling artwork, leading to man-nature meldings. There is also a preservation of the study of the old culture through the priesthood and its knowledge of how reality is, which keeps people in power. Eventually these people in power become an aristocracy.

4) blue - nation based civilization

At this stage the spreading of agriculture and the creation of a merchant class, has allowed for those in power to think new ways about how the world is, through philosophy and mathematics for example. There is also the creation of art-work that truely depicts the human form. There is also the beginning of rational thinking replacing the mystical thinking of the religion at the time.

5) orange - capitalism spreading civilization

At this stage there is the power given to the people, with the gifts of rational religion. This leads to an increased study in the world of nature and the world of thinking. There is the creation of more intellectual forms of art, such as art that uses mathematics and science to depict a realistic world with its scientific concepts. There is also new mathematics that expands upon the earlier ideas, becoming more scientific rather than philosophical.

6) green - communalist spreading civilization

At this stage mystical thinking truths and scientific truths are later beginning to be accepted as both being truths in reality. There is the revolution of the thinking people against the power of the aristocracy, creating a more communalistic society. The artwork at this time begins to show the fragmentation of society as different groups attempt to rise to power now the aristocracy has been overthrown. With increased industrialisation, the cities become enormous and spirituality begins to be truely cast out and rejected, leading to problems in the populace regarding the meaning of life.

7) yellow - global civilization

At this stage the independent nations are now exchanging goods and services from one another. The world is now following a religion of materialism, where they think science and the rights of the individual are all that matter. There is the spread of ethics based on secular skeptical thinking at this time. Also there is the beginning of mathematics being based on purely rational skeptical thinking rather than scientific thinking.

8) turquoise - world government civilization

At this stage, philosophy about how the world came to be is merely seen as something academics study, and is of generally no importance. The nations at this time unite under a world government, that makes the world become a mixed population. The artwork at this time loses symbolism, where symbols are given the freedom to mean anything, making life seem absurd sometimes. Artwork now simply becomes a matter of fashion, where originality no longer exists and is simply a rehashing of earlier styles mixed in with modern styles or artificially constructed styles.

9) coral - collapse of world civilization

At this stage a new religion bursts forth from the very unspiritual world. This creates a rebellion against the world government, causing it and its lack of culture to crumble. The world government responds by trying to create a way to trap this rebellion in within its structure throguh teh creation of large artistic works, or buildings. But this merely makes the civilization one great bomb that detonates, destroying the world civilization, leaving it in ruins and the survivors to scavenge in the ruins once again. And so the cycle repeats itself.

As some of you may or may not know I'm a Bahai, which believes that all religions come from god, and that each religion came at a certain period of time with a particular message for that time, bringing with it a new age of civilization for that time. I have thus decided to add those spiritual messengers or Manifestations to the story.

Here is a brief list of the spritual levels:


1) Beige - survival

Spirituality: Pantheism - here the senses based around survival are embedded completely with the world around them. People in this size view the world around them as merely an extension of their own psychology, meaning that the world around them is as alive as they are. While different to animism, in that specific things are given the qualities of souls or spirits, in this case, all things are part of one mind - ours.

2) Purple - animism

Spirituality: Animism - in this stage we think that specific objects have spirituality, that rocks, trees, deserts and places have spirits, including more importantly animals. It is here that the hunter is trying to link the power of the mind towards controlling animals around him so that he can hunt. Each person may summon on the power of an animal to help them live. The manifestation I link to this is probably Adam.

3) Red - power

Spirituality: Polytheism - in this stage there is a group of gods that are linked to specific areas of nature, such as god of the animals, god of the weather, god of the ocean, god of the earth, god of fertility, etc. These gods represent again a more separated generalized group of people, who in this case reference the power of nature in its various forms. Summoning one particular god to help one with problems based around the realm of power of that god is done. The manifestation I would link to this could be Noah, or maybe Abraham.

4) Blue - conformity

Spirituality: Monotheism - in this stage there is one god who has given laws and commandments with his prophets/manifestations. It is this god that demands overall obedience to his laws and rules, and love and sacrifice. It is this god that unites a nation-state under its wing and thus allows that civilization to be protected. Instead of there being a god of nature, this is a personal cultural-god, one god per group of people. The manifestation I would link to this would be: Moses and Jesus.

