Sweet Dreams

Sometimes, although very rarely, but still, sometimes, I learn something about myself and I go WAAAAAW!

For example, the other day I realised that not only have I lost interest in dreams and lucid dreams but I started forgetting all my dreams and even forgetting whether I was writing down my dreams upon waking up as if that part taking notes has agglomerated and become part of my dreams lost to OBLIVION!

OUBLIONS tout sauf le faite que nous oublions tout juste en cas ou nous avons envie de revenir en arrière un jour et nous demander qui sommes nous, au moins nous dirons nous l'avons oublié au lieu de croire que nous somme ce que nous ne somme pas.

Why I did a Cherry Ice Cream?

Today, I did a cherry ice cream to kill time, because the person in charge of my application for a work visa was absent,  because she saw pictures of her friends on Facebook enjoying their vacation and that made her ill, because she kept postponing her vacation for lack of ideas or desire, because fear taught her not to desire, because of negative consequences and social constructs, because when she was young she was bullied, because she was fat, because she binge ate cherry ice cream. 

Post-transhumanistic call for better introspective Shamans

The post-spiritual alan-watts-inspired-ish jobless phase is nearing its end today as I sit typing this facing the Sorbonne University in Paris after receiving a best experimental short film award through an overly indulging experience at the Cannes Film Festival. All these mixed feelings and contrasts intensify my fish-in-a-sea feeling that varies between owning the see with ineffable freedom, and the ephemeral transient feeling of no anchors or points or reference that challenge time, memory and even existence. Finding the perfect balance between these two extremes has been a life challenge.

In the meantime and at shorter introspective patterns of existence, when I consult google auto-complete for existential questions that I have not thought of asking, I wonder how much have we lost through the confidence we have given to the machine and its artificial intelligence that is a collective but not necessarily additive or adequate form of intelligence.

I often find myself praising my preYoutube and preGoogle creativity and the sense of satisfaction it offered. It now feels as if I have become aware of a box that I must think outside of it when there has never been a box.

Those who had the privilege of good schooling, traveling and did not have to worry much about anything to do whatever they wished, will one day find themselves in a midlife crisis asking existential questions about who they are and what keeps them going...

Terrence McKenna and Jason Silva (among others) refer to technology  and transhumanism as some kind of a shamanic entheogenic drug that could guide us spiritually to answer and ask more questions. But our very confidence in the machine of a collective artificial intelligence  with oracle predictive powers hinders our introspective soul-seeking explorations leaving us with a few voiced choices that we get to compare and choose from. In the long run, fewer and fewer media-imposed approximations dominate the fast-responding Oracles for impatient soul-seekers until one day we will become so impatiently eager to know about ourselves that we will be getting the same ever converging answer, that is we are one network of selves consisting a higher self of a collective intelligence interfaced through our big-brothers: google, facebook, amazon, microsoft, apple.

I wonder, I wonder, when this becomes known to everyone, what kind of questions will we be curious to ask and answer in the future. Will we continue to play hide and seek with reality to keep us entertained and surprised?

Untitled for the same reason you were born

Dive into a plethora of philosophies, then bathe with poetry under this music-lit playlist shall you ever make it back from the profound bottomless mysteries of our universe.

untitled for the same reason you were born from alahay on 8tracks Radio.

Lucid Dreaming my Folks back Home

The closest I have been to lucid dreaming (ld) was passing the reality check and getting so excited that I was lucid in my dreams that I would wake up instantly afterwards ironically from the fear of waking up and loosing the lucid dream. Well that was until last night, after a series of many attempts and years of having given up on lucid dreaming.

Before going to bed, I planned visiting my hometown in Lebanon, meeting my folks and ultimately checking what's in my 3rd drawer facing my bed as a ld exercise. I had previously read so much about ld techniques and reality checks and awareness games that it ought to finally work.

I recall good fragments of my dream but not all of it. I remember meeting my parents by surprise which brought extreme joy to their hearts. I was aware of this being a dream and it did not want to share this information with them. I was happy to see them but again wished it was for real. I went to my room and checked to the drawer but it was very hazy and unclear. I felt my body vibrating in bed at that time and lots of energy was put in remembering or reconstructing from false or true memories what was in this drawer.

In my ld, I had a dream of me transferring a pine tree branch from the dream to the lucid dream which was not becoming more like a reality, possibly because I have not been doing any reality checks or because a dream within a dream is pretty tippy anyway. In my ld I was telling my folks about how I was able to get a branch from Lebanon to Paris.  I thought that was awesome,

Active Dreaming of Southeast Asia

It feels as if I just woke up from a dream in which the last empty page of my passport was filled with a Thai visa and the week that followed was filled with nothing less than ecstasy -- No language has yet the words to describe the feeling of night snorkeling with bioluminescent plankton under a starlit sky with an eclipsed moon only 7 degrees off the equator by the Ko-Poda Thai Island. The same can be said or unsaid about a spice garden near Kandy in Sri-Lanka where I was taught all about cooking, self-healing and alternative medicine. Needless to mention all the lovely people I met and connected with along the way, some even on esoteric levels, the incredible sunsets we witnessed pinching each other for reality checks, the temples we visited and meditated at with no notion of time or space. Some places were so sacred to me that I did not even dare photograph even before my camera broke. I made a vow to myself while I was hostage of such astounding beauty to travel more often and in more meaningful ways before I forget how to recognize faces, elephants and dragons in clouds rolling by in the sky and before the tan migrates from my skin to that of other wanderers without prior notice. I will be posting some stills at ALAgrApHY shall you wish to come along and travel with your friends.

