M!
Very nice to get your email, and Happy Birthday! So glad you wrote. And I'm glad you're somewhat wired for bliss :) - 'tis a sweet thing, ~ sweet, bodymind weather. I'm curious to see what you have written about it, if you'd care to share this. I suppose I think I've written about many of the thoughts, and perhaps even concerns, you share in your message below, in my blog: scott-macleod.blogspot.com/search/label/loving%20bliss. I'm not sure what you're trying to say about loving bliss vis-a-vis music (e.g. academically, or in a blog, or in a journal), but here are some starting places for me: music is in a different register than language which adds an element of challenge in writing about experiences of it. Yet writing about loving bliss vis-a-vis music isn't impossible, and it's very worth exploring - perhaps in your own blog, where you just musically rif writing-wise, regularly, away? - Blogger.com is free. And perhaps you can already point to some writing about this which you find inspiring. I'll see if I can find some of my blog entries about this too, over time - under the 'music' or 'loving bliss' labels, as two starting places. And, if you'd care to, please add great items you find here at World University & School's "Loving Bliss" subject - https://wiki.worlduniversityandschool.org/wiki/Loving_Bliss_(eliciting_this_neurophysiology) (was: worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Loving_Bliss_(eliciting_this_neurophysiology) ) - or elsewhere at WUaS. Perhaps we can come into a long term conversation about this, especially with your interests in ethnomusicology (in which I'm interested, as well).
I draw the idea of 'bodymind' from John Money's "Concepts of Determinism" section in his 1988 book published by Oxford - search in my blog under "Concepts of Determinism" to read these 3-4 pages (around p. 114 in the actual book), which I've posted below. He uses it in the context of sexuality, which seems to go like planets around the sun - i.e. all the generations that precede us - and to offer an alternative to dualistic folk-psychology/metaphysics. These pages are worth reading: scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2009/09/planets-around-sun-john-moneys-concepts.html.
Vis-a-vis Quakers, I see a parallel between Silent Meeting and the relaxationresponse.org/steps, for which there's a focus aspect on releasing. I just returned from a Quaker retreat at Ben Lomond Quaker Center on 'Rightly Ordered Financial Management - groups.google.com/group/quaker-ben-lomond-rightly-ordered-finances (please join if interested) - south of San Francisco about 1 hour; I enjoy Friendly gatherings, and Ben Lomond is beautiful in the redwoods near Santa Cruz. But I spend more time at Harbin Hot Springs - harbin.org - as my ethnographic field site, about which I'm writing an ethnography (scott-macleod.blogspot.com/search/label/Harbin%20ethnography) with a virtual world aspect, and where, in the pools, I often richly experience the relaxation response, and where, sometimes, bliss bubbles up, which I find similar to what sometimes occurs in Meeting. I've been active in quite a few Meetings. What Meeting did you grow up in?
Your observation that the more you seek 'loving bliss,' or peak experiences, the less you find them, is interesting. I often return to the relaxation response - I sit every morning - and then explore loving bliss biology, with this releasing practice as a reference experience. In my thinking about the neurophysiology of loving bliss, I use ecstasy (MDMA) as a neurochemical, reference experience - naturally (you'd have to imagine it if you haven't tried it). I experience this neurochemistry naturally in the Harbin warm pool, as well as with music, - all of which can lead to very positive qualities which touch on loving bliss. (Search on 'ecstasy (MDMA)' in my blog here for more related thoughts - scott-macleod.blogspot.com/search/label/ecstasy%20{MDMA}). So I'm exploring, as a focus of inquiry, eliciting loving bliss neurophysiology, when and as one wants it. "What's the on/off switch for this biology?" - is one way of asking this question. And I don't experience these qualities as frequently when I'm tired, as not - so it's not chasing the experience for me, but rather getting enough rest that is key, as well as being in touch with relaxationresponse.org / silent meeting centering biology (with which quite a few bodyminds in this world aren't:) - and then sometimes loving bliss bubbles up. Or I turn on Vivaldi or the Grateful Dead, and soar with neural cascades of pleasure which are kinds of 'flow'. :) {Sometimes I explore my own bodymind improvisation with the music, - I might sing a line in harmony, but silently, as one example}. So, as a focus of inquiry, I do desire to understand how loving bliss - and all its related qualities - works, and then go there, in the midst of a busy, yet somewhat free, life. So I try to stay on focus, - perhaps as a form of desire in your sense - in exploring how to elicit loving bliss. How does it work biologically, yet subjectively, in all its many qualities? I'm curious about your thoughts about this?
I also think code - e.g. music, and especially language - can give form - cause - qualities of loving bliss. Also, flax seed oil (for Omega fatty acids) has specific harmonizing and brightening effects in my experience, but I haven't seen the clinical research to support this. So code and bodymind neurophysiology are key, and these are biological.