5) Orange - scientificism

Spirituality: Scientific spirituality - in this case the great one god is now seen as an architect of the universe itself, and is seen to be linked not only with separate religious belief but integrated to the natural sciences and study of the world around them. One such example is Allah of Islam, who talks about orbits of planets, layers of the earth, cloud types, river saltiness levels, and levels of development of the fetus, as well as the idea of the universe forming from smoke and being separated. This type of spirituality was also felt during the Renaissance by such scientists as Sir Isaac Newton. The manifestation I would link to this would be Muhammad.

6) Green - pluralism

Spirituality: Spiritual inclusivity - in this case there is the beginning of religions that attempt to unite all religions under one area. One such idea was deism, a religion formed during the later Enlightenment to replace all religion. There is also the beginning of unity between groups mentioned in religions such as the Sikth faith and the Bahai faith. The manifestation I would link to this would be either: Guru Nanak or Bahulluah.

7) Yellow - integral hierachy

Spirituality: Spiritual hierachy of development. It is here that we have the development of a spiritual hierachy of development, stages that are introduced to allow people to develop to new levels, where levels of thinking and feeling are introduced as levels necessary for the development of mankind. Such ideas may be the stages of Sri Aurobindo, later psychological ideas of Freud or Jung or Erikson. Some spiritual new age religions such as Scientology also use the idea of hierarchies such as the Eight Dynamics, and the Tone Scale. There are also other spiritual hierarchies such as in the ideas of the 8 circuits by Timothy Leary. Here the manifestation I would link to this would be L Ron Hubbard.

8) Turquoise - integral holarchy/holism

Spirituality: Spiritual community of different developments. In this case, there is the idea of each way of thinking being part of the body of creation. That there are different levels of development for all the parts of humanity, but that they each have their own part to play. Spiritualities I think that reference this is more like those of George Lucas with the universal force that creates both the dark and light forces, as well as the many different races of beings in the universe. Another example is in the Matrix films, where the machines, those in the matrix and those in zion are at different levels of development but each interact as one world. Manifestations I would link to this would be either George Lucas or the Wachowski Brothers. 
There is also at this time the development of fractal like relationships of spirituality, like the ideas of NAssim Haramein. 

9) Coral - integral oneness 

Spirituality: Spiritual oneness with eternity. In this case one is meant to be one with the world of everything, one is part of the eternal universe and is forever connected to it. When one dies one lives on forever as part of the universe thus remaining in nirvana, while the world goes through its cycles of samsara. One example of this I believe is the unity shown in the film The Fountain by Darren Aaronofsky, where one can live forever in unity with the universe. Thus one doesn't have to be afraid of death and thus can enjoy life in all its forms. The manifestation I would link to this would be Darren Aaronofsky.  

Okay, as many of you have gathered, I've been repeating posting my notes for my 9 story novel Namuh Htrae. I'd just like to mention that when I've even thought I've done enough, I realise I've later missed out on some ideas I wanted to include and now feel like I'm just going round and round in circles, stating the same ideas. So apologies to those who want to read my notes and find out what book I'm trying to write about. Anyway, I hope you can stay with me on this as I type out ideas, because I'm getting confused about what I want to write about, and when that happens... *shudder* let me just say I apologise if I'm reposting things people already know about. I just need to organize my thoughts, and right now they're scattered around the place. So apologies, and please stay tuned for our regular programming.

There have been a number of Prehistoric Romances such as Jean Auer's Earth Children series.

The Prehistoric genre normally relates to such things as the relationships of different groups of humanity in the early periods of history, and how such groups differ in their culture and style, eg the Earth Children series or such Prehistoric films such as 10,000 BC.

One idea of 10,000 BC is that there were previous civilizations that may have done such things as create the pyramids, or which may have been previously been remnants of an earlier collapsed civilization, one that "came from the stars" or "came from the great sea when their land disappeared beneath the waves".

One example I am using is that one such lost civilization may be a civilization like ours which tried to survive past the apocalypse. Some types may have tried to continue life via agriculture, and later may re-emerge as an early civilization, like one which may have built astrological temples such as pyramids to use to describe how to control and manage their agricultural civilization.

