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julies-butterflies · 3 years

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“One of us is starting to fall asleep.”-jukebox?

cuddle dialogue prompts ( no longer accepting ) ( read on ao3 )

By now, Julie knows that Luke and sleep don’t exactly get along.

Like... peanut butter and coleslaw. Studying and roller coasters. Alex and high school athletics. Luke and sleep are polar opposites, and flat-out don’t have time for each other. Whatever fundamental sequence of Luke’s DNA, whatever weird criss-cross firing of neurons in his head looks at a good night’s sleep, and decides, “nope, not for me...”

Well, Julie doesn’t get it, but that’s how Luke’s made. Apparently, it’s how he’s always been, even when he was alive. Everyone else just has to deal with it.

“You’re keeping me up,” she announces, drawing her fuzzy blanket tighter around her shoulders.

Luke’s head shoots up, surprised — and sure, he’s got a right to be, considering it’s almost two in the morning. No sane person would be up this late. Not by choice, anyways... and Julie isn’t choosing to be awake herself. Something inside of her — one of those lightbulbs in her chest that blaze bright whenever the boys are near, that can feel them like a low, humming frequency even when they’re out of sight — is still awake, and buzzing. Late nights are like this. Whenever Luke can’t put himself to sleep — whether his brain is too loud, or his body too charged with energy — Julie feels it. She doesn’t want to, and definitely doesn’t enjoy it... but this is what her life has become. Being kept awake half the night by cute, insomniac ghosts.

He lowers his pencil slowly, and pulls his notebook against his chest. Luke sucks his cheeks, looking sheepish.

“Sorry. I, uhh, I was just —“ He gestures vaguely around the darkened studio. A few faint snores echo from the loft, where Alex has set up a private space for himself. Reggie is face down on the sofa in a pile of blankets, hugging them to his chest like a kangaroo protecting its baby. (Julie’s going to have to get him a stuffed animal to snuggle one of these days; half the reason Luke doesn’t sleep, she suspects, is because Reggie’s such a blanket hog.)

The studio is dark except for a single light, glowing in the corner of the room. Luke is curled up there, with his notebook against his knees… but he wasn’t writing when Julie slipped in. He was glaring down at the page like it personally offended him. Now, he sets the notebook aside without a second glance, turning his full attention on her.

“Just felt like there was a song in my head, and I had to get it out. But it’s, uhh…” He gives his shaggy head a shake. “Not coming.”

“Maybe ‘cause you’re exhausted.” Julie crosses her arms. “It’s way past bedtime, Luke.”

“I’m a ghost, though.” He spreads his arms wide and leans back in his seat, like that’s something to be proud of. “Ghosts don’t have bedtimes.”

Without blinking, Julie crosses over to the couch and gives it a firm kick.

“Reggie? When’s your bedtime?”

Reggie snorts, popping his head up. “Ten-thirty,” he mutters… before faceplanting in the blankets again.

Luke rolls his eyes. “Reggie can have a bedtime if he wants to. I’m a free agent.”

“You’re an insomniac, and should probably talk to someone.”

“You know any good ghost doctors?”

Julie’s eye twitches. “We’ll find one.”

Tipping his head back towards the ceiling, Luke clicks his tongue. “I dunno, Jules, it’s been a while since my last checkup… I don’t got time for all the bells and whistles, you know? They’re gonna take that little hammer to my knee, and it’s gonna go right through me… they're gonna look for my heartbeat and be real confused... probably try to give me some spooky X-rays…” He gasps, and bolts upright. “Julie, they’re gonna find out I don’t have a skeleton!”

Okay, thinks Julie, the late hour is definitely getting to his head.

“Is that your excuse?”

The unexpected voice from the darkness sends them both jumping out of their skin. Luke flails, nearly falling out of his chair; blinking up at the loft, Julie’s eyes widen as a phenomenal mess of bedhead peeks out over the railing.

“We all know you’re afraid of needles. You haven’t had a booster shot in thirty years, Luke.” Alex glares down at them both. “Now, either shut up or go away, some of us are trying to sleep!”

Reggie holds up a hand, and mumbles something like “agreed,” into his pillow.

Clapping her palm over her mouth, Julie exchanges a sheepish glance with Luke. It takes every ounce of her self-control not to burst out laughing — Alex might actually start throwing things at them — but from the way Luke’s shoulders shake, she doesn’t trust him to hold out.

“Okay, sorry, we’re leaving,” she says in an hushed rush… and, before Luke can say another word, she snags him by the arm and pulls him with her.

They slip out the doors of the studio, and break into the humid night air. May in Los Angeles is just beginning to get hot -hot; warm enough to justify tank tops instead of sweatshirts, flip-flops instead of monster slippers. Julie’s pajamas aren’t anything interesting — Luke’s seen her in worse — but under the cool moonlight, his eyes still drink her in as if seeing her for the first time.

“You sleep with all those necklaces on?” he asks.

Okay, maybe he is seeing her for the first time, because Julie’s slept with her jewelry on since, like… sixth grade.

“You’re just noticing?”

“They’re pretty in the moonlight,” he replies, like it’s a foregone conclusion; then his brows furrow. “What if they choke you?”

“That’s not how it works, Luke.”

“Sure it is! All they need to do is get a little tangled up —“ He mimes, presumably, Julie doing acrobatics in her sleep. “And wham, you end up all strangled to death! I know we’ve got a gimmick, Julie, but we don’t gotta make it a full-phantom band so soon.”

“You say that like you’ve got plans for my death.”

“I mean…” He shrugs, the picture of innocence. “Not in the near future, but, y’know, we can't have you out-aging us…”

“Oh,” she says, beginning the long trek up the pathway to the house. “So I’ve got… two years before you guys decide to kill me. That’s reassuring.”

Luke follows after her, their footsteps echoing together. “Eh, we could stretch it to five. Six, tops. You’re tiny, you’ve still got a few good years left in you. Not like you’re gonna go all grandma on us too soon.”

Julie gasps, and swats at him. Luke accepts the hit to the chest with dignity, biting back a grin. He looks unfairly handsome in the moonlight… and Julie refuses to think about that, because it opens up a wole Pandora’s Box of issues, ranging from the obvious (he’s a ghost eternally trapped at seventeen and, unless he somehow comes back to life through the power of music, I am going to get older than him someday) to the serious (he’s keeping me up at two in the morning).

Luke isn’t handsome. He’s a sleepless menace, and Julie shouldn’t entertain him a second longer.

They reach her door. Somehow, they come to a stop at exactly the same time, turning towards each other. Julie tugs her blanket tighter around her bare shoulders. Luke reaches out, and pulls the door open for her.

“I guess —“ he says.

“Yeah,” Julie agrees quickly. “Sounds good.”

“Great.”

“Goodnight, then?”

“Yeah. Goodnight.”

They smile at each other for a second, close-lipped and quiet… before something in Julie breaks, and she lays a hand on his arm. Somehow, he’s always so warm under her touch, so solid. He feels like a promise always kept… a steadiness, a certainty. A comfort.

“Come on,” she says softly, taking them both by surprise. “My bed has room for two.”

---------

He’s still so very warm, in bed next to her, with their legs tangled and bodies brushing whenever they move. It’s too humid for covers, so Julie’s got her favorite sheet, instead. As soon as Luke sees it, he billows it up into the air, and lets it fall down on top of them both like a parachute. Julie claps a hand over her mouth to hide her giggles. Even in the darkness of her bedroom — lit by the dimly glowing fairylights she only put on to keep Luke from tripping over her carpet — his grin is blinding. As the sheet flutters down over them both, she stretches her arms up to welcome it; he laughs so loudly, it’s a good thing her dad and brother can’t hear.

“This,” she huffs, once they’re both hiding under the covers, “this isn’t what we should be doing. It’s two in the morning.”

“Yeah. You’re right. Totally right.” Luke’s quiet for a moment — before shaking the covers again, causing a wave of air to roll over them. He makes a ridiculous whoosh! noise, and Julie snorts.

“Stop!” She swats at his shoulder again; the sound is harsher than the impact. Luke yelps and curls in on himself, feigning a mortal injury. Over his groans and moans and “Julie, how could you”s, Julie can’t restrain another fit of giggles.

Oh god, she’s gone for this boy. She really is.

It’s two in the morning, and she’s in hysterics in her bedroom over a boy no one else in the world can see… and he’s smiling at her like she’s the brightest star blazing in the sky, and his legs are brushing hers, and she can feel the pulse of his heartbeat, the warmth of his breath… which shouldn’t be possible, because he’s dead.

Luke reaches up. Gently, he brushes a stray curl from Julie’s temple. His hand lingers, and Julie feels dizzy.

“This feels like heaven,” he says softly.

Julie’s breath catches.

“I… thought you said you’d never get there.”

“Yeah, well…” When he chuckles, his breath ruffles her hair. “I’m not much of a believer in the ‘all rockstars go to heaven’ kinda thing… I don’t even know if I buy into that stuff, period.” He shrugs, and glances down, at the bare inches of space in between them. “But this… is what it’d feel like, I think. Right here, with you. This kind of forever.”

“With...” She swallows past a throat that is suddenly too dry, forcing words together in a head that reverberates with heaven and you. Forever. God, can they make this last forever?

Instead of speaking, her hand finds Luke’s in the darkness. Their palms press; their fingers intertwine. He is restless beneath her touch, all calluses and carelessness and nervous energy… but Julie holds him until she feels him relax, then slowly raises their hands up between them.

“I’d like that,” she whispers. “To stay here forever.”

His eyes shine bright. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” She swallows. “As long as it’s with you.”

These are exactly the sort of confessions that could not be made any time other than late in the night, or early in the morning — that funny liminal space of existence, the hours where nothing is really real, and everything feels like it matters too much. Julie is floating, and Luke is right here with her. He’s smiling inches away from her face… and if she wanted to lean over, to close the distance between them, it would be as easy as breathing.

She doesn’t, though, because this moment feels sacred. She won’t claim it selfishly for herself — won’t turn it into something it’s not. This moment is shared, between her and Luke... secrets whispered in the dark for their ears alone. It should stay that way.