I hope that this post inspires you to experience something even larger and then share it back and so on and so forth until we are all one in every sense of the word.

EDIT: On a similar note, I just realised that just before I left for that trip, I had a dream of bioluminiscent frogs and had no preconception of bioluminiscence in Thailand! Is that a coincidence?

Dedicated to the #girl that smiled to me but chose to remain anonymous while I was jumping to catch #bioluminescent #frogs to impress her in my subconsciousness from what I can recall from my fragmented #dream last #night . #uv lit #fluo #painting

A photo posted by ENTHEOGENIC VOLUPTUOUS POLYMAθ (@alagraphy) on Jan 15, 2015 at 12:53pm PST

À la Bi

Inhabiting other bodies

I have given quite some time to the thought of what does it feel like to suddenly and consciously inhabit somebody else's body. Does it feel like our vision has been altered with a different white balance, sharpness or even angles of view, the sounds have a different equalization with the new ears, the smells we might suddenly become aware of, the odors from our guts to our skin now perceived raw with no filtering. Our new hair reacting to the wind in a new way perhaps making us feel like we might be wearing a peruke and perhaps even our skin might feel implanted and of a notable texture that we can describe in all sorts of details. Does that influence our language and the words we use to describe the same things such as an apple being less red but more pink?

Now consider with a stretch of your imagination, what would it feel like to suddenly become embodied in an animal, say a feline not to exaggerate. Do we feel all the now noticeable hair follicles, the warmth,  the new vision, the new instincts and basic feline desires, the flexibility, agility and lightness. Perhaps the need to test all of these new features by walking around, stretching, purring, running, miao-ing and other feline activities?

Now that we have gone that far, why not imagine being a bird, a fruit fly and perhaps if bacteria and even unicellular organisms had a non collective consciousness I would suggest imagining that as a bonus exercise.

Now imagination aside, how far are we scientifically from simulating such a feeling. I can tell that VR combined with AR headsets offer us an outsider's vision but what about taste, smell, touch and somehow the modified perception of ones own voice (e.g. gas masks or software) in real time? Are there any psychedelic drugs or lucid dreaming techniques that allow for such an experience while we wait for technological gadgets to make us body surf in a way?

When was the last time...

When was the last time you observed your surrounding all mesmerized,  when was the last time your heart skipped a beat for misplacing your wallet in your left pocket for a fraction of a second and you were aware of that moment? When was the last time you were told you cannot travel because your passport expires in 5 months at the gate though you always thought that they did not want you where  you lived?  How does it feel after planning for the trip for months and saving for it for years? How does it feel  when this person who was hindering your dream was turned down by her superior who has humane qualities left in her for compassion . I only wish ppl traveled more often. 

Then it might feel  urgent to append what follows.  A man in his mid 40s enters the plane confusing the gate number with the seat number just in front of me.  He only had his home printed ticket with no seat information.  However,  finally he is aware of the ticket given at check-in and guess where he is destined to sit for the next 10 hours? Yes,  next to me,  lucky me to share half a day with a half brained adult.  But before I finish my sentence he is already gone scouting for another seat.  What can I add after this ?

Photonology: Hacking Reality with Psychotechnology

Photonology: Hacking Reality with Psychotechnology: Who in his bored mind and mundane life would not be tempted to trick his brains into a dreamy state and enjoy its outcomes. While drugs...

#Iamcharlie or #Iamnotcharlie, this is not the answer!

The past two days in Paris were nauseating. I tried to remain silent but that would only be in favor of violence and against the freedom of speech. I have mixed feelings. #Iamcharlie and #Iamnotcharlie, the former for the freedom of speech I have long fought for and the latter for the hatred it has provoked in the ignorant minds. I respect all religions although I practice none and I refuse to ever associate myself or others to an -ism for that is the work of a lazy mind. A guru does not come to you and tell you what book to read or what actions to do but will be sitting there waiting for you to come and ask questions. Wake up people! There is no religion, sexual orientation, skin color or hair style to blame for what happened with #charliehebdo and is still happening today. An eye for an eye and the world will become blind. Perhaps we are partially responsible for secluding some people from education and resources. Perhaps that is a wake up call for us to become more intuitive and think for ourselves. Perhaps this happened to shed some light on similar causes that might soon explode  #iamafrica #iamlebanon #iamtibet... Paris was called the "city of light" for it was home for enlightenment and revolutions. I trust that it shall remain so braving the darkness and enlightening the rest of the world. A #momentofsilence for the victims.

EDIT: Feel free to share this post or disagree with it if you articulate your arguments in a respectful and clear manner! Remember that silence is a form of nonexistence or support of the #zeitgeist .