TABBY CAT Gamespace

Firewall

Today there is no topic! Nothing to see here. Move along! It's all random, unconnected gibberish and nonsense (unlike every other Gamespace blog entry on a normal day hee hee)

1) Despite my very best efforts at discouraging, interdicting, blocking, and squelching all feedback of any kind on this blog, occasionally something strikingly intelligent snakes under the barb wire and across the claymores of my security perimeter and presents itself directly to my eyes. Such is the case with the interesting reader feedback below:

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I must comment on your recent entry "Moo". 

There are two examples of remote viewers who were able to direct their viewing to the benefit of themselves and others; Wolf Messing (made a great career at it, self serving in itself) and Baba Vanga, "the Bulgarian seeress".

Both are addresses in "Psychic Discoveries Behind the Iron Curtain".  For more on the interesting case of Baba Vanga:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baba_Vanga

http://www.vor.ru/English/Footprints/excl_next885_eng.html

Being completely ignorant myself I suggest that the protocols defined by Ingo Swann are a pollution themselves (like most education). 
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Now there's a reader with a brain. Obviously I need to tighten up my feedback filtering procedures, or something like this could happen again! Ahahaha!

2) Moving right along as quickly as possible, I read recently in a book about consciousness that most daydreams, across age, gender, and other variables, are some variant of one of the following eight types:

1. The Sexual Fantasy: "Imagine that person were naked. We could have sex."
2. The Delayed Repartee: "I should have said 'x' to that guy, that would've been perfect. But I didn't. I'm stupid."
3. The Adulated Specialist: "What if I were the greatest break-dancer/ninja/flutist/pizza maker in the world!"
4. The Problem Solver: "How can I fix this situation/relationship/leaky faucet/life?"
5. The Violent Fantasy: <Biff! Pow! Sock!>
6. The Banality: "Did I lock the front door? Did I lock the front door?"
7. The Replay: "That was so excellent/horrible, I think I will systematically review every excellent/horrible detail."
8. A Word from the Stomach: "What's for dinner?"

3) Quote of the Day

"I'm in show business, why come to me?"
"War is show business, that's why we're here."

- Wag the Dog

4) Change of Plan: I was signed up to attend an intensive week long Russian system training event this week. But due to personal business, I will not be going. It's ok, I have attended many such things in the past. I admire the Russian teacher. I think somebody with his level of native genius for hand-to-hand kinetics comes along about once per century. Like Ueshiba or Yang Luchan. Born not made! That isn't me though, more's the pity. And that's why I don't regret missing or skipping any training along those lines. ... didn't I just say the reason? - Born, not Made.

I will however probably go ahead with the Extreme/Illegal Boxing training intensive with Mark Hatmaker in early September. So um ... watch this space.

Bet the Farm

This past week I achieved my Tabby Yogic Milestone for the week. It was to re-introduce Urdhva Padamasana to my Primary Series. As below:

Every week I gotta have a TYM. Even though it's pointless to have one. But everything is pointless to begin with, so... why not have a TYM? Eh? For fellowship!

Now in this coming week things are going to get nastier. We're going to turn up the heat a little. I'm going to try to re-introduce (I say re-introduce when discussing poses I could do more or less OK as of last summer when I quit) one of your more problematic poses, Gabha Pindasana. As below:

I call this one a nasty boy because it has some serious overhead. Most people (me for one anyway) need to spray their legs with a water atomizer before attempting this! Isn't that awful? But otherwise you can't really get your arms through your legs (your legs are in full Lotus when you start). It's really quite wicked.

We'll see what happens on that, and of course might as well throw in the immediately following pose which is a somewhat similar flavor. That'd be Rooster, as below:

And that'll be all she wrote, for this week. If I even get that far, who the hell knows?

See what a simpleton I am? Notice how I always talk about yoga in this superficial, external, performance-oriented way. I never blab on about Patanjali or Eight Limbs or anything. Because I don't really buy all that stuff. Morals-wise all you need is "Don't hurt anybody". And spiritually, I go with David Carse who says everything's an illusion in the first place, so all this talk about spiritual progress is just hogwash. But very nice and venerable hogwash! I do respect the various Founders and Great Masters and Gurus and such of the art. But I'm just too shallow to really blend into their world. I figure as long as I keep "just practicing" my admission ticket is still good. My signal that the Ashtanga world really can't take me any more will be if/when Tracy ever kicks me out of her morning Mysore session!

