Work Out

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Kennemer Dunes Parallel Universe in 360°, today. Winter training ends here [ ten days rest ]

Above: The mind works along identical operative characteristics (is my experience) as the body does. Example. Trough vaccination the immune system is activated: "Vaccines are examples of antigens in an immunogenic form, which are intentionally administered to induce the memory function of adaptive immune system toward the antigens of the pathogen invading the recipient.¹" Mentally we benefit trough the deliberate activation and confrontation with subconscious material, and, as the Germans call it "durch-arbeiten" -- "to work out", and -- trough that process -- stimulate conscious "immunity" and endurance: raise hell, to raise consciousness. This is my personal experience during a life of training.

Min/max temperature: 5°C/11°C; humidity: 65%; precipitation: 0 mm; sea level pressure: 1019 hPa; wind: NW 19.3 km/h; visibility: 10.0 kilometres; Clouds: Few 1219 m., Mostly Cloudy 1432 m .; Moon: Waxing Gibbous, 99% illuminated.

"Exposure to deeply disturbing events is liable to produce long term effects as well as immediate reactions. […] A recovery phase of up to six months is considered to be within the normal bracket. Individuals showing prolonged disturbance and maladjustment extending beyond such a spell of time are ready candidates for a PTSD diagnosis. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is a recognised psychiatric category. Its present status as a textbook disorder originates from its spectacular, in a sense epidemic incidence among Vietnam veterans. About a third of these veterans suffered from serious psychological problems even 20 years after the war. Their problems have been extensively examined. […] A person is classified as a PTSD victim if he or she was exposed to a traumatic incident in the past and is troubled by a cluster of symptoms which uncover a disturbed or incomplete coping process. In order to be able to live with a trauma […] it is necessary to proceed trough a number of stages. A final stage of integrating the experiences in the domain of personal growth can only be achieved after going trough an initial phase of disbelief and bewilderment, followed by a period of avoiding memories and associations interrupted by the painful and irresistible intrusion of flashbacks. PTSD is basically a state of being arrested in the latter stage where denial and overwhelming images and emotions alternate and the conflict between these tendencies debilitates and absorbs the individual to a degree which impedes a satisfying social or professional existence."

J. Extra in 'NL Arms', 'Dealing with Danger and Stress', edited by A.L.W. Vogelaar, K.F. Muusse, J.H. Rovers, page 159, first published in 1997 by RNMA, Breda, The Netherlands

After finishing Mark Divine's Unbeatable Mind Academy some time ago, -- being part of the network -- I recently received an invitation for a team/sponsor-participation to "Walk the Path of the Spartan 300, Where The Warrior’s Code Of Honor Was Born.²" Mark Divine continued in the invitation/announcement: "I am leading  [ a ] team of committed [ people ] to Greece on an 8-day ruck following the path that Spartan King Leonidas and his 300 warriors rucked to take on the invading Persian King Xerxes. Please consider joining us for this epic adventure, and simultaneously helping my new Courage Foundation heal victims of PTSD. The mission will commence on September 14th and end on the 23rd. This is not a race, but you will need to be in reasonable shape to avoid injury and thrive with the team. Each day will include Unbeatable Mind training before, during and after the event.[…] I can’t imagine a better way to challenge ourselves, serve warriors in need, and do some deep self-reflection on what it means to live a life of honor, discipline, courage, and commitment… like the Spartan 300.³"

For this trip the coming weeks we will start to raise funds. Take a look at the Courage Foundation website.

___________________

¹ "Antigen", From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

²  Mark Dvine, Email invitation, last Friday

³ Ibid

Code of conduct

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Kennemer Dunes national park, today. Reflection [ unity of form and content ] 

Min/max temperature: -1°C/1.4°C; humidity: 100%; precipitation: 0 mm, sea level pressure: 1026 hPa; wind from SSE 29.0 km/h; visibility: 6.0  kilometres; mostly cloudy 1402 m.; snow depth: 30 mm

"To follow a moral code would amount to the same as an intellectual judgment about an individual, viewed from the standpoint of anthropological statistics. Moreover, making a moral code the supreme arbiter of your ethical conduct would be a substitute for the will of a living God, since the moral code is made by man and declared to be a law given by God himself. The great difficulty of course is the "Will of God." Psychologically the "Will of God" appears in your inner experience in the form of a superior deciding power, to which you may give various names like instinct, fate, unconscious, faith, etc. The psychological criterion of the "Will of God" is forever the dynamic superiority. It is the factor that finally decides when all is said and done. It is essentially something you cannot know beforehand. You only know it after the fact. […] In applying a moral code (which in itself is a commendable thing), you can prevent even the divine decision, and then you go astray. So try to live as consciously, as conscientiously, and as completely as possible and learn who you are and who or what it is that ultimately decides."