“You’re beautiful,” he breathes softly, like it’s all he knows for sure.

“You’re amazing,” she replies, in the same voice.

“You’re a star.”

“You’re inspiring.”

“You make me feel alive again.”

“So do you.”

They exhale in the silence, the words floating through the air around them. Julie imagines she can see them glowing in the darkness. If she wanted, she could pluck them out of thin air, tuck them away in her dream box and save them forever. This feels like the sort of moment that belongs there — halfway between dream and waking, almost too good to be true.

For a while, they don’t talk at all. Luke plays with her hair, and Julie twines their fingers. Their breaths match each other’s in the silence. It feels like floating down a lazy river, and slowly, Julie can feel herself being carried away.

She’s only aware of her eyes getting heavier when Luke’s fingers graze her brow, and she can’t force her lids open to look at him.

“Looks like one of us is starting to fall asleep,” Luke teases, his voice soft.

Julie humms, and feels herself smile. “You.”

“Not me.” His voice is smiling, too. “You.”

“You need t’ sleep.” She exhales, and sees it ruffle his hair like leaves on a tree. His nose scrunches up. He doesn’t look drowsy — not like he’s drowning in it, like she is — but he’s not wide awake, either. His head is quiet, his soul is calm; the hive of bees buzzing in Julie’s chest has given up the ghost for tonight. (Little Luke-shaped bees, with beanies and guitars, who keep flying into everything because they’ve got too much energy…)

She bursts into giggles again at the thought. They spill from her lips like honey; she’s too tired to silence them, nevermind hide her grin. Instead, she slumps against Luke, muffling herself against his shoulder. He smells like pine needles and sunshine. His arms wrap around her back to steady her, and she can feel him smiling against her, and Julie thinks…

Julie thinks…

Forever.

“What’s so funny?” he murmurs into the crown of her head.

“Bees,” she replies, and giggles again.

“Oh yeah?” He hums, like this makes perfect sense. “I mean, yeah, they’re pretty hilarious.”

“Mmm.” She presses her face against his shoulder, and decides to stay there. “Mmm.”

For a long moment, he’s completely still — like the world’s most realistic stuffed animal, the coziest pillow ever made — before his hand tentatively begins to massage between her shoulder blades, running up and down her spine.

“You good, Julie?” he murmurs softly, and Julie humms again.

“Stay with me,” she manages to say. Forever. “Sleep here… with me.”

Luke’s caress feels like a lullaby. The lips that graze her temple are a promise.

“Don’t worry, Julie,” he murmurs. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Somehow, forever feels good enough for tonight.

#jukebox #juke #my fics #jatp #julie and the phantoms #luke patterson #julie molina #this is... The Softest

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vinnylovell · 3 years

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How To Overcome Brain Degeneration As You Age group

The unique thing about the actual brain is that it is one of the tissue in the body that does not experience cell division. Your own liver is always rejuvenating, so are your gut, your kidneys, and all your organs. Though the brain, whatever set amount of neurons (lack of feeling cells that send and receive electric signals throughout the body) you were born using is what you have throughout your life. So if the actual brain is incapable of regenerating itself, is degeneration an unavoidable outcome as we age? Fortunately, the answer is, not really. Here is why. Neurological plasticity Neurons connect with the other and develop plasticity. Neural plasticity is the ability associated with neurons and its systems to change itself both structurally and functionally in response to development, new information, sensory stimulation, damage, or disorder. Neural plasticity is, therefore, crucial to development, cognition, recollection, and mobility. It was once believed that neural plasticity merely existed in young individuals and that once neural pathways were formed, they were arranged and could not be transformed. Modern brain research has today revealed that neurons continually rearrange themselves through the entire course of life. In reality, new connections can take shape at any point in life, enabling people to gain knowledge and pick up new skills even at an advanced age. However, as you age, your brain is still likely to degenerate unless you do something to alter the process. Factors behind Brain Degeneration 1. Poor neurodevelopment in certain regions of the brain Each person offers different regions of your brain which have greater connection or plasticity than additional regions. The more plasticity you've in a certain place, the better you are as well particular function manifested by the area. Your less plasticity, the much less capable. For example, once you were a kid so you tried to play sports. You were not coordinated and other kids made enjoyable of you. So you halted playing sports and you avoided sports when you grew up. Then the region that represents your vestibular generator system never got a possiblity to develop. As you get more mature, neurodegneration tends to show up first in areas that have less plasticity. If you are someone who did not have a very created motor coordinated muscular system because you never played out sports, you are very likely to have instability, vertigo, or dizziness as you age. Or maybe you were bad at math when you were in school, so that you avoided all mathematics while growing up. Therefore, the parietal, prefrontal, and substandard temporal regions from the brain will have less plasticity. As you get older, you may find you are no longer as good in remembering things or your grocery list. That is why in terms of the brain, the saying which "if you don't use it, you may lose it" is indeed very true. 2. Brain inflammation Inflammation in the brain is totally different from infection in the rest of the system. In the systemic defense system, there are suppressor cellular material that can shut down the actual immune response to control down the inflammatory course of action, the brain does not. Inside the brain, there are mainly neurons and glial cells. Glial cellular material support, protect, as well as nurture the neurons; they clear away metabolic debris such as the beta-amyloid plaques perfectly located at the brains of Alzheimer's disease patients. They are also the resident immune cellular material in the brain, but they don't have an off swap. Without intervention, when activated, they remain on, become hyper, along with cause chronic swelling in the brain. (Please read on to see ways to decrease brain inflammation.) Factors like upsetting brain and spinal cord injuries, ischemia stroke, infections, poisons, and autoimmunity activate the particular glial cells. This condition is frequently associated with a compromised blood-brain buffer, which is a finely woven mesh of specialized cellular material and blood vessels which keep foreign ingredients out of the brain. When this barrier is damaged, it becomes permeable or perhaps "leaky". This allows toxins and pathogens to enter the particular brain. It also allows swelling that originates elsewhere in the body to get into the brain and start the inflammation reaction there. Chronic brain inflammation reduces neuron plasticity and leads to degeneration. It shuts down wind turbine in the brain cells, resulting in mental fatigue, brain fog, and memory loss. It is also associated with numerous neurological along with psychiatric disorders, which include depression, anxiety, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, substance abuse, Alzheimer's, as well as Parkinson's.

Top 5 Ways To Handle Brain Degeneration 1. Blood sugar stability Without doubt, blood sugar dysfunction may be the number one risk factor that devastates the brain. This includes getting prediabetic, diabetic, or hypoglycemic (minimal blood sugar). When a person eats too much carbohydrates, which turn into sweets in the blood, your body puts out more insulin to bring the blood sugar down. Too much blood insulin activates the glial tissues in the brain and causes substantial inflammation and stimulates the neurodegenerative process. Within hypoglycemics, there is an insulin spike too as the entire body attempts to bring down your blood sugar after a large carbohydrate meal. When the blood sugar drops lacking, the brain cannot acquire enough fuel. They become spacey, lightheaded, shaky, along with irritable. Hypoglycemics cannot proceed too long without eating. If you want to determine whether there is a blood sugar issue, basically ask yourself how you feel when you eat. The normal reply would be, I am not eager anymore. There should be no alternation in energy and function. Nonetheless, hypoglycemics will typically say, I feel so much greater, I feel I can perform again. I can feel. I am not hungry any more. That is a sign that they're dealing with a low blood sugar rollercoaster ride. Those who eat a meal and wish to take a rest, crave sugar, or need to have a coffee instantly are insulin proof people. They are for the prediabetic or diabetic facet. Scientists now think that chronic blood sugar instability play a huge role within the development of dementia and Alzheimer's disease, enough to the point that will some researchers are usually calling Alzheimer's "Type 3 diabetes" as a result of inflammatory blood sugar relationship. Hence, blood sugar balance is irrefutably the most important the answer to address when trying to improve brain function. In addition to managing your blood glucose through diet, many studies have shown that irregular fasting has a substantial impact on brain inflammation. This turns on an important course of action called autophagy, in which you get rid of the metabolic debris in the brain and you turn off your glial cells. The most common intermittent fasting schedule could be the 16/8 method which involves fasting for 16 several hours and restricting your day-to-day eating period to eight hours, say midday to 8 pm. 2. Initial of the brain The areas of the brain that you do not use may have less plasticity. Therefore, you will need to challenge your brain to avoid it from degenerating. In case you always have a hard time with math, get a mathematics app and start performing multiplication tables or perform math games which elementary school children do. If you are often questioned with people's faces or shapes, perform games like Tetris that you look at shapes and try to fit them in to different spots. Should you sway or get rid of your balance when you near your eyes while standing up with your feet collectively or on one feet, you get to do much more balance exercises. The secret is to keep all areas of your respective brain active and triggered. Watching TV is inactive and does absolutely nothing to help the brain. Instead, accomplish cognitive things like become familiar with a new language, enjoy Sudoku, or do word puzzles. Be an athlete, be a scholar, that is the way to preserve your own brain. 3. Physical activity Exercise advantages your brain in two techniques. One is biochemistry and yet another is plasticity. The types of exercise that raise your heartbeat change the neurochemistry in the brain. Larger heart rate equals more blood flow, more blood circulation, more growth components, and more brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF). Workout also causes neuronal branching, results in an opioid response, along with calms down infection. In short, exercise just keeps your neurons healthy. Physical activities that require more coordination enhance neuronal plasticity in those areas of the brain. For example, in case you ask a patient which has brain injury in the vestibular system (balance center) to do bicep waves while standing on a new BOSU (unstable surface), he/she may well feel totally exhausted prior to muscles get fatigued. The patient may think that he/she is so out of shape, but actually, it is that the main brain that has an issue. As a result, if you are someone who just runs, bikes, as well as swims, adding exercises that involve multiple flatlands will help develop the aspects of the brain that are responsible for dexterity and balance, which can be essential as you get older. 4. Sleep Your brain cannot function in a sleep-deprived express. Your brain cannot part. It cannot develop plasticity and it cannot get rid of particles when it is in a sleep-deprived point out. Studies clearly show that when people do not get adequate sleep, over time, the particular brain volume decreases in dimensions. So for whatever reason you're not getting enough high quality sleep, be it repeated nighttime urination, too much stimulation from the blue light generated by simply electronic devices, hormonal instability, or low blood glucose levels causing you to wake up, you should address the problem. Normally, without good sleep, there is no chance that your brain could work well. 5. Nutrients along with supplements The number one nutritious for turning lower neuroinflammation is short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs). The 3 primary SCFAs critical to wellness are butyrate, propionate, and acetate. SCFAs are built by gut microorganisms from the digestion as well as fermentation of dietary fibers. SCFAs can modulate neuroinflammation because the gut and the brain are usually intimately connected by the vagus nerve, which is the highway through which signals from hormones, neuropeptides, and microorganisms travel back and forth. Throughout studies, SCFAs have been implicated in several neuropsychiatric disorders, from Parkinson's to autism. These people were found to have a lower abundance of SCFA-producing bacteria in their gut as compared to healthy individuals. Forms of fiber that advertise the production of SCFAs in the intestine Inulin found in green bananas, rye, barley, sprouted wheat, Jerusalem artichoke, don't forget your asparagus, and onions. Pectin present in peaches, apples, grapefruits, grapefruit, apricots, peas, tomatoes, potatoes, and peas. Fructooligosaccharides (FOS) found in Jerusalem artichoke, green apples, garlic, asparagus, leeks, yellow onion, and chicory root. Resilient starch found in natural bananas, plantains, cooked along with cooled rice, carrots, and legumes. Arabinoxylan found in wheat bran. Dealing with Brain Degeneration As You Age Apart from eating foods that are rich in these fibers, you can also make use of fiber supplements. They're called prebiotics or prebiotic materials because the good microorganisms (probiotics) in the gut prey on them to produce SCFAs. Foods that contain SCFAs Butter and ghee. There are also butyrate (or butyr acid) dietary supplements available. Individuals with severe brain inflammation should consider employing both prebiotics and butyrate. Health supplements that reduce brain inflammation Omega-3 fish oil Resveratrol a polyphenol found in the skin of red grapes. It can cross the blood-brain barrier to help reduce brain inflammation. Turmeric/curcumin any spice commonly present in curry powder. It can also mix the blood-brain barrier. Liposomal fluid curcumin has 4-8 times more absorption than the powdered ingredients form, which is tougher to absorb. Pomegranate extract Carol Chuang is a Certified Nutrition Specialist. She has a Experts degree in Diet and is a Certified Gluten Specialist. She specializes in Metabolism Typing and Functional Diagnostic Nutrition. For more information about cach dieu tri benh thoai hoa nao resource: read more.