Actually though, yoga should be done only by spiritual retards like me! This yogic soul corrective isn't meant for those who are already so high-minded and resonant with all the Yama's and whatnot. If you are already imbued with all that, in spirit if not the letter of it, then you good to go man! Bye bye! Don't let the door hit your butt on the way out. You don't need this stuff in the first place.

For is it not written:

But when Jesus heard that, he said unto them,

They that be whole need not a physician,

but they that are sick.

- Matthew 9:12

The Cat on the Mat Comes Back

I did it. It's been a year off, but today was my Official Tabbycat Yogic Reentry day. Went to the new "AYS veterans" (or refugees?) Mysore session, presided over by Tracy. What a great session I had! Even though few things I could formerly accomplish with not much problem (such as Mari D, Garbha pidasana, and one or two others *smirk*) have temporarily fallen by the wayside (due to physical issues and a year's overcoat of rust), overall this morning's session was maybe the best, the deepest, the most mature if I could say that, I've ever done. And I'll reel those nasty guys above back in, and land them on the dock again, all in due course of time.

Why so great? Definitely not the facility. I mean its super nice of them to let us AYS refugees have some space, but nobody would disagree that physically, the studio there just doesn't compare to the lofty, airy, spacious and gracious AYS from where you could see across the entire Cascade mountain range of a bright clear early summer morning like today. Not to mention the cool pics of Ganesha and Hanuman all over the place. And other amenities. Nope, sic transit gloria, how are the mighty fallen, we are huddled into a smallish back room.

But that's good enough because the of the key factor we do have: Tracy. The teacher. She is such a total Yoga Goddess! This morning, with just a quiet word here and there, a touch, a gesture or smile she corrected dozens of my poses and taught me a bunch of key refinements - accomplished so smoothly you'd hardly know she was there. I was being too forceful, in breathing and posing. A bit crude I think, in retrospect. She said "[Tabby], remember - ahimsa in word, thought, deed". She was saying, you know, ahimsa even toward yourself, that was her idea at that moment. She was right. I love the ahimsa thing... I even mention it on the home page of my AlasBabylon Yahoo group. But I had forgotten it for a long time. She smoothed and gentled out my practice so it went way deeper.

All the Ashtanga teachers in the line the I've been exposed to in my narrow, extremely parochial slant on yoga (Ashtanga Primary Series only, taken in two locations only - Seattle AYS and Tokyo Ogikubo) have been great. David was very inspirational with his technical performance virtuosity and metaphysically spacy personality, Satya gave me many key technical advances in posture mechanics, Ken is the ultimate drill sargent who never lets you say die, pure fire, while Basia is another Yoga goddess type with absolutely incomparable technical adjustments.

But of them all, I love Tracy the best. She was my first Yoga teacher from Day 1 when I didn't even know what a Surya Namaskar is. She read us poetry, taught us the opening chant, just made it seem so fun and meaningful, a spark of something shining up an otherwise lackluster world. It's kind of funny, thinking back - after she'd taught our little intro group the Suryas A and B, I somehow thought that was all of Ashtanga yoga, that those two exercises were the system! They seemed challenging enough to me, at the time. So I was ready for the Intro class to begin winding down after we'd covered those. Oooops! That's what an ignoramus I was.

But anyway, for me, Tracy brings a taste to the practice that nobody else ever did. Although I know that actually nothing means anything, everything will end as mere dirt in the wind, still I have to love those very rare spirits whose golden touch can make me feel otherwise, if only for a moment.

Downward Facing Cat

Tomorrow I'll take my re-tooled Ashtanga Primary Series into the shop (Tracy) for a checkup. I've just barely got something passable stitched together with paper clips and duct tape after the one year layoff. But it's gotta go back on the road sooner or later, and tomorrow's the day. I may report Tracy's prognosis on it here in this gamespace. Or not. Doesn't matter. 

