Figs: Harbin's wholeness - its Gestalt - which is a kind of experiential perfection - the waters & the valley, the climate, the clothing optionalness

Changes in perspective are emblematic of, and a part of counterculture.


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At Harbin I hear Spanish spoken sometimes, besides English.


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I sometimes find hints of Nicholson's "Somethings got to give" film at Harbin.


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Wisdom in individuals in the place and freedom at Harbin.


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At Harbin there are at least 14 films a week.


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A social pattern I've noticed at Harbin:

There's a kind of hazing at Harbin upon 1st arriving as a guest, which I've noticed over the years. While not exacting hazing, a Harbin resident, for example, might even do something unthoughtful or slightly antagonistic, and then a beneficial serendipity often develops at Harbin following this initial slight negativity. Harbin's cattiness?



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It's a warm weekend day beginning of fig leaves coming out.


Harbin has a wholeness - its Gestalt - which is a kind of experiential perfection - the waters and the valley, the climate, the clothing optionalness.













(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/02/figs-harbins-wholeness-its-gestalt.html - February 8, 2010)

Lotus Buds: What would 'meeting for blissing' look like?, 2 hour form?, Raga as metaphor

What would 'meeting for blissing' {or, especially, 'meeting for loving bliss' neurophysiology} look like?

What might be its 2 hour form - like chamber music performance as analory, or raga performance (ragas are improvised)?

Face-joy improv?

What 'practices?'


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If raga is the form as a metaphor, what are the skills of loving bliss 'musicianship,' akin to sitar playing, tabla playing ... so we might begin to give forms to improvisation with highly trained musicians vis-a-vis loving bliss?


Learning how to play ragas is originally an oral tradition, although I suspect that some musicians now learn these instruments using sheet music with notation.



What would the parallel music, and oral tradition, for loving bliss improvisation be?

















(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/02/lotus-buds-what-would-meeting-for.html - February 8, 2010)

Citrus: Welcome to 'Information Technology & Society' on Harvard's Virtual Island in Second Life

This is the notecard I just shared with everyone in my Second Life group: "Soc & Info Tech ~ Aphilo on Berkman."

You, who read this, are welcome to this open, free, first course at World University and School. We meet in the free, virtual world of Second Life. Here's information about how to get there.




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Welcome to 'Information Technology & Society' on Harvard's Virtual Island in Second Life (slurl.com/secondlife/Berkman/113/47/25)!

This is a course about the Information Technology revolution. Here's the course wiki: socinfotech.pbworks.com.

Please join the "Soc & Info Tech ~ Aphilo on Berkman" Second Life group.

Here's a key resource: webnographers.org.


This is also the first college course (non-credit) at World University & School: worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/World_University.

And please join the WUaS Google Group and Facebook Group for information: groups.google.com/group/World-University-and-School and facebook.com/group.php?gid=48753608141.

All of the above information can also be found on my web site: scottmacleod.com.

I'm looking forward to conversing with you about the Information Technology revolution.

With friendly greetings,
Scott (Aphilo Aarde in Second Life)

scottmacleod.com/papers.htm








(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/02/citrus-welcome-to-information.html - February 7, 2010)

Neurons: How to course love through the world (via the media) and our brains?

How to course love through the world (via the media) and our brains?


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I'd like to explore this with World University and School. What would you suggest? Edit this page: worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/World_University.




























(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/02/neurons-how-to-course-love-through.html - February 6, 2010)

How do things settle down for people emotionally when people abide in one place? How to enliven and complement this?

How do things settle down for people emotionally - when people abide (John Money 1988:114) in one place - and what patterns emerge? ... How to create fluidness in ways of interacting, after settledness develops?






















(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/02/how-do-things-settle-down-for-people.html - February 5, 2010)

Stream flowers: How to make anthropological field work come 'alive'?, Like a wanderer, Relationship between 'neurophysiology' and 'virtual'

How to make anthropological field work at Harbin.org come 'alive,' - in a virtual world? How to cultivate the relaxationresponse.org/steps in a virtual Harbin, from home, or wherever? In a bathtub?