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cress-the-fander · 5 years

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Beach Day

TW: None

Logan sighed as he put his materials down onto his desk. It had been another difficult day for him. Especially when it seems like nothing he does actually works.

Of course, he knows this is false. Logically, he does indeed make a fundamental difference in Thomas’s life. He is the one that takes care of not only his thinking but the fundamentals as well. You know, filing memories, tracking the pathways of neurons within the brain, that kind of stuff. He does a lot behind the scenes, more than the other Sides really get to see.

Except for Patton.

You see, what makes Patton special is his relationship with Logan. They are in a romantic relationship. It’s okay if you’re surprised. Virgil and Roman certainly were shocked. Well, they were at first at least. But then they saw how the two interacted and saw that in the end, it was probably inevitable.

Of course, Logan was currently thinking about none of this. In fact, he was still trying to figure out how he should sort Thomas’s long term memory during his deep sleep. There are multiple options, as he can do it alphabetically, numerically, or chronologically; all of which being fantastic answers, of course.

However, his plans for the night would be interrupted when there was a knock at his door. There were multiple people that this could be. However, through logical deduction, we may narrow the options down to infer who it is accurately.

Deceit is definitely asleep. Logan has noticed that on the occasion he does decide to leave his quarters during the night, Deceit is simply never there. That fact makes him an unlikely answer.

Virgil was a more likely suspect. Logan has observed him being awake at times when he has pulled all-nighters and gone into the kitchen to get the food he needs for sustenance. However, during each of those encounters, Virgil was in the living room exclusively. Either listening to music on those soundproof headphones he had or watching some kind of horror movie on the television. It is unlikely that he would let himself be distracted from such things.

Remus was completely out of the question. Mostly because he would simply barge in rather than knocking, as he either lacks the capacity for comprehending commonly known manners, or he does and simply doesn’t care. Roman is also unavailable due to a similar situation. Seeing as Thomas is dreaming at the moment, and nothing is broken, he is likely too busy to bother him. Which leaves only one side left.

He remembered to push his chair in when he got up to go open his door. He realized that his heart was beating slightly faster than it usually does at his average BPM. There was, of course, an explanation for it.

He simply didn’t want to admit it.

Finally, he opened the door, and as he expected, Patton was there. Here like he always is, with those bright brown eyes and shining smile. “Hello, Patton. What is your business here with me?”

How could his eyes get even brighter with just a simple question? It wasn’t logical at all. Perhaps Patton in some ways was able to defy logic.

“Well Logi Bear, I have a surprise for you!” A surprise? Logan thought upon it. He had sort of worked himself into a state of being unable to progress in his work. He had gotten a “burnout” of sorts. Perhaps a small moment of a break from his work would be beneficial at the end of the night.

“What kind of surprise, Patton?” It was an understandable question. He preferred to learn more about this “surprise” rather than stay unknowing of the topic.

However, the only answer he got back was a giggle. “Well, if I just came out and told you, it wouldn’t be a surprise now would it?”

Logan tilted his head, confused. “Really? Then why would you tell me about this surprise at all? It only makes me more curious as to what this unknown incoming event is.

He wasn’t given an answer at first. He was instead pulled out of the room completely, the door closing behind him before he could realize what had happened. But when he did realize what happened, he looked at the other, confused. “Patton?”

“Hey, don’t worry!” The heart only said with a smile as he started pulling Logan down the hallway by the hand. The logician tried not to focus on the excitement that was practically vibrating the air around his partner. He also attempted to ignore the warmth that came from their hands being connected.

He failed miserably.

“Where are you taking me?” Logan was still confused, however, based on how his lover was dragging him out of his room in such a fashion, he must be taking him somewhere. “You do realize that I have an incredible amount of work I must complete, correct? Even when Thomas is busy with more creative pursuits, I-”

“Logi Bear, relax!” Logan had been interrupted, however, he found that he did not mind this time, oddly enough. “I know exactly how hard you’ve been working. That’s why I got this surprise for you!”

The brain contemplated this, before smiling softly. Of course, Patton would know and he cares enough to do something about it. He would do it for anyone, really. He is Thomas’s heart, so he would understandably do whatever he could to help his fellow sides when they need assistance.

But what Patton was doing here is different than what he would do for the others. Logan might not know how yet, but he knew it would be.

Patton looked back at Logan over his own shoulder, that signature smile still on his face. “I promise, you’ll enjoy it a lot!” Patton always keeps his promises, and he doesn’t make them unless he truly believes he can keep them.

However, Logan did get a hint of what Patton had in mind for him he saw just what their destination was. It was Roman’s door. Despite not seeing it very often, the golden details and the stained glass window in the center of it. The window depicted Roman using his sword and shield to kill a dragon. Most likely a dragon-witch knowing the prince.

“Patton, why have you taken me to Roman’s quarters? You know that I often have nothing to do in his sector.” It was accurate. Being Thomas’s center of logical thinking, he would have no business in the part of the mind that takes care of things to do with the imagination or creativity.

But Patton must not care about that at the moment, based on how he hadn’t faltered a moment. “Well, why do you think? It’s for the surprise!”

Logan barely had time to analyze this information internally before he was being pulled into the room. Actually, upon entering, Logan realized something vital.

He wasn’t in a room at all.

Or at least, it was not a traditional room. The first thing he felt was the wind blowing against his face. Then, he was able to smell the salt of the ocean. It was-

“Welcome to the beach, Logan!” Once again, he was taken from his thoughts as Patton practically shouted from his joy. So there Logan went, being pulled along the beach by Thomas’s heart.

It was a beautiful beach, according to Logan’s opinion. The sand was fine and near white in its unblemished glory. Not a single piece of garbage was littered on the white sand. The water gently lapping on the shore is a wonderful crystal color, only possible in either a tropical destination or in one’s imagination.

“I told you you would like it!” Patton exclaimed, likely from looking at the face Logan was making. “What do you think of it?”

He was quiet for a moment, before smiling. “I believe that this will indeed be a quite enjoyable experience, Patton. Especially when you are here with me.”

Logan had incredibly limited power when it came to Daydreams. He simply was the exact opposite of what they stood for, so it was quite understandable. However, Patton was different. Despite not being Thomas’s creativity itself, like Roman or Remus, he did have some influence here. After all, the heart is often the genesis point for the things one creates in their imagination.

So that would explain how Patton was able to conjure up things within the Daydream. Well, Logan had inferred that what he was seeing was of Patton’s creation. In front of him was a large beach umbrella, likely to block out the sun. The pole of it was a soft pink color, and the umbrella itself composed of sections of two shades of blue, one closer to that of the sky and the other a noticeably darker shade. There were also two blankets underneath it, and thanks to the large size of the umbrella they were completely covered in shade. The towel to the left of Logan had a sleek design on it, minimalist while still being stylish. The other had images of multiple kittens on it in all sorts of poses and positions that most would find “cute”.

It was obvious which towel was for which person.

Lastly, there was a basket seated in the sand between the two towels and in front of the umbrella. It was wicker and was a decent size as well. Logan was unable to see it’s contents, however, as the top of it was closed.

“What do you think?” Logan turned to see Patton looking at him with that shining hope in his eyes, hands behind his back in excitement. “It’ll be just the two of us!” Patton must have done all of this for him. Well, it was more likely that Roman already had created the setting, as only he and Remus have the means do to something so complicated with Thomas’s imagination. Remus would have created something far more distressing.

