Lost Dog Blues

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For better or worse I've been waking up every morning for a week now at 4:00-4:30 a.m., and laying in bed for a while wide awake, so then I figure I might as well get up and write some. It's a good time to write because the world is still quiet. It was especially good yesterday morning because the man whose dog ran away started calling him.

I couldn't do anything creative with all that yelling going on, so I went out to see if I could help find the dog. I walked down toward the river calling out for him in the old man's voice, but I didn't find a clue, and the dog is still gone. I guess the old man, in his eighties, is heart-broken. Rich, with a young wife in her mid-fifties, I think the dog may have been the most meaningful relationship he has.

The most meaningful things in my domestic life are gone and have been gone for thirty years. I got an e-mail response from my daughter yesterday. It's the first time we've communicated in a long time. I was surprised she even bothered to write back. She seems busy being a mother of a young boy. I've never seen my grandson, and probably never will. I don't think I could have done anything any different. The die was cast before me and her mother ever met.

Writing the last line might seem strange to some. I guess it indicates that I am is a fatalist. A victim of kismet or karma. I don't know what to think about the way my life has turned out. It seems to follow the auspices of my natal astrology chart or maybe I interpreted my natal chart to read like my life. If so, then it was as good a way to interpret as any as far as I am is concerned. A man gotta do...

The Gnaural binary beat generator seems to be useful to me. I became acquainted with binaural beats by reading Robert Monroe's books on astral travel. I'd had some spontaneous astral travels previous to encountering his books. One in particular truly astounded me.

When I read Monroe's books his stories appeared to have the same slant as the way I had figured my own experiences, and so when I read in his books that he has set up an organization to explore astral travel I had to go there to see what it might mean to me.

He used binaural beats that he claims to have discovered using radio frequencies through his job in the broadcasting industry. His story about how he encountered them may or may not be exactly the truth, but I was determined to come up with his asking price and attend the initial seminar in Faber, Virginia.

Attending the seminar and indulging the regimen that had been set up by Robert Monroe didn't impress me so much while I was there. I came home rather disappointed that I didn't learn to initiate astral travel by listening to the binaural beats as was supposed to be the good end of following the course lessons.

Later, I realized that I had been fairly depressed when I went there because I had to deal with my father's death, and then was forced by circumstance to stay with my mother who took his death hard and couldn't stay home alone anymore. I stayed with her for two and a half years even though I had this partially completed house to stay in.

Attending the seminar might not have gotten the results I was seeking, but it did calm me down and gave me some perspective about my own life. I was deeply obsessed with using the Wilhelm/Baynes translation of the I Ching at the time, and every time I asked it about taking more seminars at the Monroe Institute I received encouragement.

The Monroe people call their binaural beat audio tapes Hemi-Sync, but they're the same as the Centrepoint.com binaural beats Bill Harris calls Holosync. They're the same as the Gnaural beat generator produces with each system claiming their stuff is different.

The Gnaural beat generator can be downloaded from Sourceforge.com free. Since they have a Mac version I downloaded it. It's a good thing they have a default meditation program with it. All you need is stereo earphones and you can use it right away just by clicking on the Start button. I've listened to it at least twenty hours, and it has a powerful affect on me.

I ordered the demo offered by Centrepoint and received it by snail mail yesterday afternoon. I walked out to my rural mail box on the paved road and it was there waiting for me. I brought it back to my house, tore it open, and loaded the enclosed DVD right away.

The guy who owns Centrepoint, Bill Harris, explains what he offers on the audio disc at the same time the binaural beat demonstration is happening. His voice is not so intrusive as I thought it might be, but it's the same deal as with Monroe Institute technically. He tries to get people hooked with the first modestly priced introductory course, and once done, to continue, you pay more, and then probably more.

Since my chief feature in the Enneagram system is avarice, and I've grown to accept that I'm a serious miser, I may not get involved with the Centrepoint format past the demo. The Gnaural beat generator default program seems to be helping me meditate more deeply. I may just start using it regular.

The thing of it is with the Gnaural beat generator is that one is not limited to the default meditation program. There is a YouTube tutorial video about how it can be altered to produce an individual approach. I've watched the video several times without getting the point. Last night I watched it again and was able to grok it a little better.

Gnaural keeps freezing up on me when I try to create a different program. That may be my fault because I haven't learned how to get it to do right. I end up having to "force quit" the program to close it, and reboot it to try again. Maybe with each attempt I'll understand the tutorial eventually and get what I want to happen.

The default program starts out producing alpha brainwaves, and fairly quickly goes to theta and stays there until just before the 72 minute program ends where it drop to delta brainwaves for a short while. I want to set it up to get to delta faster and for a longer period of time. Maybe I can make that happen, but if I don't, it's all good.

I did dream a segment early this morning about getting picked up hitchhiking with a friend by three guys in the front seat of a car. I figured they intended to rob us once we got to a rural area. Sure enough they did, and when they slowed down I opened the door of the car and dragged my friend out with me into some tall, dry grass.

There was a tussle, but then I went lucid and started coming with with weapons to fight them with. Then, I started waking up, but not before I killed a couple of them by slashing their throats. Getting lucid can be lots more fun than being victimized.

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