I think the music recording examples I've mentioned are all examples of information technologies which bring me to bliss. I too get tired when staring at the screen too much, but this is partly a scheduling question. Has reading, as information technology - nose in a book - been relative widespread (and alienating?) since Gutenberg? I don't think so, and this is key aspect of the internet. And I prefer the enjoyment of being social a fair amount, and do find myself engaged with information technologies at times at the expense of sociality. I suppose it's all about troopbonding see John Money 1988: 114) of an unique (communitas - see Victor Turner) persuasion (and scheduling - see Stanford Professor Emeritus Phil Zimbardo's FB office hours: Zimbardo, Phil. 2009. Stanford Open Office Hours: Philip Zimbardo, Part 1. (Heroic Imagination/Insight - also here: facebook.com/video/video.php?v=614090435683 Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University, and see his Pts. 2 & 3 sections, concerning 'planned hedonoism' for busy Stanford students. Phil Zimbardo is also great. I think social conditions do emerge as a consequence of the industrial revolutions that precede and inform us, where all these technologies we live among create conditions of alienation, especially around possibilities for making money and livelihoods - I've experienced this in myself and others (e.g. when you see really wigged out people). But I also think we have agency, and that we can and will choose the technologies we want to use. I don't see widespread agrarianism emerging en masse in the next century either, for example, as a response to the alienation of modernity and cities. Jobs are in cities, and cities will continue to grow tremendously around the world in the next century.
When might you come to visit, so that we can check out cell-phone free Harbin Hot Springs together? The warm pool there is richly and refreshingly releasing, - even for the most wired, information technologist. :) And Harbin is very natural, so I agree that nature is wonderful for bliss ... but so is the experience of traveling there and back again. It's Harbin's milieu which is so remarkable and unique. Findhorn isn't the same, although I haven't visited it. I know of no place in the Britain like Harbin.
For me, with a focus of inquiry on loving bliss, the next questions I'm curious about have to do with bodyminds vis-a-vis chamber music, rock bands, and raga and related musicians, as metaphors. Can people do what such musicians do, but bodymind to bodymind, that is, metaphorically, as human musical instruments (and with or without musical instruments), both with notation and improvisationally vis-a-vis loving bliss. Contact Improv dance jams are a metaphor here for me, as well. And while I enjoy contact improv, and it also makes me fit - being healthy helps with bliss elicitation - it usually can lead to flow for me, but not bliss, let alone loving bliss, in my experience. What's the musical score, if one were to develop chamber music-like jams/practices? What musical instrument is your bodymind? How would you make it soar with another musical instrument bodymind? How would this work? (The video I posted to your FB page, here, is an amazing example as model: İşte Gitarı Konuşturmak Ben Buna Derim Four-Hand Guitar - facebook.com/video/video.php?v=1107177801715&ref=mf - but there are many. Humans are complex, and there's a lot of evolutionary biology behind us, and ahead, as well as culture, all informing us. One kernel for this idea of exploring loving bliss as musical score is here: http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/03/bonobo-relaxing-loving-bliss.html as well as here: http://scottmacleod.com/GuidelinesPracticingLovingBlissvavMusicalInstrument.htm. Shall we explore this together, from afar, in writing and media? :)
Happy birthday :)
With friendly greetings,
Scott
Hi Scott - many thanks for the guitar four hands - fantastic!
I have been meaning to write to you for a while - I always find your statuses intriguing and your blogs very interesting.
I am particularly interested in your work and ideas on what you call 'loving bliss' and how you relate it to Csikszentmihalyi's theories on flow.
I too am a little wired for it I think.
I've been trying to write about it in the context of musical experience recently, but there are not terms for it that are unambiguous that it is proving very difficult.
I like how you don't express it in terms of religious or spiritual language. I'm also interested in the idea of the 'bodymind'
I'm interested in your case because I too was brought up in a Quaker family in Scotland. I am used to focussing my mind and bringing my consciousness into certain states , and have been pratising it since childhood. Have I learned from a young age to welcome such experiences in? Or is it to do with a perspective on life? simplicity, integrity, open-endedness and focus on goodness as you say?
I seem to spend my whole life chasing these peak experiences, but in fact it seems like the more I desire them the less I experience loving bliss, because of artifical expectation. The more I desire loving bliss the less likely it is to just come over me, because I desire it. I don't know.
I have a question though. I know you are interested in the anthropology of information technology, and I wonder about this in relation to loving bliss.
I am an addict to information and I definitely feel that living in a virtual world, constantly plugged into a digital feedback loop, makes me unhappy. It forces me to live perpetually in the future. And if I am in a situation whereby I cannot access information instantly, it makes me anxious and uptight.
I only experience loving bliss, as you call it, outside the world of technology. I experience it most often in nature, where I am not wired into this artifical world. It is only when I am not connected to the web that I can appreciate the world 'as it is,' in that moment. It is only then when I can appreciate the universe without looking to the future. To observe the passing sky, the regularity of the waves lapping the beach - the great salt pulse of the earth.
In fact, i would say that my happiest peak experiences happen when I am as far removed from technology as I can be. Not necessarily alone, not at all. With great friends, yes, playing music with great friends, having fantastic conversations in real time.
As much as I revel in the world of information and knowledge at my fingertips, I feel that it is having a profoundly detrimental effect on my well-being, my mental health and my ability to elicit experiences of loving bliss.
I worry that as a human race our attachment to information technology will have an negative impact, unless we learn to use it wisely.
Have you any thoughts on this? I would be very interested to hear them.
In anticipation,
M.M.
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Wednesday, September 26, 2018
Am seeking to recall who M.M. is, and which social media ... (would think I can search various social media in 2010 to find out).
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(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/03/beautiful-succulent-letters-between.html - March 23, 2010)
I enjoyed reading your post. It was informative and interesting and I look forward to more in the future.
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