I remember seeing this a while back … nice to them making concrete progress and speaking of commercial version:
I remember seeing this a while back … nice to them making concrete progress and speaking of commercial version:
Scarcity impinges on your mind. People behave differently when they perceive a thing to be scarce.
… Scarcity narrows your focus to your immediate lack, to the meeting that’s starting in five minutes or the bills that need to be paid tomorrow. The long-term perspective goes out the window.
… Compare it to a new computer that’s running ten heavy programs at once. It gets slower and slower, making errors, and eventually it freezes — not because it’s a bad computer, but because it has to do too much at once. Poor people have an analogous problem. They’re not making dumb decisions because they are dumb, but because they’re living in a context in which anyone would make dumb decisions.
… There’s a key distinction though between people with busy lives and those living in poverty: You can’t take a break from poverty.
… It all started a few years ago with a series of experiments conducted at a typical American mall. Shoppers were stopped to ask what they would do if they had to pay to get their car fixed. Some were presented with a $150 repair job, others with one costing $1,500. Would they pay it all in one go, get a loan, work overtime, or put off the repairs? While the mall-goers were mulling it over, they were subjected to a series of cognitive tests. In the case of the less expensive repairs, people with a low income scored about the same as those with a high income. But faced with a $1,500 repair job, poor people scored considerably lower. The mere thought of a major financial setback impaired their cognitive ability.
… in addition to measuring our gross domestic product, maybe it’s time we also started considering our gross domestic mental bandwidth.
… poverty is not a lack of character. It’s a lack of cash.
source via James Wallbank
A bug in Elite Dangerous caused the game’s AI to create super weapons and start to hunt down the game’s players. Developer Frontier has had to strip out the feature at the heart of the problem, engineers’ weaponry, until the issue is fixed.
… The AI was crafting super weapons that the designers had never intended.
Players would be pulled into fights against ships armed with ridiculous weapons that would cut them to pieces.
… weapons have been removed from the game, giving the dev team time to investigate what’s been causing the bug.
After the first few days there was a drop in my sense of well-being. An initial blow came when I allowed a disturbance to take places – a visit to the city. I came back feeling tired, with a slight head-ache and agitation. The next day I was somewhat contained, I was able to get on the mat, but my breathing compromised. I adjusted my practice to accommodate this state of being.
Shortly after that came another disturbance – a first jam making of the season. The preparations (cleaning and cutting strawberries) were made during an evening and the next morning (usually my time of being and practicing) we got on with preparation. I thought to practice later in the day but that did not work out. The cooking, though spacious, was agitating, lighting and keeping the rockets going for a few hours added some smoke … practice did not find me after that. However I was able to settle … and the next day I was able to engage my practice fully and pleasantly.
Shortly after that (a day or two later) there was a sudden change in my sleep. I woke up around 2:30am and had to leave bed to keep my breathing from deteriorating. That effort required (as it has in the past) two main ingredients: warm tea and alertness / attention (being awake). After that nights continued to be disrupted. It seemed that as long as I was awake I could somehow keep my breathing together (sometimes with relative ease, sometimes with difficulty) … but lying down and fading to sleep seemed to lead to deterioration. 2:30 soon felt like a regular thing. I was able to find some rest in the night, but almost no sleep.
For a couple of days, despite the sleeplessness, I was, to my surprise, still able to be with my practice with quality. I was surprised at being able to engage the new pranayama ratios (and I was very grateful that the technique was anuloma ujjayi instead of pratiloma). It took quite some hours until I could approach practice (usually not before 1pm). My appetite was also affected by all this, I wasn’t eating much before practice and I was (still am) drinking a lot of tea and that too reduces my appetite for food.
At some point (fortunately early in the unfolding) I recognized that tea may also be effecting my sleep. Iulia made for a me a mix with about 10 supportive plants … however some of them, I believe, were detrimental to my sleep … so while I still drink it, I drink less of it and only in the first half of the day.
Then a few days ago a last disturbance kicked in. During the night I felt a nausea coming on … the next morning my bowels emptied completely … and for the next 36 hours I ate almost nothing … only teas. I had no appetite for food at all. This completely drained me. A couple of days later I found a tick attached to me (not sure how long it was there)! I don’t know if the nausea is related to the tick (it may be) … but when I think of the tick … the most prominent feeling I have is that its presence is of a healing intention! Strange, I know!