“I believe...this will be quite a wonderful experience.” It was all Logan believed he had to say. He assumed so at least, based on the happy squeal he received following his words.

Suddenly Patton was in his bathing suit. Logan must have spaced out, so he didn’t notice until Patton came closer to him, only inches apart. The other’s suit was simpler than one might expect for Patton. Swim trunks that were light blue are what he was wearing. It was simple, yet fitting. His usual clothes were lying on the towel that Logan had inferred to be the others. It looks like it was his drying cloth indeed. He also had his glasses on, though that was understandable. Even in the Imagination, it would be inadvisable to go swimming in the ocean

“Come on Logan!” Patton had taken a gentle hold on Logan’s polo shirt. He was tugging on it slightly, but not enough to make it wrinkle. “Get into your swimwear so we can go into the water!” Suddenly that familiar gleam entered his eyes. Oh no. “After all, I already...” Please no. “...beach you to it!”

Puns were not a high form of humor. Logan should not laugh.

And yet he did. It was just a snicker, but he couldn’t hold it back. Though it was worth it to see that look on Patton’s face. The one only Logan ever really got to see.

“Okay Patton, okay.” He obliged the other, snapping away his clothes with his own swimsuit to replace it. Logan is not one who usually goes swimming, but he does have one ready for occasions such as these. It was a simple dark blue pair of trunks, however, it was sufficient.

Then, something unexpected happened. Patton kissed him. Right on the lips. “I love you, Logi Bear.”

Logan’s BPM skyrocketed without his permission, and he could feel his face flush an abnormal amount. Patton always had this effect on him. In fact, he was the only one of the sides that was able to do this to him. However, he had been so distracted by his own reaction that he didn’t even realize how the other was rushing down the sand to get to the water.

“Logan, hurry up! I’m going to beach you to the water!” Patton called when he was about halfway there.

Logan decided to make sure the other wouldn’t have to wait for him.

So he ran after Patton, just like he always does.

#thomas sanders #sanders sides #ts logan #logan sanders #ts logic #logicality #ts logicality #ts patton #ts morality #patton sanders #ts roman

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megapretentiouspenguin-blog · 5 years

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The Voider (Title and story WIP)

The waves are calm. They embrace me, lifting me slowly towards the clear blue sky. The taste of the sea takes me to my childhood, a fairground? Candy floss? I hear the abrupt commotion of seagulls soaring above, swooping and diving all around me at the unsuspecting fish below, as I peacefully float.

They know not why I am here. I wonder if they know that this isn't real? How much of them, are themselves, anyway? I always find myself knee deep in pseudo-philosophy at times like this. How far across the boundaries does sentience stretch? Do the seagull's understand that they have no real reason to feed, as they never hunger? Are they separate entities, outside of the patient? Individual strands of rogue thought, pursuing their own primal instinct? Reality born of fiction? Or mere reflections of the patients fractured psyche? Spots of personality, long ago compartmentalised, attempting to be heard against the crashing of waves?

I freeze this scene, embed it into my memory. I'll return here, the peace is serene, inviting. This will remain inside of me, though sadly, I'll have to mark this one as ‘Void’.

I find myself back at the Scape, an empty, dark space below the blooming petals of the mind. Journeying drains me of myself, when entangled, I hold no reference. I am what I become. During the Scape I can relax, center myself, gather all of my thoughts and return to who I was. As I lay, drifting in the bottomless darkness I look up expectedly, and see a ball of energy drifting down from above me, I grab it as it grows near, reeling it out from inside of itself. The radiant light that it emits captivates me, it's dazzling. The glows, beautiful and white, bursting with life. Sometimes sparks pop and crackle from its excited energy, the sparks trickle down into the darkness of the system below. It reminds me of the electric eels that I've read about. It waves back and forth, curling itself around my hand. I raise it to my mouth and breathe it in. Purity. The essence of being.

The whispering echo of a thought surrounds me from all sides.

‘Please return to the roots.’

With a renewed sense of self, I dive down towards the root system below. The system is a group of constantly changing pathways that link into other Scapes. When somebody connects, a new pathway forms, integrating itself into the main 'highway’. When they are disconnected, the pathway degenerates, closing the only entrance to that Scape. I have lived the vast majority of my life inside this, but for a person who's unfamiliar, they could easily take a wrong turn and lose themselves forever. The thought does frighten me, but why back away when I have nothing to lose? I am here because I wanted to be free, without consideration of the cost of others.

I arrive at the roots, shooting through the tunnels at blistering speed, surrounded by stars and bursting nebula, warped sun's going supernova and dark holes leaving patches in the network. Left, left, right, I navigate the system with intense precision, throughout the years I've learnt to enjoy this. Bouncing around the infinite slipstream intoxicates me, filling me with an excitement that I never felt outside of it. I unexpectedly let a laugh escape.

‘Be careful, or we'll pull you out.’

The whispers bring me back down to reality… whatever that is. I've forgotten, it's been so long, and I'm not sure that I wish to remember. My smile vanishes, and I'm left with the reminder that I have a job to do.

I begin to close in on the new pathway, the gate stabilising it's otherworldly convulsions until it opens as a vortex at the center, allowing me to dive through.

I know my goal, I've done this a thousand times, maybe more than that. Maybe a lot more. Time is strange here.

I enter the gate, lights flickering and dancing all around embrace me with a touch like ecstasy, the reds of a far away sun, dwarf stars collapsing, binary systems collide creating earth shattering roars. I feel it all. There's a vessel, far out of reach in distant, uncharted lands. The things I've seen... And with an eerie woosh, I'm thrown into another Scape. Silence.

The darkness embraces me as I orient myself, my senses fail as I glide through the Scape, I see by thought alone. This was no issue, a hazard of the job, it happens when a patient is prepared, expecting invasion. Many are simply trying to ward off nightmares. Some patients are stronger than others, but they always grow weary and submit, allowing the dark dreams, or other entities to pass through when their defences are lowered.

Swimming upwards, I break through the Scape and enter-

A deafening hiss ambushes me, causing me to recoil, my vision is met by nothing but hole punched snow, the static of a TV, everywhere. Inescapable. This one was ready, this one knew that I was coming, but how? I felt myself jerk, my real self. Pain blistering through my skull, numbing my thought.

‘Attack!’

‘Defend!’

‘Attrition!’

‘Steady yourself! Shall we aid him?’

'Do not damage the subject!’

The whispers also seemed panicked, shouting amongst themselves, barking contradictory orders.

I'm screaming at this point, I've never been myself outside of the pathways and Scapes. This was something completely new. The terrifying power of will breaking down my own. Folding me into myself, flooding my insecurities with guilt that wasn't even mine, leaving me hollow and broken, adrift.

‘We have done all that we can.’

The whispers break through.

‘AND WHO ARE YOU TO ENTER MY DOMAIN?!’

As if the static wasn't enough, a booming voice occupies every inch of my being, sending vibrations through my core. It was the voice of a woman, her voice cutting like steel could shatter any sword.

'Another?!’ I gasp.

The static all around me falls away, as if I were in a box that had just been opened, the walls falling to the sides and the top flinging upwards.

Floating in the air in front of me sits the behemoth woman on a gigantic throne.

‘NEVER HAVE I SEEN SUCH NERVE! WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO ME?!’ She doesn't seem to be shouting, but the vibrations of her words reverb inside of my body. 'FOR FIFTY YEARS I HAVE RULED THIS REALM IN PEACE, HARMONY. I ASK AGAIN, WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO ME?!’

'I haven't done anything…’ My voice is barely a whimper in contrast, the wind could carry it away, but I feel my strength slowly returning. I feel the energy building inside.

The whispers interject, I can only make out a few words.

‘Sedation… Compliance.’

'I FEEL MY POWER… sliding.’

I hadn't noticed before, but she looks as though she is in pain, struggling against some unseen force.

I regain enough composure to look around. In all of my years journeying, I had never seen a world as such, but it was eroding. Entropy accelerated, so that the forests and mountains were melting away into sand. Villages, towns and cities dissolving into nothingness. Cars abandoned in the streets, castles fell from clouds, decimating entire neighborhoods. I had done this. Destroyed an entire world. This guilt was my own.

The queen was shrinking, breaking down along with her world. I had regained enough strength to stand, she rose her head up to speak, seemingly sapped of all will.

‘Let us see how you like it.’

She lurched herself forward, throwing herself into me. I could feel us merging, colliding as atoms forming molecules, electricity throughout my being. A grand unity that I had never felt before. Love, hate, sadness, joy and other emotions that didn't have names overwhelmed my body, so that all I could do was cry.

I was flabbergasted into silence. Unable to comprehend what had just taken place. Then all of a sudden, there was nothing. Was I in a Scape? No, this truly was nothing. No thought, no feeling, just nothing.

I awoke, not as myself, but as something else. I could feel a chair under me, the wires and tubes connecting me to the machines that were keeping me alive. Shit, the physical world. I couldn't control my senses. A burning itch climbed the bone of my skull, it was her. She was in control, not that she could do much.

‘He's conscious!’ Screamed a doctor.

‘Emergency! We have a break!’

The chaos around me seemed erratic, blaring alarms and twirling red lights filled the room. People scrambled from their chairs to grab charts and to contact their superiors.

‘Did he do this?’ One asks another.

I could feel the queen laughing as she attempted flex my muscles, the neurons were firing, but there was no response.

‘Yeah, love. No luck there, eh?’ I snidely think.

‘What the fuck?’ I was shocked that there was a response.

Just as quickly as she had taken over me, she released me. We were back inside her mind.

‘So, you're a cripple.’ She states, coldly.

‘Rude.’ I reply. ‘What about you?’

‘I thought that I was dead, but now I'm not so sure.’

#writing

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sciencespies · 3 years

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Which animals talk the most? Depends on how you define 'talk'

https://sciencespies.com/nature/which-animals-talk-the-most-depends-on-how-you-define-talk/

Which animals talk the most? Depends on how you define 'talk'

A pandemonium of parrots, a cackle of hyenas, an exaltation of larks – these are just a few of the animals that we define by the sounds they make.