Here the world of language has come into being, allowing for sentences that can be lengthed into paragraphs, linking to tell stories.

The world of communicating being no longer simply through body language and signs and images.

Now we're in a world of words, where one's language may use different words to describe similar things.

For instance, "hide" and "skin", "blade" and "knife", "craft" and "skill", "sick" and "ill", "pig" or "pork", "deer" or "venison", "meal" or "dinner", "meat" or "beef", "sheep" or "mutton", "cow" or "cattle", "room" or "chamber", "love" or "like".

The use of adjectives, the ways of words turning towards the audience, or sayings being broken by bits of information.

Stories of animals, how they came to be as they are, stories of how people made up rules and writing, "Just So Stories".

Stories of hunts, or tales of how people did certain things, humourous events, tragic events, thrilling events, emotive events, angry rants, long winded explanations, lectures and talks, accents and conversation, dialogue and internal thinking.

Single perspective from one person, I, or third person perspective on other characters, going to second person to speak directly to the listener.

Imagine now that no longer instead of scavenging for scraps, you now have clothing to keep you warm, tools to help you kill and training and support from others around you.

Now you are based around protecting yourself in this world.

Instead of being simply impulsive, you watch what you do in the world, because you could get into trouble and you want to avoid punishment.

You still want to do what you want to do though, and get what you want.

So you start to study other people, get to learn more about them and what they want to see if you can use them to get what you want.

But at the same time you don't want others to know what you want, so you hide your true intentions with a false face.

In this world it's you against them, anything bad happening being their fault.

You are only able to be allowed into the group if you know how to help add to the group.

You do respect rituals, doing the traditions of the tribe to appease them so that they let you live with them.

You want support and so by helping others hunt food you're supported by them.

Women however are still valued more and told to do certain jobs because women, mysterious as they are with their ways of carrying and birthing children, are the way in which the tribe survives.

In this world, it is a knowledge of how one can control nature that makes one able to live in this world.

And so you follow the tribe's rules although you want your own freedom.

The world has recuperated after the fall of man. Vegetation has eaten through the cracks of the pavement, devoured roads, wrecks of automobiles, scaled and toppled skyscrapers, whose rubble became the new rocks trees would sprout from and grow. Rivers have returned as roads have fallen away and been worn away by time. The world of man however has changed much.

The world itself seems like a large breathing organism. With deserts breathing hot air, seas breathing cold air, trees breathing strong air, animals light air, men air that gives words, and the sun hot air as well, all this air, breath or spirit is seen as what possesses the world. There is this energy which makes up the world, some of which some people call the chi, the negative-positive energy of unity and difference, yin and yang. For others it is a world of spirit, a world of forms made from a universal consciousness, a god who dreams the world into being, we being made in the image of god, as we too have dreams. THe world itself and how it came to be may be a world now that came to be because of a race of giants who caused the world to be flooded, made bad because they ate the tree of knowledge, or were given the gift of fire from a firey messenger.

In all cases, this story leads to the power of spirit and the power of mind, which is a power many of the hunters that live in this world try to control. They control by going into caves, depriving their senses, and thus they have visions of lines, dots and patterns, seeking their animal that gives them power, which they will later paint on these caves in the light of a small flame. Others seek the early memories of mother, carving great feminine busts of disproportioned beauty. Others carve animals into their tools such as spear-throwers, shields and blades. Their painting of animals, of dreams and people is their way of trying to control what they want and desire inside, by painting it and controlling it outside of them, drawing also the beasts from within.

The mystical-metaphysical world of spirit makes one become aware of the world of dreams. In the world of dreams one is welcomed to the spiritual world, where if one can truly find one's connection to the world, they can perform miracles. In reality that trying to create miracles or magic is more difficult, but they can through belief and visualization, allow certain events to happen, and so through ritual invoking spirit, or praying or meditating or visualising, one can create things to happen in their everyday life and thus create a magic of their own.

It is this magic that is made that those in power want to use to make themselves more powerful, and so they the strong ruling ones try to separate from those who seek the answers to where the magic comes from, thus becoming the sole providers of magical knowledge, becomeing the first priests who use the magic for their own rise of power.