I never had much use for Buddhism. Though I studied it a lot, even learned Tibetan language at Harvard for one intensive year, in the end it leaves me cold, just like all the other big phony organized religions (except I do have a bit of a soft spot for Jainism, since they are super kindly towards animals). The only supernatural entity that interests me is Shiva Nataraj - Lord of the Dance. However, there are two cool artistic works that have arisen from, or are related to, Buddhism.

Number One, the novel Siddhartha by Hesse. Strictly speaking not part of the Buddhist religion in any way, but (supposed) historical Buddha Gautama features as a character and the whole things touches on Buddhist themes.

Number Two, the 8-volume manga graphic novel of the historical (semi-fictionalized) life of Gautama by Osamu Tezuka. That is really magnificent work (and as a bonus features lots of commentary on human-animal relations).

What somebody needs to do, and this would be a great Hollywood project that could make a ton of money not to mention acclaim and prestige etc. is to make the ultimate animated feature film of Siddhartha. I've mentioned this before in Tabby Ashtanga blog, but no action has been taken. It's true there's a fairly recent (2004) Thai animated version of the historical legend of the Buddha. But that, graphically charming though it is, remains a parable or catechism for religious indoctrination of children. Just like all the Jesus movies out there.

Whereas if somebody were to do real justice to the Hesse novel, it would be wild, exciting, mysterious, bizarre, awesome. Not offer any answers, just immerse you in the mystery and weirdness.

And to do it justice, the indispensable element would be the soundtrack. Just as important as the narrative content, we'd need to get rights to the latest great world-music trancified Hindu kirtan chants. I refer of course to stuff by Jai Uttal, Krishna Das, Donna De Lory, and Deva Premal. Those extended psychedelic chant tracks would set the atmospherics which the graphics would only enhance.

So the sequence would go something like this:

Opening scene: The proud, beautiful Brahman youth S, bathing at sunrise at the river by the boats, then walking back to his home. He passes forest scenes with animals visible through the leafy shadows. And town scenes where blacksmiths and other busy shops clank with pre-industrial production noise, that sometimes amost totally obscures the music track but always under the "red dust" of this world, the beat of the music track would still be barely discernible and would always re-emerge strongly as S passes quietly by each tableau, walking his way. The sound track for this opening "walk" scene would be Jai Uttal's Maha Deva chant (about 10 minutes).

Then there's something good from Deva Premal, title escapes me at the moment, that would exactly suit as the soundtrack for the Samana phase, where S abuses and tortures himself with physical austerities in the forest for years. We could do some great dark work on that phase.

Then we need a good sound line for S's meeting with the actual Buddha. Gotta think about that one.

Another soundtracked scene would be when S has done with his Sannyassin phase, no longer a Samana, and has met and rejected the Buddha, and has given up on all the spiritual search, and comes to town and first sees the half-naked sexy girl drawing water, who places one foot on the other while staring at him, but he passes her by and sees the beautiful courtesan Kamala, in her sedan chair and their eyes meet. The soundtrack for this extended sequence would be Donna DeLory's Om Nama Shivaya - sung with her passionate female voice (Madonna's main backup vocalist in live concerts) and its hot rhythmic beat. A hymn to Shiva, the wild god of power and ecstasy.

Then the dramatic and spiritual climax to the movie would be the scene where S has been through absolutely everything and lost it all, he's just a bum of a ferryboat oarsman, and he gazes in the water and suddenly understand Non-dual awakening. The river immerses him and he becomes the river (rivers are also symbolized in the wild tangled hippie hair of Shiva Nataraj). And the soundtrack for this extended segment must obviously be Jai Uttal's ultimate masterpiece, Nataraj.

Then something from Deva Premal for the closing credits.

If the animation were really super highest quality, with lots of mysterious, dark, psychedelic yet surrealistically credible hyper-real imagery and colors, this could be the most powerful animation movie ever made - even though there really isn't any action in the story at all. No car chases, and not even one single explosion.

I figure we're talking 20 million USD for overall budget, including animation, soundtrack rights, novel rights (or rights to the English translation if the original German has gone public domain already), world class voice talent, and so on. Naturally I would have to retain full creative control over the entire project.