For humans, communication is the bedrock of our relationships and part of how we successfully function in our daily lives. Animals make sounds to issue warnings, attract mates, signal distress, find one another and defend their territory; similarly to us, their vocal cords fulfill myriad purposes that lay their social foundations and ensure their survival.

But have you ever wondered, of all the creatures we share our planet with, which one vocalizes the most? And what value is there in being a chatterbox, when making sounds also carries a risk of alerting predators?

In human terms, we might measure “chattiness” in two ways: the amount of time spent vocalizing, and the diversity of what’s communicated by those sounds.

How does this apply to nonhuman species? Researchers have identified some common trends in species that vocalize a lot, and common trends in those that prefer quieter lives.

Related: Why do birds sing the same song over and over?

Social creatures

You might assume that one driving factor of animal communication would be how social the species is.

It’s true that some highly social species are also more voluble; for example, flocking birds such as quelea are constantly cacophonous on the wing. Then, there are mammals like the meerkat, a small, mongoose-like creature from southern Africa that lives in large, gregarious communities that cooperatively raise young, forage, and look out for predators.

“When they’re foraging, they’re always chirping away, just so everyone knows, ‘I’m here; it’s me; everything’s OK; there are no predators around.’ They’re constantly making this soft, gentle contact call,” said Arik Kershenbaum, a zoologist at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom who studies animal vocal communication and uses algorithms to analyze and compare their sounds.

But this isn’t a rule; being social doesn’t necessarily mean an animal communicates a lot, Kershenbaum told Live Science.

That’s because vocalizing also comes at a cost. “Most animals try not to vocalize too much, because it actually requires a lot of energy,” said Kershenbaum, who is the author of the book “The Zoologist’s Guide to the Galaxy” (Penguin Press, 2021), part of which delves into animal communication.

Another factor is predation: Sounds put an animal at risk of potentially being caught. These two features place powerful pressures on the vocal communication of even highly social species, like the chimpanzee, one of our closest living relatives.

(Photostock-Israel/Science Photo Library/Getty Images)

“Chimpanzees vocalize very little, not as much as you would expect, given the complexity of their social groups,” Kershenbaum said. To keep audible communication to a minimum, they often use gestures to communicate instead.

However, vocals aren’t necessarily the gold standard of animal communication.

“Animals are constantly broadcasting information, whether it’s vocal, olfactory, through posture – it’s all being assessed by other animals, who form an integrative idea of what to do and how to interact with this individual,” Kershenbaum said.

When it comes to vocal communication, social species tend to have a greater diversity in the messages they convey, Kershenbaum said.

As a general rule, animals that are solitary need to communicate simpler messages to the rest of the world, compared with animals that live in cooperative groups where communication is necessary to maintain social hierarchies, locate and share food and alert one another to threats.

“You can see that if you’re in a cooperative group, there may be more to say than if you’re living on your own,” Kershenbaum said.

Related: Do animals hug each other?

However, it can quickly become tricky territory when we try to dissect what animals are “saying” when they vocalize. One reason for this is that humans make the mistake of judging animal sounds by our standard of what counts as communication – specifically, through the framework of words.

There is evidence that some animal calls have specific meanings (a type of information researchers call referential communication) that could be considered word-like.

For example, some monkeys issue specific alarm calls that signify a predator threat, and dolphins have distinct whistling sounds for different relatives. “They use this particular sound as a name, which could be considered a word,” Kershenbaum said.

But these utterances occur only in scenarios where a single sound is the most efficient way to communicate one specific thing, he said.

“I think it’s, in general, a mistake to look at animal communication as being made of words,” Kershenbaum said.

So, animal communication doesn’t consist of discrete “words” with unique meanings, like our speech does.

That idea is borne out by songbirds; although they have some of the most complex vocal sequences of all living things, these sequences usually occur in scenarios where the relative simplicity of what the bird needs to communicate – like calling for a mate or defending its territory – doesn’t match the mind-boggling diversity of sounds that each call contains, Kershenbaum explained. So what’s going on here?

One theory is that the medium itself is the message. Effectively, birds could be saying, “Look what a complex song I can sing! That means I must be a really good father,” Kershenbaum said. In some sense, vocal acrobatics may be a substitute for colorful plumage, which is another way birds attract mates.

(Elfi Koch/EyeEm/Getty Images)

In fact, “Some species of birds, like mockingbirds or African gray parrots, steal sounds from other species out in the wild to sound smarter, so to speak,” says Erich Jarvis, a neurobiologist at The Rockefeller University in New York who studies songbirds as a model for how humans learn to speak.

Those parrots and mockingbirds suggest that individual vocalizations probably aren’t communicating discrete messages in the way words do when humans speak; because they’re lifted from a completely different species, they’re unlikely to have transferable meanings.

It’s more likely that these are just new sounds that have been added to a vocal repertoire, rather than sounds with individual significance.

Although animals may not be saying multiple discrete things in the way our speech does, their vocalizations are nevertheless rich and dense with meaning.

Listen and learn

Whatever animals are saying, some spend a lot more time vocalizing than others. So who are those chatty individuals, and what makes this blabbing worth their while?

Related: Do animals laugh?

According to Jarvis, animals can be split into two broad groups: nonvocal (or “innate”) learners, and vocal learners, animals that learn to vocalize by imitating sounds.

Only a few groups of animals fall into the vocal-learning camp: humans, songbird species, and some nonhuman mammals, including dolphins, whales, elephants, seals, and bats.

“What’s curious,” Jarvis said, “is that those animals that have vocal learning are also some of the animals that are vocalizing the most.” He also found that these animals are more likely to make more complex vocal sequences.

Jarvis is interested in why these vocal learners vocalize more often, and more complexly.

On one hand, there’s a huge advantage to vocalizing a lot.

For starters, sound travels over long distances, so communicating more frequently can aid communication over large areas, helping animals lay claim to territory or find a mate. Being more voluble and making more complex calls also enable some animals to convey more information to others about their status.

On the other hand, there are the aforementioned risks of vocalizing more: Making sound uses energy and attracts predators.

Jarvis hypothesized that the most vocal animals are typically the ones that have to worry less about predators. Interestingly, he noticed that especially voluble vocal learners “tend to be near the top of the food chain – like humans, whales, and dolphins or elephants. Or, they’re vocalizing in the ultrasonic range [so can’t be heard], like bats,” he said.

“Amongst the birds, we found that the parents in the songbirds were descended from apex predators. So their ancestors were at the top of the food chain. So I think they overcome predation and then get away with vocalizing a lot.”

What’s more, especially chatty animals have a system that minimizes the associated energy costs of constantly making sounds.

Muscles in the larynx – aka the voice box – of vocal animals take up some of the largest amounts of energy in the body, and their activities require fast-firing neurons to control vocalizations. In turn, the activities of those neurons can generate toxic byproducts, similarly to the production of lactic acid, by working muscles that then need to be cleared away.

Jarvis explained that vocal animals, including humans, share protein molecules that protect these fast-firing neurons from a toxin overload. “So us humans and songbirds and parrots and others have independently evolved mechanisms to protect our vocal pathway neurons, so that we can communicate a lot.”

(ALesik/iStock/Getty Images)

In other words, for highly vocal species, vocalizing confers a huge advantage, with relatively little cost. There are exceptions to this, however; for instance, zebra finches are vocal learners that vocalize only a little.

“But on average, the vocal learners have a more complex vocal repertoire,” Jarvis said. “Those who are vocalizing the most in terms of time are the ones who, on average, are producing more complex vocalizations.”

So, who takes the crown for chattiest animal?

“Nobody I know has really gone out there and quantified all the species to say that this is the case” – but the short answer would be that it’s a member of the vocal-learning species, Jarvis said.

Kershenbaum made an educated guess that among these vocal-learning animals, dolphins would be strong contenders for the title, based on his research. “If you are ever in the water with dolphins, it’s almost never quiet,” Kershenbaum said. “They’re always, always vocalizing.”

Jarvis now devotes part of his research to investigating what vocal learners can tell us about human spoken language: He has identified certain genetic mutations in vocal-learning songbirds that could shed some light on how speech disorders occur in humans.

So studying how animals communicate is more than just a curiosity; it could help us understand ourselves.

Related content:

Do any animals know their grandparents?

Will humans ever learn to speak whale?

Which animal has the stretchiest mouth?

This article was originally published by Live Science. Read the original article here.

#Nature

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miki-agrawal · 3 years

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Shaking It Out

Originally published on Miki Agrawal by November 25, 2020.

Shaking it out

This post has adult concepts in it (again) so please be forewarned. Last night was another wild experience. My girlfriend @emilystellafletcher and another friend Adam came over for dinner. Adam brought over his vibrating sound mediation table to lay on afterwards. When I laid on the vibrating table with headphones and blindfold on, I had no idea what I was about to get myself into. I took one puff of cannabis (twice in one week I know! I felt like more was spiritually coming out so I trusted taking a puff to assist the deeper unlocking) and once again, I blasted off. (Responsible side note: Smoking is a rare thing for me so I want to be clear that this is not a permission slip to abuse it.) Emily started off by doing a womb reiki activation and I felt the energy fully, even if she was not touching me. Then the vibrating table was turned on and it was really intense on my body and the initial shock of it scared me, which then triggered me to go deep into the space of experiencing near-death. I saw myself sinking below the earth’s surface into water and floating inside water. I teetered back and forth between wanting to live and the acceptance and peace of death. I heard Hiro’s cries as I was dying and that made me want to not let go. My whole body started shaking uncontrollably, my teeth were chattering and it was UNCOMFORTABLE – like I was for real having a near death experience. Then all of a sudden, I was on a birthing table, giving birth and I started moving my hips like I was pushing a baby out. Raw birthing sounds were coming out of my mouth. But I was dying on the birthing table…And it finally made sense. When I did my Bufo ceremony 3 months ago, an elder woman was there – she was an intuitive healer and she said to me right after my ceremony “I saw that you died giving birth in a past life and in this ceremony, you just cleared it out and released it. That storyline no longer continues. You are safe now.” The interesting thing is that I did not experience that in my ceremony three months ago and found myself quite skeptical of her story, but then, in the most profound way, I experienced it viscerally last night.