C.G. Jung, 'Collective Work, Letters 1951 - 1961', page 300, 301, first published in 1973 as 'Briefe III 1956 - 1961', 'To William Kinney, 26.V.1956', page 27, Walter Verlag, Olten, Switzerland

"I do not try to bent the plot to fit technique; I adapt technique to the plot. […] A particular angle may give a cameraman -- or even a director -- a particular sattisfying effect. The question is, dramatically, is it the best way of telling whatever part of the story it's trying to tell? If not, out it goes. […] The mark of good technique is that it is unnoticed. […] The important thing is that the director makes his decisions when the need for them arises, and operates with as few rules as possible. The fewer rules you have, the fewer times you'll have to experience the unhappiness of breaking them."

Alfred Hitchcock in  'Hitchcock on Hitchcock, Production Methods Compared', page 208, 209, originally published in Cine-Technician 14, no. 75, November - December 1948, reprinted in American Cinematographer 30, no. 5, May 1949. (Book) first published in the USA in 1995 by University of California Press

Left, right, appetite

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Kennemer Dunes, today. Fast in [ fast out ]

Min/max temperature: 0°C/5 °C; humidity: 87%; precipitation: 0 mm, sea level pressure: 1016.14 hPa;  wind from N/NW 9.7 km/h; visibility: 8 kilometers.

"It’s widely acknowledged that postmodernism as a philosophy is now dead; and books are everywhere starting to appear that are written about “What comes next?” [I]n academia and the universities, it is a long, slow death, and most teachers still teach some version of postmodernism and its aperspectival madness even if they have many deep doubts themselves. [W]hen there are no binding guidelines for individual behavior, the individual has only his or her own self-promoting wants and desires to answer to—in short, narcissism. And that is why the most influential postmodern elites ended up embracing, explicitly or implicitly, that tag-team from postmodern hell: nihilism and narcissism—in short, aperspectival madness. The culture of post-truth. […] Nihilism and narcissism are not traits that any leading-edge can actually operate with. [A] well-known pollster [...] said, “This [Trump win] is a wake-up call for everyone at every level of government. Governors, Senators, mayors—all of them need to have a retreat where they can work together to bring about peace in the populace. Importantly, this isn’t about government officials reconciling with one another—which in itself is needed. Rather, it is about their facilitating their constituencies to reconcile with one another. It’s about bringing people together, bridging our divides, and binding our wounds. That’s what real leadership is about.” […] Conversely, feeling nothing but despair at Trump’s victory is to fail to see the larger currents at work in this situation. Understanding this election—as well as similar events now occurring all over the world—as a manifestation of a self-correcting drive of evolution itself, as it routes around a broken leading-edge [...] and attempts to restore the capacity of its leading-edge to actually lead (while also seriously starting to give birth to the next higher leading-edge of integral itself)—this gives us a glimmer of real hope in an otherwise desperately gloomy situation. In the deepest parts of our own being, each of us is directly one with this evolutionary current, this Eros, this Spirit-in-action, radiant to infinity and luminous to eternity, radically full in its overflowing overabundance and excessive in its good graces, wildly crashing off the heavens and irrupting from the underworlds, and embracing each and all in its limitless love and care. And the only ones who should be allowed to work politically for a greater tomorrow—and who should thus work—and those who truly understand that it is not necessary to do so; who see the utter fullness of the Great Perfection in each and every moment of existence, and who nonetheless work to trim-tab (or adjust through leadership) the manifestation of more and more and more of the Good and the True and the Beautiful, right here and right now in this gloriously manifest universe, moment to moment to ever-present moment, knowing full well that this entire world is nothing but the dream of an infinite Spirit, yet each and every one of us is directly this very Spirit itself, dreaming the world of our own amazement. And we can try endlessly and tirelessly to fix this dream…. or we can simply wake up."

Ken Wilber in 'Trump and a Post-Truth World, An Evolutionary Self-Correction', first published last Sunday by Integral Life as an Ebook, available as Pdf at the Intergral Iife website

"I" am as good as my team

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My Moroccan crew in the Sahara-desert. Picking the right people is essential. It may be "you" or "me" or "I" who got the call; without a unified team behind that to clear it, the results will turn out flat, pale, uninteresting and disappointing. A symptom of  the "look what a clever filmmaker I am" syndrome. This probably counts for other professions as well; even leading to endangering other people's health and other people's lives.

Conclusion: Like a brand, which may be the vision of one person -- "I" --, its strength is determined by the team behind it. "I" is "I Care" ; characterized by the ability to switch and unite, flexibilty. From the inside to the outside, on the battlefield of the (not so) free market, doing the job that needs to be done; for the sake of the team really... Outside the team, there is nothing.