And to make an academic process of representing and interpreting interactively, as a form of knowledge production, is a fascinating possibility with a virtual Harbin.


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Harbin.org field work in the pools is fascinating when studying the relaxationresponse.org/steps anthropologically especially in the context of Heart Consciousness Church. The warm pools deepen the experience of releasing, and Harbin itself, as milieu, transforms releasing, culturally.


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Before I passed by the Harbin gate on my way there {a little like a wanderer on the road}, I was eliciting the relaxation response along a beautiful stream vis-a-vis nature.

MMmmm. :) Flax seed oil - omega 3s.

To the waters of warmth at Harbin.org soon.


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What's the relationship between 'neurophysiology' and 'virtual'? Both take place richly in the bodymind, but the 'virtual' in the context of the internet and virtual worlds, is influenced by representations, more and more interactive (see Packer and Jordan's book "Multimedia" [2000]).










(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/02/how-to-make-anthropological-field-work.html - February 4, 2010)

Arctostaphylos manzanita: Harbin pools in the morning, Face-joy improvisation, Harbin politics, Harbin has helped a lot of People

Harbin pools in the morning ...


I spent a long time in the Harbin baths today ... going in thrice, for hours ... it's so nice and easy and whole-making to be there ...


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Saw some face-joy improvisation - like musical improvisation with skillful instrumentalists - in the pools ... a new art form :)

Let's cultivate this as an art, a little like contact improv, jazz, and theater improvisation.


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New ideas emerge for me in the pools, vis-a-vis Harbin. The pools open idea-possibilities for me.


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I'd like to focus this blog to generate my ethnographic manuscript - until I've finished it. The daily focus will accomplish a lot.


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What are the politics of the pools, in a social science sense?

Harmonizing, oneness, cuddling, clothing-optionalness, silence, freedom, enjoyment, relaxation response ...


Political process at Harbin is a kind of hippie anarchism with some ideals of nonviolence. It's also tribal - family-oriented in some ways. The politics here are also informed by Watsu and HAI and new age workshops; also by the big beat, and kind of tribalism/big man. They are also the politics of a mid-size business. And they are informed by a relationship with a generally open, progressive community in the SF Bay Area, Sacramento, and up north, - so northern California politics, culturally, in a way.


The politics of the Harbin pools, and Harbin, have to do with getting in to the water 24/7, and with Harbin as an 'organization.'


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'Love' brain-chemistry interactivity emerges in the ease of the pools, where, in that ease there, new kinds of relating with what I'm experiencing and thinking seem to emerge, influenced by what I'd call love oriented neurophysiology ...


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Harbin could be seen, imaginatively, from an aerial (modernity - flight) photograph as a single sperm (modernity - the microscope), where the body of the sperm is the Harbin valley and the tail of the sperm is the four mile road to Middletown.



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Harbin has helped a lot of people who are now living there as residents - in material ways - and a lot. ... People have found a niche at Harbin - from modernity, too - over the years through finding a home there, - in ways they might not have been able to in the places they came from.

Harbin is quite permissive in very many ways, - alternative ways, especially.







(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/02/arctostaphylos-manzanita-harbin-pools.html - February 4, 2010)

Mother Whale and Calf: Harbin women, Groups at Harbin, Drumming in the Conference Center

It's the Harbin women ... who make Harbin Hot Springs exceptional, in so many ways. The women I've met and seen there since 1994-ish are easy taking off their clothes in public, in a situation where clothing-optionalness has been normalized for both genders. (For millions of years, I suspect our ancestors didn't wear clothes in Africa. By contrast, the clothing meme affects a lot of people now in modernity 2010). This clothing-optionalness adds an element of attraction and openness to Harbin's milieu, which may influence how people think there. {Do forms of what I might call improvisational opera then emerge?} Women (like men, too) who seek freedom - especially informed by the 1960s and 1970s - come to Harbin.