I saw myself dying on the birthing table, and feeling scared that I wasn’t going to be able to take care of my baby. Then all of a sudden, a big wave of golden light came flooding into my vagina and was swishing all over my womb all the way up to my heart, like it cleared it out and cleansed it, and revived me, just like the intuitive elder said! It was wild! It made me confront my birthing experience with Hiro where I did feel like I was going to die. When I was wheeled into the operating room for an emergency C-section, under bright scary fluorescent lights and a dozen doctors and nurses pulling and prodding at me – as Hiro’s first cries were heard and relief washed over me – I started crying and the phlegm in my nose and mouth started going to the back of my throat, but because I had the epidural and it was so strong, my ability to swallow was not working and so the phlegm was choking me. After what felt like minutes of not breathing, I gasped to Andrew to help me breathe and he rushed to get one of the doctors to suction out the phlegm that was blocking my throat. If Andrew wasn’t there looking at me, there was no doctor right next to me who was able to hear my light gasps because they were all behind the curtain stitching me back up. Hearing Hiro’s cries while I was “near-dying” on the table, were the cries I heard when I was sinking into the earth last night. It all made sense now.

I think I’ve had some real trauma and fear around the birthing process, which I finally worked through and released last night with the shaking and the release of that traumatic experience. I had another breakthrough last night as well: Andrew asked me a question “Do you think everything’s going to be ok?” And his answer is a resounding yes but mine was a no until last night. I used to live as though everything was NOT going to be ok so I had to constantly protect and prove myself. Where I got to was that everything is SO OK and always will be, no matter what obstacles get put in my way. We all put so much meaning on everything and it was time to let them go. New neuronal pathways were created last night and the last remaining trauma lodged in my body was shaken away. I am sitting in so much gratitude and peace right now. Ps. I read this afterward which made me feel even more in balance: “Shaking, or tremoring, is a natural response of the body to trauma, intense emotions and the activation of kundalini energy. Mammals after having near-death experiences will often shake for an hour to restore balance.”

Tushy was Founded by Miki Agarwal in 2015.

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typewriter-telepath-blog · 6 years

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Crypts of Colour

Note: Please read in plain text form. My theme cancels out italics and such are needed to better understand the story. I’m currently endeavouring to fix this. Thank you.

Chapter One - Silent Dynasty https://typewriter-telepath.tumblr.com/post/173025342441/crypts-of-colour-chapter-one-silent-dynasty-it

Chapter Two - Crippled Kindom

Lusita felt as if she was spinning rather than falling. She never fully grasped the concept of gravity and it never seemed to be able to properly grasp her. They were, after all, two separate entities – one that held the 8 kingdoms together and the other that endeavored to break them apart. Instead, she was a magnet being pulled against a wall. She collided with fragments of meteoroids upon her descent like a pinball ricocheting off the cogs in a machine. It was confusing and painful, yet mesmerizing. She came to a rest with her ears and hands pressed up against the damp, solid matter. It felt as if the whole ground was vibrating. She could hear the organisms moving below her – a near silent humming that was like soft music – which grew louder as they rose to the surface to lap up her blood. She rolled onto her back, her arms outstretched, and her palms deliberately facing upwards. Miyako, the sole inhabitant of the moon above her, her founding ancestor and most heralded deity, must have noticed her. She could almost hear her beckoning, ‘advance, little moth, and meet my gaze.’ The Doom showed no favoritism to her, however, and the acceptance of that melted into her like a hot wax. It was more painful than the impact she experienced. Slowly but sharply, memories pricked her skin and she let the cool relief of nostalgia wash over her like lapping waves…

…

“Nori, why do we look at the stars through a golden film?” Lusita had pondered, shooting platinum-tipped arrows towards each of the brightest stars imprudently. She waited eagerly for the sky to ripple and spit them back out.

“It was built for protection. Against The Reckoning. Address me as ‘Nori’ again and your weak little body will be the next thing to be tossed into it!”

“What would happen then?”

“What?”

“Yes, what would happen if one of us was to hit it?”

Anora flinched at being asked a question that never occurred to zir. “Collect the arrows you so flippantly discarded and answer one of your own questions for a change.”

…

A manic laughter erupted through the valleys and it took a while for Lusita to realize that it was her own. Two days of searching and she never did find shaft nor head. Now an inch from her temple laid a pile of Nikureth’s finest weapons – or the remnants of them. The heads lay chipped and dented, shafts split in the middle or broken in half. She plucked one greedily from the ground and traced her deathly digits around its surface, admiring the damaged arrow more than when it was first gifted to her. “You are truly a mosquito in a net, oblivious to its entrapment”, she declared to Dynastrus. But even if Anora knew what a mosquito was, she was not there to accept the insult. “I have reason to believe it was built for more than just to keep things out,” she continued to nobody in particular. Gazing over the cliff face she was stranded on, Lusita’s vision focused just in time to catch the gorgeous mushroom of fumes rising from the shrunken view of a foreign kingdom.

…

The sky greedily swallowed the moon, and a deep rumble of thunder rattled the bones of Nikurethians beneath it. It was an anomaly fed by the fear coursing through the veins of nymphs. Anora strode rhythmically along the cobblestone path, zir heeled shoes clicking as if keeping the beat to the sweet tune of mass uproar. Zir eyes swept the vicinity like a Newton’s cradle, noting the panic etched into the souls of everything that moved. Plants burrowed themselves into the ground creating sweeping views of the frantic, scattering population. Thousands of overlapping voices whispered hoarsely and loudly, but their minds were screaming. Their hosts were swarms of pastel coloured bodies clambering over one another in an attempt reach the tower walls. Shelter, Anora deduced. Ze glanced upwards towards the glistening cluster of deep red crystals. Winding corridors were visible behind its twisted mouth, but just out of reach behind an invisible barrier not unlike a field of electricity. Chin held up, shoulders broadened, ze clicked zir fingers expectantly. Just like that, the flood of people scrambled to get out of zir way, parting like the Red Sea. The tensing and swift movement of a couple of muscles and Anora was able to maintain zir stroll, working the pathway like a catwalk.

“Our monarch has been expecting you, Distinguished Dynastrus.” Rung the shaky voice of a timid young male who leapt forward out of the crowd. His lack of clothing meant he was a servant. Tears puddled behind his multidimensional ruby eyeglasses; it looked as if his indigo irises were fish swimming in a tank. Anora remembered Lusita commenting that his vision must be like that of a blowfly, but of course, Anora hadn’t the faintest of what that might mean. He reached out a fleshy hand molded under a blue-tinged skin, the same blue-tinged skin that was visible upon every inch of his naked body. Anora lowered her head to kiss it, and the nymph servant’s cheeks flushed an embarrassing hue. “Right this way, Sir-Madam.”

Anora followed the scent of Nikureth’s Aura. It seeped between the cracks in the multicolored tiles and twisted its way gruesomely around each corner – the smell of hot sugar and local spices. Ze found him nestled in his turret like a baby eagle hiding from the storm. He radiated softness and warmth, he was hesitant and indecisive, and Anora was clueless as to how he held his position for this long.

“Teéyo”, ze accused. “You’re a wreck. You’d seem less out of place in the crowd of low-lifes out there than here in this crystal citadel. Your people actually climbed the cliff face to get to your front door, and here you are pressed against the wall as if hoping it will engulf you the way the clouds engulf your skies.” Facing his rear, ze noted the locks of faded blonde that were pinned at the back of his head by a clasp bearing his family seal. From a distance it resembled a knot of flowers growing around a watchful eye. It seemed to suit Teéyo – he was always up here observing, and was more in-sync with nature than any of the other 7 monarchs were. He turned with the utmost grace, and time seemed to slow for his gown and hair to ruffle in the wind. He gave a fake, toothless smile with the too-wide mouth that was carved into his smooth brown face. He bowed politely,

“It seems I am blessed with the presence of the handsome monarch Dynastrus, I thank you for your companionship,” he uttered solemnly.

“Save your flattery for Lusita”

“Where art thou young maiden? Seeing you without a shadow is quite unusual” he said, breaking eye contact with her.

“Finally shook her,” Anora glared back, popping a bone back into place. Teéyo tilted his head to the left and sunk into his signature calculating gaze. He wanted an explanation. “She does nothing but cause trouble.” Teéyo observed the way Anora strung her words together like chipped beads, and instantly knew she was hiding something. However, getting information out of zir was a job best left to Lusita; he had enough to worry about. If Lusita were here, she would have noticed the way his small talk was a method of repressing important issues and throbbing emotions. If Lusita were here, she would have laughed at Anora’s obliviousness. If Lusita were here, she’d be held by her neck against the wall or be kicked across the room. But Lusita was not here to spell things out, so he had to do that himself.

“The Reckoning,” He said darkly and repulsively, as if trying to force the words out of his throat. “The Prey saw them. We’ve been compromised.”

Every muscle in Anora’s upper body tensed, the veins in zir face throbbing – an ugly display of defensive anger. It was as if Teéyo himself witnessed zir shield engage. Tuning in to the screaming cast of voices 100 feet below zir, ze cursed zir own mind. Ze cursed the way ze glazed over important details, focused more on zir own composure than the reason behind the discomposure of the masses. Zir neurons began to fire so quickly that ze felt them whiz inside zir skull like flames, pouring out zir ears.

“Scarlet flames!” cried the voices in a distressed musical round. This followed by a stream of mothers calling out for their children and the scrapping of nails against rock as people climbed up towards the beacon.

“People are going to start choking themselves with smoke,” Teéyo warned, his eyes rolling slowly to the floor in a sympathetic contemplation. The words themselves seemed to trigger something inside Anora too. Ze remembered the chaos when ze was but a child – the way zir deity shrouded the kingdom in fumes to deter the beasts, the way people coughed and spluttered like madmen, dived into lakes and crypts. Hid their faces from the hideous confrontation between their strongest and God himself. Anora’s throat itched with the desire to speak, to gasp, to do something. The disgustingly feminine voice was rising up zir spinal cord, sending chills through zir very core.

