Imaginal Archaeology

We're heading down to San Diego today for the annual conference for the Society of the Anthropology of Consciousness. They're an eclectic group of anthropologists, transpersonal psychologists, and consciousness explorers - including the remnants of the academic psychedelic research scene from the 1960s.

Back before Timothy Leary started hawking LSD like it was snake oil.

The image above is a prehistoric rock art site in Nicaragua, an ancient sacred site close to my heart, and the reason why I'm travelling down to San Diego. Spirals, concentric rings and other abstract geometric shapes (as well as as a few monkeys, birds and otherworldly creatures for good measure) were pecked into these boulders by the indigenous people of Nicaragua long before the Spanish arrived in the 15th century. Archaeologists still don't know who these people were, or when they lived.

I'm presenting a short paper on my experiences in Nicaragua last year when I volunteered with the Ometepe Petroglyph Project. I tracked my dreams during the fieldwork session to reveal my biases, expectations, and intuitions about prehistoric rock art on Ometepe Island. That practice forever changed the way I see the enterprise of science.

Let me tell you, I'm all about William James' radical empiricism, and learning to pay attention to the anomalous experiences we have but tend to deny because they don't fit our conscious worldview. Dreamwork can do this, as can body meditation, journalling, learning a new language, fasting, and watching an entire season of Battlestar Galactica in one sitting. I recommend all but the last.

When it's all said and done, this work is really about sense of place. By staying close to our perceptions, we can learn how be open to the unique landscapes all around the world and also in our own communities.

This work is crucial for places like Ometepe Island, where the ancient rock art is endangered by modern living practices as well as the eco-tourism market that is capitalizing on the artifacts.

I hope that by sharing my experiences about rock art and dreams, that more people will come to remember - and protect - the sacred landscapes we live within.

Lucid dreaming on the radio

Veteran lucid dream researchers will be live on the web on Wednesday, March 28, 2007 - 9am Pacific (noon Eastern) to share their experiences about dreaming and consciousness.

Check them out at Bob Hoss's portal for the live radio program.

Below is the blurb from sponsors the Association for the Study of Dreams:

Lucid Dreaming – Exploring the Inner Space of Your Dreams!
Robert Waggoner and Dr. Ed Kellogg

Description: Have you ever become aware you were dreaming while in your dream? Did you know that with proper training you can explore your own dreamscape from within? This week Robert Waggoner and Dr. Ed Kellogg will discuss the research, as well as well as decades of personal experience, into the profound nature of the lucid dream. They will discuss methods for learning to dream lucidly as well as some of the extraordinary experiences they have encountered in this inner space exploration of dreams. Conscious explorations of your dreams can help you understand the nature dream reality, your own inner mental processes, and perhaps become a personal aid in the self-healing and transformational process of dreaming.

Hard pill to swallow

Neuropsychiatrists are on their way to learning how memories are formed, consolidated and stored. I think this is cool. But this study has some Dark City implications.

I'm not sure why this is a major paradigm in neuropsychology, but many scientists want to learn about memory so they can destroy it. Very quickly the fascination moves from how interior experiences are represented in the brain to how those processes can be halted and erased.

And, of course, how to pump the recipe into an over-the-counter pill.

This will all play out in later years with the treatment of post traumatic stress disorder, which used to be called "shell shock" and later, "combat fatigue." These days, the term PTSD has widened its umbrella, and now is considered to play a role in any traumatic experience, such as child abuse or rape.

My biases as a lucid dream researcher are here, because in my experience trauma comes to consciousness in order to be dealt with, not to be a cruel overlord over human frailty. Jeremy Taylor sez it like this, "No dream ever came to be remembered so that it can say 'Nah, nah, nah, you've got all these problems and there's nothing you can do about it.'"

But this position makes me sound like a dark overlord myself, as I decide who can and cannot be eased of their suffering, and how. According to experienced Buddhist meditators, "enlightenment doesn't care how you get there."

Since the flip side of enlightment is the condition of human suffering, maybe deleting our traumatic experiences really would be worth the meddling?

But then again... around the landmine of trauma and secrets and fears, fortifications of defenses build up, and these networks would not just disappear too.

Say, do you know the way to Shell Beach?

Thanks to transhumanist George Dvorsky for the tip.