An interesting short article – interesting to me mostly because it is a conversion and disillusionment story, and I think conversion and disillusionment are extremely important and understudied topics in the field of self-development.

Does it say anything new about Ken Wilber? No, I don’t think so, it merely expresses a common arc in the various paths of the student. The attraction to a guru figure, and the inevitable subsequent disillusionment and seperation as the emotional glamour of the original attraction is unfulfilled, as it almost inevitably must be, because the original attraction to a teacher figure and parental figure is part of the nature of the “young mind”, and individuation and seperation is part of the self’s (inherent?) growth patterns.

I thought you might enjoy this fellows story.

“What interests me, personally… is what were the psychological reasons that I was so strongly drawn to Wilber’s work and is my present skepticism of Wilber due strictly to shortcomings in his work or also to a deeper skepticism of comprehensive worldviews in general, discomforting as it may be to wonder?”

“…the primary lesson should be methodological: that it will no longer do for a didactic celebrity to dictate Integral as dogma. It is because everyone is flawed, Wilber and his critics, that the appropriate method for philosophy is dialogue. Dialogue is what separates philosophy from dogma. This is what keeps our beliefs open for debate and reconsideration.”

“WINNING THE INTEGRAL GAME?”

I have a long standing iunterest in the self-help movement and it’s materials, ideas, and authors. In the self-help philosophies we can see how the occult and esoteric ideas of earlier centuries have evolved to become a new toolset. It’s a curious toolset, a strange mix of the useful and practical and the patently ridiculous and exploitative. But, for people interested in self-development, studying the ideas and language of the self-helpers can be fairly important.

Some of the practical applications can also be directly useful – for instance, I liked some of the attitudes in this article – yes, they apply to the ordinary persson who just wants to be a better salesman, but they also apply to the student of self-development.

So I thought you folks might enjoy reading this:

Number 1 – They Think, Say, & Do Negative Things.

Number 2 – They Act Before They Think.

Number 3 – They Talk Much More Than They Listen

Number 4 – They Give Up Easily

Number 5 – They Try to Bring Others Down To Their Level

Number 6 – They Waste Their Time

Number 7 – They Take the Easy Way Out

The 7 Destructive Habits of Incompetent People, from Mind Power News

Secret Symbols of the Rosicrucians from the 16th and 17th Centuries – from Bibliodyssey

Was Timothy Leary Right? Are psychedelics good for you? – recent Time magazine article about new research in the field of psychedelic therapy.

“Are psychedelics good for you? It’s such a hippie relic of a question that it’s almost embarrassing to ask. But a quiet psychedelic renaissance is beginning at the highest levels of American science, including the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) and Harvard, which is conducting what is thought to be its first research into therapeutic uses of psychedelics (in this case, Ecstasy) since the university fired Timothy Leary in 1963.”

“Last year two top journals, the Archives of General Psychiatry and the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, published papers showing clear benefits from the use of psychedelics to treat mental illness. Both were small studies, just 27 subjects total. But the Archives paper–whose lead author, Dr. Carlos Zarate Jr., is chief of the Mood and Anxiety Disorders Research Unit at NIMH–found “robust and rapid antidepressant effects” that remained for a week after depressed subjects were given ketamine (colloquial name: Special K or usually just k). In the other study, a team led by Dr. Francisco Moreno of the University of Arizona gave psilocybin (the merrymaking chemical in psychedelic mushrooms) to obsessive-compulsive-disorder patients, most of whom later showed “acute reductions in core OCD symptoms.” Now researchers at Harvard are studying how Ecstasy might help alleviate anxiety disorders, and the Beckley Foundation, a British trust, has received approval to begin what will be the first human studies with LSD since the 1970s.”

“…a Leary for a less naive age: Richard Doblin. Also a Harvard guy–his Ph.D. is in public policy–Doblin founded the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) in 1986 to help scientists get funding and approval to study the drugs. (Doblin, 53, says he was too shy for the ’60s, but he was inspired by the work of psychologist Stanislav Grof, who authored a 1975 book about promising LSD research–research that ended with antidrug crackdowns.) Doblin has painstakingly worked with intensely skeptical federal authorities to win necessary permissions. MAPS helped launch all four of the current Ecstasy studies, a process that took two decades. It’s the antithesis of Leary’s approach.”

What do a neurotoxic pufferfish, an iron rod blown by blackpowder thru the brain and skull, a split brain, and an enriched environment neuron all have in common?

