Author Archives: Hey!
Barometer of Belief as of Oct 2011
Belief: Meditation, yoga, tai chi, NLP, ley lines, astrology, acupuncture, feng shui, Tantra
Unsure: Healing, auras, live blood analysis, kinesiology, reiki, EFT, EMDR, palmistry, crystals, homeopathy, personal vibration, biodynamic energy
No way: Angels, spirit guides, clairvoyancy, runes, past lives, tarot
Poking my Pineal Gland
Got a third eye tattoo? Pull up a chair!
Riding on the breeze there came the distant rumble of bongos. But instead of the familiar knot of repulsion in my gut, I found myself imagining the satisfaction the bongo botherers were getting out of interlocking their rhythms and looping into infinity, like psychedelic fractals.
“Thank god,” said a fellow diner when infinity petered out; but at this they started up again, which made me titter and root for the bongo botherers.
I drained the ubiquitous latte and set off to follow the sound.
Richard was not from anywhere in particular, but a citizen of planet earth. To be fair he didn’t utter this himself, but I deduced it from his rough, brown legs, straggly goatee and faraway stare. He perched on a rock, looked out to sea and requested a rolling paper. I shifted over to sit next to him and threw sticks for his sandy dog, which was wearing a bandana. The sun was setting epically over Mount Warning. Richard requested some tobacco.
This lovely photo of my new friends provoked vile threats about glassings and chasing people with flamethrowers when I posted it on Facebook.
“Get here earlier tomorrow,” he said. “You need to absorb some vitamin D from the sun and decalcify your pineal gland. That’s your third eye. It calcifies as you get older.” I pictured it scabbed and scaly as a cuttlefish bone behind my chickenpox scar.
Richard gave me a lentil pie he’d salvaged from a dumpster behind the bakery and cracked one open himself.
I thought about what to say other than, “And what do you do?”
“This is all just a figment of our imagination,” he offered before I could come up with anything. He swept his hand out at the shimmering horizon. “What we see here, we have created. Think about taking acid or mushrooms, and how differently you see things then.
“We’re all made up of energy,” he continued. “Like golden light. Sometimes when we meet someone with the wrong energy we’re like lightsabers, you know? Shwwwwung, shwwwwung. But we’re all just drops in the ocean. How do I know? I’ve read enough books and had enough conversations to be sure.”
It helped that Richard was good looking, in the same way that market researchers recruit hot young students to wield clipboards and bounce into your path. Sometimes you’ll weaken and listen. Richard talked some more about the meaning of life, and then drifted off. “Maybe your reason for coming to Byron Bay was for us to have this conversation,” he said in parting.
I wandered off into the sun’s crimson haze, and had a think about my pineal gland. The ancient Egyptians called it the Eye of Horus; the Freemasons depicted the All-Seeing Eye of the Great Architect of the Universe on the dollar bill. It’s known as the Third Eye of clairvoyance, or the Crown Chakra in the Hindu religion and sees metaphysical reality, not physical reality. Metaphysically, your soul leaves your body through it; physically, it secretes melatonin and serotonin, regulating sleep and mood. I want to see if I can get mine picking up stuff my other senses can’t.
How to stimulate your pineal gland without drugs, according to the internet
- Musically, the pineal gland resonates to the frequency of B. Get a tuning fork and ‘om’ along.
- It emits a violet/white frequency, so enjoys having amethyst, charoite, dumorierite and quartz crystals of the same hue placed over it for up to 90 minutes.
- Burn or massage in essential oils of mugwort, sandalwood, lavender, frankincense, myrrh, pine, oakmoss, and Himalayan cedar.
- Consume chamomile, pine bark, lavender bud, wild indigo bark, violet, licorice and ginseng.
- Tape a small, gold-plated magnet over your PG and wear for a few hours throughout the day.
- Hold the pointed side of a quartz or amethyst crystal to the pineal gland while looking up to the morning sun.
- Chant.
- Have Tantric sex.
- Rub milk snow on the male’s pineal gland. Milk snow is vaginal fluid, just quietly.
That’s all on the ‘to do’ list.
Conclusion: You know, I think I did go to Byron Bay to meet Richard, as sitting and talking to anyone on a pile of rocks while the sun goes down is quite out of character.