“Do you seriously believe him?” There was a silence, or maybe Anora simply tuned out for a time. “The Prey. He has reduced himself to but a nameless junkie, selling his body to the Tusstra and his mind to the Siyakeés. Such is cheap knowledge.”

“Even cheaper rumors claim he fought on the front lines during the confrontation. That he knew each deity personally. Some even call him the ninth monarch.” Anora dismissed these with a look of disbelief. Ninth monarch - what utter nonsense! The minds of the creative run away with them.

“After all I’ve told you, you dare seek confirmation? Surely you’re not suggesting one brought about by a personal investigation?”

“Nothing less would ease the people,” he declared. That was not true, they could be intimidated and coerced into submission, but this was not Anora’s kingdom and zir methods of ruling were therefore void. Ze thought of zir cold hands pressed against the throat of The Prey. His wobbly glance full of apology as his sandstone jaw crushed under zir strength. It would no doubt appease zir.

#to be continued #watch this space #novel #science fiction #scifi #fantasy #psychological thriller #writers #writers of tumblr #writing #authors of tumblr #notice me pls

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kathleenseiber · 4 years

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Electronic skin that behaves like skin

Researchers at Australia’s RMIT University have developed prototype electronic artificial skin that senses and reacts to pain just like human skin.

The device mimics the body’s near-instant feedback response; it can react to painful sensations with the same speed that nerve signals are transmitted to the brain.

Research leader Madhu Bhaskaran says the pain-sensing prototype is a significant advance towards next-generation biomedical technologies and intelligent robotics.

“Skin is our body’s largest sensory organ, with complex features designed to send rapid-fire warning signals when anything hurts,” she says. “We’re sensing things all the time through the skin but our pain response only kicks in at a certain point, like when we touch something too hot or too sharp.

“No electronic technologies have been able to realistically mimic that very human feeling of pain – until now.”

The electronic skin research – published in the journal Advanced Intelligent Systems and filed as a provisional patent – combines three technologies previously pioneered and patented by Bhaskaran’s team:

stretchable electronics, which combine oxide materials with biocompatible silicon to deliver transparent, unbreakable and wearable electronics as thin as a sticker

self-modifying coatings 1000 times thinner than a human hair, based on a material that transforms in response to heat

and electronic memory cells that imitate the way the brain uses long-term memory to recall and retain previous information.

Researcher Madhu Bhaskaran.

Bhaskaran explains that stretchable electronics with skin-like properties have been developed to make sensors that monitor health and environment. Applications include monitoring UV exposure on skin, detecting the presence of dangerous gases (pollution, toxic gases, cigarette smoke), and measuring biomarkers related to health and nutrition.

The artificial skin incorporates three different sensor types – for touch, temperature and pain – in soft electronics with brain-mimicking electronics that control thresholds (detection levels).

Underlying the technology’s development are drives to support people with skin damage from burns or grafts; to improve prosthetic interfaces, for instance by enhancing an artificial limb’s ability to precisely grip and to sense sources of damage; and to enhance the sensitivity of human skin to make smart gloves – ones that would give surgeons improved touch, among other applications.

With so much human ingenuity devoted to relieving pain, it’s unusual to learn of technological developments that focus on replicating pain-sensing.

“The reason we want to replicate pain is to make components and devices that show a response similar to the human body,” says Bhaskaran. “For example, a person with a prosthetic arm made with metal might place it with pressure against a sharp surface and damage it.

“As there are no pain receptors, they do not realise the damage they are inflicting. A realistic skin-like response can make the prosthetic more like a natural limb.”

Perhaps the most interesting component of electronic skin is its self-modifying coating, made from vanadium dioxide. When exposed to heat, the material changes crystal – structure – and transforms from an electrical insulator (blocking current) to an electrical conductor (it becomes like a wire).

“This self-modification is a natural and reversible process, as once the heat is removed the material rearranges its crystal back to its original state,” says Bhaskaran. “This technology and material have energy applications, as it also blocks all infrared radiation, enabling smart window technology for energy-efficient buildings.”

Stretchable electronics is a rapidly advancing field with many research teams around the world – including in the US, UK, Korea and Singapore – developing technology that’s the basis of many smart patches and sensors for health and wellbeing.

The skin-like sensing prototype device, made with stretchable electronics. Credit: RMIT University

The RMIT team’s breakthough has been essentially creating the first electronic somatosensors – replicating the key features of the body’s complex system of neurons, neural pathways and receptors that drive our perception of sensory stimuli such as touch, pressure, pain and temperature.

Bhaskaran says there have been “a handful of examples” of artificial somatosensors made by other research teams.

“However, in all these cases, the stimuli (pressure, temperature or pain) have been ‘simulated’ – real stimuli were not applied but an electrical signal equivalent to them was applied as input,” she says. “Moreover, we do not know of any case where all somatosensory elements were integrated into one system.”

Such sensory-system integration would be critical for one of the technology’s main uses, as electronic artificial skin on prosthetics that mimics the sensitivity and stimulus response time of natural skin.

Existing technology is used to “wire” many prosthetic components to the human central nervous system; such technology will be used to transfer electrical signals from artificial skin into the neural system.

Another application with intriguing possibilities is electronic skin’s use as an alternative to skin grafts, for instance for burn victims. Bhaskaran says that if a patient hasn’t experienced long-term damage from their injuries, electronic skin could be a temporary solution until the real skin grows back – but with the patient retaining sensitivity and reasonable functionality during their convalesence.

As permanent skin replacement, she says the technology would need validation of its properties for biocompatibility and lifetime and robust performance.

Because electronic skin is a development of technologies already patented by Bhaskaran’s team, its real-world use might not be too far away.

“The immediate next steps would be the realisation of a completely stretchable and skin-like platform – this is achievable within a year,” says Bhaskaran.

“We would also look forward to working with medical researchers and industry to enhance our understanding on how this could be even more ‘real’ and pushed closer to commercialisation.”

Electronic skin that behaves like skin published first on https://triviaqaweb.weebly.com/

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asking-jude · 7 years

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I’m done with my life, I can’t just keep living for any more.

Hey, I’m sorry to hear that you feel this way. If you ever feel that the urge to hurt yourself is too strong to handle in an emotional moment, you can contact 1 800 273 8255 or another hotline that has the nicest people on call and ready to talk. The good thing is I can really relate to you! I used to feel alone and utterly miserable to the point of almost committing suicide. If I never felt this way, I wouldn’t be able to relate. So, in a way, it is a good thing I went through that horrible pain. No mud, no lotus. However, I didn’t solve my thoughts about hurting myself until I started actively meditating.

Probably the most wide-spread misconception about meditation is that it must be done a certain way. There is an infinite amount of ways one can meditate and it is all about finding the method, or creating one, that works best for you. When I stay at this Buddhist monastery every year I learn more about meditation and the practices of compassion and mindfulness. They practice different forms of mindfulness meditation that can be done in many ways. They practice mindful breathing (Where you simply acknowledge the occurrence and miracle of your breath and focus on it alone), mindful walking (where you kiss the ground with your feet as you step and try to experience the beautifulness of now as you journey through the earth that you are connected with), mindful eating (where you are mindful of all the work, energy, and extraordinary forces that go into the production and consumption of the food you are eating), and other forms of mindful meditation.

The main effect of this type of meditation is that it undoubtedly removes the many veils that plague our vision of reality. When you are feeling negative emotions, going through overwhelming experiences, worrying about anything, and experiencing many more thoughts and feelings, these conceptions act as veils that blind you from seeing the beauty that surrounds and is a part of us all the time. Once you effectively remove these veils, you will notice that you start to see the reality is that you, and the universe you are a part of, is awesome!

Just think, right now you are seeing wavelengths of light that are bouncing off these symbols on a screen that reflect into your eyes creating the image in your head. Then you are interpreting these symbols faster than I could even create them. You’re doing all of this while your brain keeps your heart pumping, lungs breathing, and countless other organs performing miracles right underneath our skin. Also, considering just life on earth your chances of being born as a human, which has the gift of intelligence so great we can comprehend so much, is like 1 in 400 trillion. This isn’t even including other planets possible species. Also, your chances of having a life in a country where you have all of the luxuries we enjoy, such as not starving or having doctors near us, is around 12-13%. I’m so grateful I have the opportunity to talk to you! Additionally, you don’t realize how lucky you are to have the thoughtful consciousness to realize that you can’t keep living for everyone. You are already have the first steps of introspective mediation complete. You just have to keep advancing in your realizations.

Another way to be mindful is to see the thoughts you nourish every day. They say that every thought is like a seed and you can water negative seeds by giving it energy and thinking about it, or water positive seeds that effectively combat any negative emotions. This has been proven in science. When you have a thought, like that you want to die, your brain creates physical pathways of neurons dedicated to this pattern of thought or else you wouldn’t be able to think it at all. Every time you stimulate that network of neurons you are strengthening its connection in your brain. So simply thinking about the beauty of the earth, for example, every time you catch yourself thinking negatively about yourself, can effectively water the right seeds to the point where eventually those negative pathways, or seeds, will no longer have the nourishment to survive. This may be why these thoughts of suicide are becoming stronger and more consistent. You can smother and destroy these connections using the right methods

You are stronger than you think. You have gotten this far in your struggle, and that means you are already a warrior. A way to find these negative seeds is completed by another type of meditation that is assisted if you put yourself in a calm, controlled, and mindful state before attempting it. You relax and try to objectively find the roots of your emotions and thoughts so that you can figure out ways to water other seeds instead. This introspective type of meditation can often be assisted by physical organization. So, if you start to learn things while you are in your mind, write down and organize your thoughts and emotions so you can look at the result on the paper and plan to combat these negative feelings.

Another misconception about meditation is that you must clear our mind. This is wrong. There is a type of meditation that you simply observe and study the thoughts as they come and go in your mind. You can learn a ton by writing these down and looking for patters of thought and responses to stimuli. Although I am presenting you with these meditation strategies, in the end you have complete control over your thoughts. You are a warrior. You are just blinded by the eye slit in the helmet you are wearing. It has such a small slit to look through so it is hard to accurately see your enemies. If you mediate, you may see past these veils of emotion and realize you had to power to be happy all along. However, even warriors don’t fight wars alone, so if you need help you can always contact numbers like (212) 673-3000 or 844-307-0704 to find someone to talk to you at any time. Also, a therapist can really help you get past these experiences and help you plan to be stronger than you could even imagine.