You can get them as free .pdfs for printing neuro cards from Accidental Mind.

http://accidentalmind.org/notecards/

I thought this article was interesting. Isolation is one of the common elements in most kinds of self-development practices, at least at certain stages. And, I think a lot of the people that are attracted to self-development are the introspective types, who are happy enough without being in the centers of groups, enough so that some of the ideas and descriptions in this article could be useful to most self-developers and practicioners.

I myself have been in the past very able to be “extroverted”, teaching classes and giving talks and speeches and whatnot. But, I’ve always been very comfortable with isolation, especially isolation while surrounded with nature, like when I’m just hanging out at my home in the country. I think I’m clearly a loner type – altho it’s easy enough to be “alone” when I’m alone with a wife as wonderful as Marisa. ;-}

It’s not at great article, by any stretch, it’s populist pablum really, but still interesting.

Here’s the article, from Psychology Today – Field Guide to the Loner: The Real Insiders – Loners are pitied in our up-with-people culture. But the introvert reaps secret joy from the solitary life.

“Loners often hear from well-meaning peers that they need to be more social, but the implication that they’re merely black-and-white opposites of their bubbly peers misses the point. Introverts aren’t just less sociable than extroverts; they also engage with the world in fundamentally different ways. While outgoing people savor the nuances of social interaction, loners tend to focus more on their own ideas—and on stimuli that don’t register in the minds of others.”

A flash tool to look up some information about nearby stars.

ExtraSolar – chart of nearby stars, including most of the discovered extrasolar planets.

New sarticles about developments in neuroscience (and “neuroculture”) from Slate magazine –

“How Smart Is Grandpa?: How much can you expect from a septuagenarian brain?” by Michelle Tsai. Posted Thursday, April 26, 2007.

“Cells That Read Minds?: What the myth of mirror neurons gets wrong about the human brain,” by Alison Gopnik. Posted Thursday, April 26, 2007.

“God Is in the Dendrites: Can ‘neurotheology’ bridge the gap between religion and science?” By George Johnson. Posted Thursday, April 26, 2007.

“Spirit Tech: How to wire your brain for religious ecstasy,” by John Horgan. Posted Thursday, April 26, 2007.

“Train Your Brain: The new mania for neuroplasticity,” by Meghan O’Rourke. Posted Wednesday, April 25, 2007.

“Ginkgo Biloba? Forget About It.: A history of the top-selling brain enhancer,” by Brendan I. Koerner. Posted Wednesday, April 25, 2007.

“Brain Lessons: Steven Pinker, Oliver Sacks, and others on how learning about their brains changed the way they live.” Posted Wednesday, April 25, 2007.

“Best of the Brain: The five biggest neuroscience developments of the year,” by William Saletan. Posted Wednesday, April 25, 2007.

“Brain-Gym Showdown: Can a Slate reporter hold his own at the local neurobics club?” by Max Linsky. Posted Wednesday, April 25, 2007.

brains!: A special issue on neuroscience and neuroculture.

BC psychotherapist denied entry after border guard googled his work.

If you have ever written about using psychedelics, you may be denied entry (or rentry?) into the United States

“Andrew Feldmar, a well-known Vancouver psychotherapist, rolled up to the Blaine border crossing last summer as he had hundreds of times in his career. At 66, his gray hair, neat beard, and rimless glasses give him the look of a seasoned intellectual. He handed his passport to the U.S. border guard and relaxed, thinking he would soon be with an old friend in Seattle. The border guard turned to his computer and googled “Andrew Feldmar.”

The psychotherapist’s world was about to turn upside down.

The Blaine border guard explained that Feldmar had been pulled out of the line as part of a random search. He seemed friendly, even as he took away Feldmar’s passport and car keys. While the contents of his car were being searched, Feldmar and the officer talked. He asked Feldmar what profession he was in.

When Feldmar said he was psychologist, the official typed his name into his Internet search engine. Before long the customs guard was engrossed in an article Feldmar had published in the spring 2001 issue of the journal Janus Head. The article concerned an acid trip Feldmar had taken in London, Ontario, and another in London, England, almost forty years ago. It also alluded to the fact that he had used hallucinogenics as a “path” to understanding self and that in certain cases, he reflected, it could “be preferable to psychiatry.” Everything seemed to collapse around him, as a quiet day crossing the border began to turn into a nightmare.”

Visit bibliodyssey to see larger versions of this image and others… Bibliodyssey page on the Kalighat Pictures of Indian Gods