Anyways the nausea knocked me completely off the mat. Only today (its been 4 or 5 days), after a gradual return of my appetite and some sense of physical strength (at the peak of this cleansing walking was a challenge) and a couple of night with some sleep I am curious about re-engaging the mat.
This year, it has been a strange meeting with allergy. Overall, I feel that my allergy symptoms are lesser. But still I feel like I’ve been through a storm … and I don’t feel it is over. A qualitative change which has not yet revealed its narrative to me.
A few days ago allergy symptoms started to appear and have been gradually increasing. A itchiness in my throat, eyes … and sometimes sneezing sequences. This morning, for the first time this season, I had to get out of bed at 5:45 to move myself into a vertical position (lying down aggravates the symptoms) and start my day-long, relieving tea-drinking. This is already different from last year where the allergy symptoms erupted all of a sudden.
Another difference is that the symptoms (so far) are not continuous. They come and go in waves. Tea, relaxation, attention … all seem to help to some degree in reducing the symptoms. I am staying outside more (now that the deck is available), but I am also avoiding some things which may cause aggregation. Fortunately most of the hay has been cut and stored so I am not going to be exposed to much of that in the coming weeks. Also, thanks to Iulia’s presence, I will be staying away from things like harvesting elder-flowers.
Another difference is, maybe due to a gradual appearance of symptoms, that I am able to get on the mat and practice. It may take two cups of tea instead of one. It may take a few hours of relaxation when I wake up with increased symptoms like this morning. But, so far, I have been able to make my way onto the mat and THAT has been an informative exploration. I have felt that asana practice has absorbed allergic disturbances and that, as a result, pranayama practice (that has recently changed) has been steady and undisturbed.
Being on the mat right now is an interesting convergence. I am arriving at the allergy well established in practice. I am enjoying an overall softening and expansion of the body and breath due to the warmer and brighter days … and at the same time incorporating the effects of the allergic response.
There has been a a prominent expression in breath during practice, specifically on exhale. I have felt exhales get a bit shorter but I also felt a more subtle change. It is as if there is a certain tension in the exhale. I experience more difficulty in surrendering to it, more tension. This morning, during practice the word “distress” came to me … and I felt it touches on the core of allergic response.
Reflecting on this made me appreciate the revealing qualities of breath. As my breath has lengthened it has had a kind of slow-motion effect on observation. Simply put, there is more time for me to observe, taken in, experience. As a result, I have experienced this subtle distress in my breath as a physical presence … almost as clear as I would feel a strained muscle.
Lengthening of breath also brings with it a qualitative change that I have experienced in two ways. A longer breath acts as an attention funnel, it keeps me more focused and more steady in my focus. An exhale of 12, 15 or 20 seconds holds my attention more firmly … or I could just as well say that if my attention is not stable my exhale cannot extend this way.
Another qualitative change is softness. This has become especially tangible for me due to the recent change in my pranayama practice. Moving to a 10 second inhale and the relative increase in exhale has coaxed out of me more softness. When I initially approached the new practice I could not arrive comfortably af 15 seconds (even though I knew that I had the capacity). It took me a few days (this is all very recent) of staying with a 10.0.10.0 ratio (instead of 10.0.15.0) and settling in it before I was suddenly and smoothly able to soften my breath and arrive at 15 seconds. It is hard to put in words this quality of softness.
This softness is also projecting into my attention … off-the-mat. In the last few years I have already shifted my relationship and approach to my allergy with soft acceptance and curiosity. I feel very little residue of control or change … I do not feel inclined to neither diagnose nor cure my allergy. This subtle softness feels like an affirmation of that relationship … a soft support 🙂
Following my periodic reflection I had another review with my teacher. Though my original intention was to focus on the pranayama sequence, the development of breath in asana and its relationship to pranayama called for some attention.