Further reading: This is the most concise, well-balanced article I found on the third eye: http://www.magickriver.net/3rdeye.htm.
The Vagus Nerve Vs. Invisible Padlocks
All through the airport I had a face like a smacked arse. I could feel my features growing pinchy and tight as I shifted through the food court, the sort of face that elicits a “cheer up, darling, it might never happen”; that in turns elicits a spirited “fuck off”.
I felt like I’d been stabbed, but it was just your bog standard heartbreak and disappointment. From the airport I’d outrun it.
An aside, as we mope past McDonalds: do you know why sorrow feels like being stabbed in the heart? It’s the vagus nerve, which travels from the limbic system in the skull, to the chest. The limbic system, that most reptilian and primeval of zones, from which our every base urge and unconscious thought materialises, is also known as the emotional brain. Agitation of the vagus nerve during emotional upheaval causes a sudden drop in blood pressure and heart rate, and inflicts pain.
From the chest, the vagus nerve continues to the gut, which Dr Michael Gershon, chairman of the department of anatomy and cell biology at Columbia University, hypothesises is our second brain, complete with neuroreceptors. Perhaps one day we’ll even book the gut in to see a psychiatrist, one of Gershon’s peers suggests. The gut transmits stress signals back up the vagus nerve to the heart. Double whammy.
How long’s this going to last for? I wondered. I could go on a bender and spin it out for a year, but instead I’d do a runner.
The size of your amygdala determines how fearful/impulsive you are. The pineal gland is also known as the third eye.
Byron Bay lies on magical ley lines. I’ll get on to ley lines another day, so for now just take my word for it. My hotel room had views of broiling skies and self-satisfied palm trees. Drawing the curtains, I hunched over my computer, tippety-tapped meanly and smoked.
Later that afternoon, I tore myself away to have a dunk in the sea. I swam with big silver fish in clear waters and then booked in for a massage so relaxing I started to hallucinate. Part of the package was a session with a healer, Mark. This was the first time I’d gone for a new age treatment without the caveat of an article to hide behind. Our history teacher at school once told the class that the superstitions of people dying of the plague in the Middle Ages – like cuddling hens and rubbing human faeces on buboes – may seem ridiculous now, and they probably did then, too, but when you’re desperate you’ll try anything. That was my reasoning when handing over my money. That and: when in Rome.
Mark took a seat and looked at me. He had a very empathetic face, useful in a job like his. I thought about what to say. I wasn’t about to drearily flutter my hands and emote over a boy – how very predictable.
“I keep spacking out and losing my temper,” I told him, which is also true. My computer is regularly sprayed with spittle and threatened with punishment; it should be taken away from me by DoCS. “The rage is always there, just under the surface.”
Mark said a number of kind things. “Everything you’ve ever done, no matter what you think of it, has served a purpose,” was one of them. He decided against a psychic reading, in favour of healing. I lay down as he made plucking motions with his hands. “I can see all sorts of protective layers you’ve put over your heart,” he said, still plucking. “Some of them are tissue thin, some of them are heavy padlocks.” I drifted off, feeling like I was floating in the fetal position, breathing easily in golden fluid and bubbles.
“Be careful crossing the road,” Mark said as he waved me off. That was a month ago and I haven’t felt a blade in my heart since.
Conclusion: Mark calms my vagus nerve better than I do. I’m saving up to see him, next disaster.
Why
I once wrote a blog called Hey Man, Now You’re Really Living, in which I tried something new every day for a year.
While this included non-spiritual things like Wielding a Chainsaw, Shooting Glocks, Magnums and Rugers, and Blowing Shit Up, I was moved to include a fair few New Age activities, like Getting My Aura Read, Hugging Cows and Healing My Embittered Soul With Song.
I began to get suspicious as to just how many New Age activities were creeping on to my list. Was it solely for me to expose practitioners as frauds, flakes and charlatans, to feel the rage bubble up from my guts and then, as so often happened, torrent out of my traitorous tear glands? Or did my unconscious have deeper plans afoot – plans to sign me up and insist on being addressed as Bindi?
I reckon I’d better check.
New Age Guinea Pig 