My brother is in the business, hobnobs with all kinds of industry players, big wheels, movers, shakers. I need to put him onto this. If only I could get him to return my calls and emails (Hollywood is a cold town, ahaha).

Mobbed up

We are here to awaken from the dream of our separation
- bumper sticker

I saw the above quote on a bumper sticker today. It's alright as far as it goes. Who could argue? One sees a BS (Bumper Sticker) like that and one says to oneself: "Cool ... far out ... if that's not deep I'd like to know what is".

 But wait a sec, hold yer damn horses a minute. Isn't there a logical issue with this? I mean, if the only reason for us being "here" (Earth Plane Time-Space Illusion, I assume), in an apparently undesirably "separated" condition, is for us to realize we are not actually, or need not be, separated, then what's the point? In that case, this is a very screwed up school. It's as if a doctor first deliberately injects you with syphilis so that he can then sell you the cure or antidote.

Point being, if we weren't separated in the first place, when we were up on our etheric clouds or wherever, before we jumped into physical, then the easy way to handle this "separation" problem is just don't jump down into Earth/TSI to begin with! Where did this problem of "the dream of separation" come from? Just by landing in the physical Earth meatspace in the first place.

Is it not written: an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

Do you know the formal definition of a protection racket (organized crime) ? It goes something like this: an extortion scheme wherein victims are forced by an organized crime organization to pay for "protection" from threats and dangers that are engendered by the criminal group itself.

So, bear with me now, this logic is going to hug the rails on some tight curves here -  if the ONLY place that "problems" such as separation, loneliness, greed, fear, pain, ego, etc. all that baaaaaaaaaaad stuff exists is the Earth/TSI in the first place, and if this is the only place it can be experienced, then your basic New Ager will tell you that's why we are here - because ONLY here can we experience those things and learn to overcome them. But but but...wait a fucking second, if all that nasty stuff is ONLY found here, then why bother to learn to overcome it in the first place? Just leave Earth/TSI alone and go on about your business.

It doesn't hold water. I smell a rat. There's a fly in the logical ointment here. 

Souls are being scammed! Somehow the whole operation reminds me of the dumbass old joke about Tiger Powder: a guy comes up to you and the following dialog ensues:

TP Salesman: "Hey here's something you really need, Tiger Powder, you just sprinkle this around and it keeps all kinds of nasty dangerous man-eating tigers away from you!"

You (sensibly): "There's not a tiger within a thousand miles of here!"

TP Salesman: "There, you see? It works!"

The Soul Command out there is somehow cooking up some kind of faked-up hothouse threat, and then forcing us to learn to overcome it by scamming us into ponying up our souls and whipping us liked rented mules into a karmic pack train of abuse - abuse that the Soul Command itself has artificially created to stoke the very fires it claims to be helping you extinguish.

Half inch deep

One among the numberless hordes of Gamespace readers, someone I don't even know, wrote me to complain about my recent posts on yoga. Saying that I don't get it, that the point isn't physical performance and asana sensationalism - no, no, no, no, no! It's all about spiritual growth, progress toward the light, self understanding, soul shaping to qualify for a gold star from the Lords of Karma, taste their carrot rather than their stick, blabitty blah blah. I am claimed to be too much performance oriented. I am told to study the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali more seriously.

Well that's fine as far as it goes. But from my feline point of view, it's really rather shallow. A tad ... unagressive... wouldn't you say? Because we felines don't buy into the whole human hangup about spirituality and enlightenment and all such nonsense. That's all just air whistling past our ears. We don't buy this whole complicated game of eight-limbed soul straightening. To me, there is nobody here or there. Nobody exists. We are all just populating one another's dreams for no particular reason. It's all just lila, the endless pointless dance play of Shiva Nataraj. Given that, all you can reasonably ask is that it at least look good.

Now granted, I can't blame the humans for thinking something matters - they have been conditioned by the one harsh task mistress of the earth plane - physical pain - to believe so. They have obviously been driven insane since Day One in this vale of tears by their unrelenting experience of physical and emotional pain, so who can blame them for being such harebrained fanatics? Mad as hatters, every one of them.