The following changes were introduced to the asana sequence:
8.0.12.0 | x4br |
8.0.12.4 | x4br |
Step2:
8.0.12.0 | x4br |
12.0.12.0 | x4br |
Pranayama is built around moving from a base inhale of 8 seconds to 10 seconds (a capacity that has been built up in asana). First with anuloma ujjayi – the same ratios I was using in my previous anuloma practice, then moving back to pratiloma focusing on increasing the length of step-up from 5 seconds to 10 seconds.
10.0.15.0 | x6br | anuloma ujjayi |
10.5.15.0 | x6br | anuloma ujjayi |
10.5.15.5 | x6br | anuloma ujjayi |
5.0.10.0 | x6br | anuloma ujjayi |
5.0.5.0 | x4br | ujjayi |
10.0.10.0 | x4br | pratiloma ujjayi |
10.5.10.0 | x4br | pratiloma ujjayi |
10.5.10.5 | x8br | pratiloma ujjayi |
10.0.10.0 | x8br | pratiloma ujjayi |
5.0.5.0 | x4br | ujjayi |
10.0.10.0 | x8br | pratiloma ujjayi |
10.5.10.5 | x8br | pratiloma ujjayi |
10.0.10.0 | x8br | pratiloma ujjayi |
5.0.5.0 | x4br | ujjayi |
This section of the book is filled with examples, including works of art, that demonstrate the qualities Alexander discusses. I looked up a few of these examples online and wanted to include them here, but the color rendering of low resolution images in heavily manipulated color pallettes on the screen is not true to the story being told here. So much so that I have preferred NOT to include them. Attempting to do this further demonstrated to me the powerful truth and subtlety Alexander is writing about.
“Reality, as we experience it is full of color, saturated by color … color is one of the few aspects of wholeness where we experience wholeness directly, because the sensations of color are not analyzable into parts. We are simply aware of the overall color quality of something as a whole.
Inner light is the color quality which arises as something comes to life, and as it approaches and reveals the I.
Possibly, the greatest examples of inner light occur in nature … In things which we have made, this quality of inner light is much more rare. But in certain cultures, at certain periods, it has also been understood and created intentionally and systematically by artists, who were intentionally seeking to do it …
In every case where it occurs, color which has inner light has a special kind of subdued brilliance. It is quiet, very quiet, yet bright at the same time. It is an overall single sensation, not a composition of colors, but a single overall color field – almost like a musical chord – which strikes simultaneously from all parts of the picture at once. It comes from the picture as a whole …
Wherever there is inner light we always see two phenomena simultaneously. One the one hand, the overall feeling of the color field is muted. It is not gaudy, or garish. It is calm, soft-toned, subdued. At the same time, the colors are usually quite intense and brilliant, they are not themselves subdued, or muted, tones of gray with tints of color.
The combination of these two methods is very surprising: 1) the use of brilliant colors to produce a muted whole or an overall unity so profound that nothing stands out, everything melts together, and yet the actual colors that are used are brilliant; or 2) the actual colors are used are subdued, but everything together seems extremely brilliant …
Very often, when we look at nature, we experience a feeling of intense and lovely color. Even on a dull day, the colors we see are soft, varied and full of life. On a bright spring day the world seems filled with color. Yet objectively … the colors are extremely pale and muted if we compare them with the paint colors we consider bright – primary red, primary yellow, primary blue …
Like every other kind of life, inner light is created – always I think – by the unfolding process. The artist works at the whole which exists and then asks himself, at each step, what has to be done next, to intensify the light. The extraordinary thing is that while working, if we half close our eyes and look at the half completed work in a passive and receptive state, we can answer that question. That is, the color which will produce light comes to my eye by itself, presents itself to me autonomously, arrive in me without my effort. The only effort I need to make is to make myself passive enough to receive the color which will then come into my eye … We have the ability to see this color, partially formed, in our mind’s eye. Then we have to try and make the color. And then, with actual paint, I have to try and see if an amount of that color, in the place where I imagined it, really will create a more brilliant light in the thing.
This is an empirical matter … I am not looking for some superficial brightness. I am truly looking to see if the process I have just done, increases the inner light … does it increase the extent to which this thing I have made now seems to go deeper into the realm of I, make me more vulnerable, reaches further into the light behind all things.”
Christopher Alexander – The Nature of Order – Book 4: The Luminous Ground