This morning when I was observing a man give a woman a Watsu (water shiatsu) in the warm pool, I thought that I was watching a whale surface and dive, in a very graceful way. As this woman's breasts emerged again and again so beautifully, her chest open in this water dance, I thought of breaching whales.

Women and men seem to enjoy seeing each other naked.


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People form groups a lot, and especially at Harbin. 'Subcultures,' or little networks, abound there. I postulate that this is a development on 'troopbonding' in ancestral environments (Money 1988: 114).


How have residents and long term visitors come to deal with the flux of Harbin and life? I wonder if Harbin as a kind of tribe is one way, and if the many subgroups that have also formed there, since 1972, are another. For example, there are an amazing number of spiritual teachers - very colorful ones - and others, who have come through Harbin's gates since 1972. {Harbin has so many teachers!}


How does Harbin respond to these groups in all their uniquenesses? Harbin experiments, in part, - it tries things. Some groups (workshops) are laughter-oriented, many are New Age, some are sexually oriented groups. A kind of culture emerges around these gatherings in Harbin's Heart Consciousness Church's fluidness.

Harbin's founder has some say in what workshops happen at Harbin, as do the Managing Directors. And Harbin as a kind of family, and culture, gives a kind of form to these groups as a whole.

In many ways, Harbin is an ongoing exploration of, and return to, hippiness, as I see it.


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Drumming last night in the conference center, we generated the big beat - that synchronicity that happens on the beat - the one - through music, particularly drumming.
















(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/02/mother-whale-and-calf-harbin-women.html - February 3, 2010)

American bellflower: nontheist Friends, 'silent meeting' of evolutionary biology, "Harvard Psychedelic Club"

Dear nontheist Friends,


I continue to be curious how ways might open for nontheist Friends to explore the remarkable 'silent meeting' of evolutionary biology (which I believe in), and primatology, to deepen our Friendly exploration, knowledgeably, of diversity (symbolically, especially) and share this with other Quakers, perhaps to open new ways of exploring the relaxation response in Meeting, in warm pools ~ hot springs ~ baths, and at home with (atheist) friends. While Huston Smith's 'The Religions of Man' (whom I recently met (at around age 90, with his wife Kendra) at a Berkeley book store reading from a new book called 'The Harvard Psychedelic Club' by the San Francisco Chronicle's long time writer about spirituality and religion, Don Lattin) perhaps characterizes how richly people believe religiously, including Friends, I wonder, too, how we might best express an openness to all of this diversity in uniquely nontheistically Friendly and reasoning ways.

World University and School's subjects on 'Quakers' and 'nontheist Friends,' which will develop, may be two germane ways to come into conversation with Friends about nontheist Friends.

With friendly greetings,
Scott

worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Subjects

scottmacleod.com



Dear nontheist Friends,

As a follow up, Huston Smith is also one of 4 key individuals/subjects of 'The Harvard Psychedelic Club' along with Timothy Leary, Andrew Weil MD, and Ram Das. For folks in the 1960s and 70s, especially, psychedelic drugs gave rise to profound religious and spiritual experiences, in extraordinary senses of the words, and often in very nontheistically friendly ways, as well. I'd like to invite nontheist Friends to begin to engage, in our Friendly ways, these experiences, in letting friends know about nontheist Friends.

With nontheistically Friendly greetings,
Scott


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Dear Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,

It's all neurophysiology.

Love,
Scott


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http://www.sciencedaily.com/images/2007/11/071115164134.jpg





(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/02/american-bellflower-nontheist-friends.html - February 2, 2010)

Silene scouleri: To contact improv

To contact improv ... :)

which creates connections ...


















(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/02/silene-scouleri-to-contact-improv.html - February 1, 2010)