Me, I see it all as dance. And dance ought to look good. Or not. Won't matter in the least, either way.

Get it: The sole thing that does matter, across all the galaxies, across all the vastness of hyperspace, is food. It's a predatory multiverse, for sure! Haha! But if our dance play looks good, it makes good eating for the Lords of Karma. And then they'll reach down to gratefully pat our heads and in their turn toss us a scrap from the high table of their cosmic feast.

I'll have what he's having

Yes yes yes - all the rumors whispered in the lunchrooms, back offices,  sound stages, and casting room couches of Hollywood are all true - I'm totally back into Ashtanga. Damn! After a year off the mat (despite doing all kinds of other stuff, ouch!) I have about as good form as a junkyard dog after a tornado sweeps over his scrap heap. Grotesquely twisted metal and random shards of once-(semi)-elegant asanas strewn all over the freeway. I can see it's going to be a long voyage back. But I trust Tracy to throw me a lifeline and reel me in again, starting next week. I don't know why I suddenly plunged back into it. I'm nuts! (But you knew that already) I felt it was a command direct from Lord Shiva himself (see pic, upper left). Obviously, the coolest of all supernatural entities - Nataraj, Lord of the Dance, King of the Himalayas! I always dedicate my (shamefully subpar) practices to Shiva before I launch into Surya A every morning (hey at least I can still do that one, more or less). The coolest thing about AYS though, and what I miss most, is the kirtan sessions there, where sometimes David would break out a Shiva chant: Om Nama Shivaya - go for it! For some reason any Shiva chant whatsoever launches me straight  into orbit, much better than even the very finest "baby c" (catnip) - even uncut Burma Blue straight from the continent.

But all that aside, that isn't what we're here to discuss today. Obviously we are here to talk about coolness, the cool factor (which Shiva embodies in spades!) First let's lay some groundwork. Let's back off and talk about what everybody wants.

People give different stories about what they want. Surfers want the perfect wave. Jesus freaks want to be bathed in the blood of the lamb. New Agers want to be the best bunny they can be. Politicians and businessmen want power over other people. Boxers want to break your jaw. On it goes. But what do they really all want? I mean, is there something underlying all that? Some common x factor that unifies it all? Yes and that x factor has never been better stated than by Joe McMoneagle (he's probably the world's premier Remote Viewer, and one of the trainers for my recent intensive) in his book where he talks about his Near Death Experience:

I was enjoying the ride, its feeling.; I was becoming one with what was happening to me. After which I couldn't estimate then - nor can I now - I became aware of a gentle warmth on the back of my neck. It began at the base of my skull and spre more like a warmth of feeling, of being. It made me tingle all over, everywhere. It began growing in intensity, and I began to feel really good all over. Soon it exceeded the definition of good - then better - then great - then glorious. On and on, through definitions that don't exist to describe it, the feeling continued to grow in intensity and completely filled my being.

Now, a lot of people want to know what exceedingly-outrageously- fantastic means, and I find it a difficult question to answer. closest that I can come to giving an example that most people will understand is that it was like the peak of a sexual climax times twelve time ten to the thirty-third. That would be a twelve with thirty-three zeros after it. (Sexual peak times 12x10**33, or a normal climax time 12,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.)

So you see, everyone's the same. Right there, that's what everyone wants. But given that, why do we perceive differences among people? I figure the main dimension of variation among humans is the Cool Factor Quotient.

Consider the following sad case:

Cool Factor Quotient (CFQ) = less than zero, for sure. But why? I know what you're thinking - he's uncool because he's an old, rich, white, male. Is that it? But let's draw another card from the deck. I see your Dick and raise you this:

Say what you will, the CFQ of this one beats Cheney hands down. But why? What's the difference? They are identical on all the listed categorical attributes... Well, I've known it ever since I read The Picture of Dorian Gray as a mere kitten: it's physical appearance obviously!

So I figure the reason for all the wars, pogroms, holocausts, genocides, ethnic cleansings - the entire Earth Plane shitstorm - is just that some people self-perceive their own Cool Factor Quotient (CFQ) to be so shamefully low that it drives them into homicidal frenzy!

*Tabby nervously gnaws his fore-claws to the nub as he ponders the fact that he too seems to be incarcenated in physical Earth Plane space and thus fully subject to the whims and fancies of all these human assholes*

Meow Culpa

This blog has been mothballed for a while, time to catch up on some big doings.

For example, for some reason I have gotten totally back into yoga. True, my hip is somewhat screwed up, but I decided not to let that stop me. Even while I was at the intensive RV training this past week (12 hours training per day), I got up at 5 AM every single morning to do the entire Ashtanga Primary Series. I must be nuts! I don't know why I suddenly popped back into it like this... as though somebody offers a recovered alkie a single glass and whammo.

But I only want to do hardcore uncut Ashta Primary Series, with one of the main Ashta teachers, nothing else, nobody else. That means: Tracy or David or Ken or Basia or Satya. So to that end, I stopped by the alternate shala today and signed up/paid for all morning Mysore sessions from Aug 5 onward.

I'll go there for every Mysore morning session when Tracy is teaching (except moon days).

In short I have gone from dry drunk to raving sot in one quick gulp. Back to being a yoga Nazi!

I don't know what flipped the switch again. My yoga pal gently reminded me that since I quit yoga this time last year, I have dissed it on these very blog pages, stating that yoga is dangerous and useless etc. Well my yoga pal is correct. That's not a good thing to have done. Looks especially stupid now that I'm back in the game. Well hey - I'm bad. Bad to the bone. But if you've been reading this blog for more than a few days and you still don't know I'm bad, you need to get your eyes examined. (Actually, if you've been reading this blog for more than a few days, period, you need to get your head examined.)

Bang

This blog will now be temporarily put out of your misery due to Tabbycat Temporary Relocation (TTR) for purposes of intensive Remote Viewer training.

Maybe I'll blog that up when I'm back in a week or so. Or maybe not. But the beauty of the Time-Space Illusion (TSI) is that either way, it won't matter in the slightest.

Methadone

Huh, Ashtanga yoga got into me more than I thought. A sleeper addiction?  Ironically now that my home shala is nothing more than a dead tumbleweed fading into my rearview mirror, dimly illuminated by the feeble rays of the setting sun, I find my bod wanting to get back into the game.

Yet I'm still basically lazy  (and the sun still rises in the East). So I've crafted my own personal Primary Series. The design protocol was ingeniously simple:

• Start with full Ashtanga Primary Series (learned at AYS and Tokyo Ashtanga)
• Strip asana's I don't like
• Strip asana's that bore me
• Strip asana's that are uncomfortable
• Strip asana's I can't do
• Strip asana's that take too much time
• Strip leg/hip stretches duplicated by Shaolin stretches
• Strip asana's that I look especially stupid doing

The resulting sequence totally hits the spot!

I can do alone in my own home space every day taking only about 15  minutes.

It goes as follows:

1. Surya's A & B
2. Purvattanasana
3. Navasana
4. Jumpback
5. Bhuja pindasana
6. Jumpback
7. Urdhva Dhanurasana
8. Uttana Padasana
9. Chakrasana
10. Sirsasana
11. Shavasana

(Notice that at least I kept them in the correct order!) Feels great and only takes a fraction time of the whole PS. Of course, some purists might question how can I cherry pick like this and expect any benefit? Yet with AYS six feet under, I can't go back for corrections, instructions, adjustments ... in other words, I couldn't practice right even if I wanted to!

At some point I'll probably re-introduce at least: Baddha Padmasana, Yoga Mudra, and Tolasana. I've always enjoyed those 3, even through they are a bit on the static quietistic side. Maybe even Urdhva Padmasana.

For marketing differentiation, of course it needs its own name: Tabbycat's Outrageously Unbecoming Corrupted Ashtanga Nanosequence (TOUCAN). Ah, now that's marketing!

I'll probably just keep doing it this way on my own until I relocate for the Fall season to Tokyo (as always) and there I'll restart the real shit under the eagle eyes and talons of Ken and Basia. This TOUCAN thing will just let me keep a toe in the game so they won't laugh too uproariously at me when I unfold my mat the first morning in Ogikubo in September.