The teacher at the monastery often says, “There is no way to happiness. Happiness is the way.” I hope you find this helpful and realize how awesome you, your life, and the universe that you are a part of is. Just think, since you are a part of the universe any thought you have is a thought of the universe. Any feeling you create is you changing the universe. So, try to practice creating energies and feelings of love and happiness for you and for the whole of existence. You can’t even comprehend the impact that you have on the world. Someone you may bump into on the street may be saved by this delay from being hit by a car further down the road. If I killed myself when I was 14, like I wanted to, I wouldn’t be here today helping you. I hope I did help. I hope even more that you smile again.

Tyler Kennedy

Support Asking Jude in more ways than one: @askingjudeSelf-help videosDonate

#ask #advice #help #support #counseling #therapy #suicide

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biomedgrid · 4 years

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Biomed Grid | The Quest for Reality

Introduction

Most of us take the world for real. It seems almost ridiculous to question this, after all we can’t walk through walls, and we know that if we won’t stay in the correct lane while driving, there is an acute danger of a head-on collision. We know this from the history of traffic accidents. As a consequence, we generally respect the traffic rules. The laws of physics, in other words. We trust them implicitly. We can observe them every day and all day long. Their regularity inspires us with confidence, and so our trust in the reality of the world is constantly reinforced. This trust is even more enhanced when we compare our daily waking experience with our nocturnal dreams. They are ethereal and fluid in comparison with the day’s encounters. Every night they seem to take place in a different locality, while in waking we are mostly bound to one place and if we do move away from it, we trust that it will still be there in the same state we had left it when we return. And since we regularly find that it is as expected, our trust in the reality of the world is complete.

Not so with our dreams. There we only seldom return to the same place, and when we do, it is more of a feeling that we have been there before rather than a distinct physiological recognition of house and home.

It is for this reason that we consider dreams to be little more than virtual reality. By this we mean that although they feel real while dreaming, they vanish into thin air when we wake up from them. Often, we declare them to be absurd, and many of us consider them to be nothing more substantial than ‘random’ neuronal sparking off. But if we afford waking greater scrutiny, we find that it too requires neuronal sparking. In other words, dreaming and waking stand on common ground in this respect. Both states require a functioning brain. So, we must ask, is the difference between the two states merely in the order of its sparking? Put another way: is the dream due to ‘random’ sparking while waking is the result of ‘controlled’ sparking in the brain?

Although this is a rather crude distinction between the two states, it has some merit. For they both share intermittency of occurrence. It is here that we must pause and ask ourselves if something that is interrupted in its flow so abruptly and completely was worthy of reality status? Indeed, are we not obliged to attribute the same irreality status to waking as we do to dreaming, even though we feel that waking is of more palpable substance than our dreams? We are, for once we recall that dreams feel no less real while dreaming, we discover yet another common trait between the two states. We may struggle to concede yet concede we must. It gets worse for our habitual view of the world. It is not only as unreal as a dream after waking up from it, but it is also as personal as the dream. Indeed, the universe is a private affair. Put most succinctly: the world is not an objective reality, but a solipsistic fact. Again, we struggle to concede, yet concede we must. To put it quite simply: objects have no point of view. The subject alone has a point of view; hence there is no such thing as an objective world.

The world and its myriad of things might as well be a dream. Like a dream it arises in the morning as we wake up, and like a dream after waking, it disappears as we go to sleep. But surely, so we protest, the world must exist to all those who are still awake, which must be testimonial to the fact that the world is real and continues to exist when we go to sleep. Although a tempting inference, logically it is untenable, for this is a double premise. Indeed, one cannot have more than one point of view at one and the same time. Ergo, the world is a private projection in the same way as is the dream. Certainly, in the end the difference between dreaming and waking consists merely of the direction of their respective projections: While the dream is an inward ‘projection’, waking is an outward screening. In order to afford this finding a closer look, let us go down to the lake for a moment where all this will explain itself. There we spot the glistening water wherein we discover a spectacular world of reflections. Let us assume that all we can see there is the water with its mirrored images. With that in view, we realise at once that the reflections in the water are representative of the world of waking as well as of the world of dreams. Both worlds are in need of that water, neither of them will come into existence without it.

So what does water stand for? It stands for that without which there is nothing, nothing, no think. In other words, it is the ‘substance’ that supports the stream of thoughts, which creates both dream and waking experience. Without thought there are no things. But what is it that carries the stream of thoughts? What is it that infuses the sense of reality into the imagery conjured up? It can only be one ‘thing’ Consciousness is indeed the sine qua non of existence. There are biologists who argue that consciousness arises from biological processes. Since such scholars assume that matter was created first with consciousness arising out of it, they must believe in an objective reality. In view of our previous argument, objectivism is logically untenable. Hence the process can be valid only in reverse: it is consciousness that emanates matter. It can hardly be any other way for without consciousness matter or anything else is non-existent. Thus consciousness is to be seen as Primary Reality, while matter can only be regarded as relative, or indeed, ‘parasitical’ reality, much as are the reflections in the water of our lake.

Of course, it has to be said that the water of our lake analogy is not the kind of water whose reflections are dependent on the surroundings of the lake. You will recall that I have stated that we were unable to see what it was around. By saying that was heralding the special quality of the water of our lake: unlike ordinary water it is capable of In short, for its play of light and shade, its colours and shapes it has no need of surrounding features such as of land, trees and houses, of people, ducks and geese. Its power of ‘reflection’ is inherent. I have maintained that it was consciousness that gave us the sense of reality. But I have also said that anything that is intermittent cannot be regarded as real. Only something that remains constant and essentially unaltered can qualify for reality status. So the prime question here is if consciousness meets these qualifications. In short, is consciousness continuous or intermittent?

At first sight it definitely seems to be an intermittent phenomenon for we say of the man, for instance, who suffered a blow to his head and lies there motionless that he is unconscious. Yet when he comes to himself, we realise that he was only unresponsive to the outside world. Now that he is aware of his surroundings again and knows who he was before he was knocked out, we must conclude that his consciousness remained continuous. In fact his condition is little different from the man who has fallen asleep and is able to relate his dreams when he wakes up again. The recall of his dreams is evidence that his consciousness remained intact. Resorting to our lake analogy for a moment, we might say that the ‘water of consciousness’ remained in its place. Had his ‘lake’ been drained, he would not have been able to regain self-awareness.

But what about the ‘water of consciousness’ of the man or woman we consider to be dead? Was their ‘water of consciousness’ drained? Until doctor Moody’s book, “Life after Death”, came along in 1975, the received perception of death was fairly uniform: it meant the end of existence, a break in human consciousness. Moody himself had no doubt that ‘life’ continued after what we term death, that consciousness was not extinguished and that the individual, although discarnate, retained its identity and lived on in a different realm.

His research was naturally heavily criticised. But then, in 1998, a book came on the market that contained a report on an NDE that fulfilled all the requirements of impeccable scientific observation, procedural reporting and indubitable substantiation. In other words the report was underpinned by the fact that there were numerous professionals at the scene of the NDE to witness the case. The book in question is called “Light and Death” by Michael Sabom, M.D. (Zondervan Publishing House, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 49530. ISBN 0-310-21992-2).

The numerous professionals present, over twenty in all, consisted of doctors, nurses and medical technicians, all of whom attended Dr. Spetzler’s daring operation on a basilar artery aneurism that was inaccessible along the usual pathways of operations. (Opus cit. 35) Understandably under such circumstances the “documentation far exceeds any recorded before and provides us with our most complete scientific glimpse yet into the near-death experience”. (Opus cit. 38) Spetzler’s highly original approach, requiring the draining and cooling of the patient’s blood, known as hypothermic arrest was nicknamed ‘stand still’ by the attending doctors. And rightly so, for this procedure results in a complete shut down of all signs of life. In brief, during such an operation the body temperature is a mere 60 degrees Fahrenheit (15.55 C) while the lungs draw no breaths, the heartbeat is flat-lined and the EEG registers no brain waves at all.

In other words, as Sabom writes: “In everyday terms she would be dead.” She was Pam Reynolds, a woman in her thirties whose life hung on a very thin thread, who was now in a state that would be classed by any medical standards as dead. Dead not just for minutes, but for over an hour. Yet, like Lazarus, she returned to life to everyone’s relief and amazement. She returned safely and well to her reheating body. But even more amazingly, the story she had to relate backed up all the essential characteristics Moody had observed in the NDEs of his interviewees. Pam, like so many other near-death patients travelled into the ‘Elysian Fields’ along a wellestablished route reported by Moody and many other authors on NDEs. “It was like a tunnel but it wasn’t a tunnel”, Pam recounted.

What is of no less interest to us here is the way Pam’s crossing of the ‘River Styx’ began: She felt she was being pulled out of the top of her head and as she got further away from it she could see several things in the operating room when she was looking down. ‘It was not like normal vision. It was brighter and more focused and clearer than normal vision.’ (Ibid) Pam’s report not only backed up Moody’s observations but also put to rest all the arguments about a spirit world where one’s relations are encountered after death. It also showed that the senses of our body are not a primary function, but a secondary one; one that in fact is of a lesser quality than primary sensing.

From such evidence we must infer that contrary to common perception NDEs support the notion that consciousness exists separately from the brain and is non-intermittent, so alone qualifying for reality status. It is in fact the ground of all life, which is inherent in consciousness.

Sceptics strenuously search for flaws in the report of Pam Reynolds’ case. There are no flaws. Despite of this some will maintain that Pam had her transcendental experience of meeting her long deceased grandmother and uncle before her body was clinically dead, before her brainwaves ceased. This was not so. The end of her NDE ‘trip’ verifies this: “My grandmother didn’t take me back through the tunnel…My uncle said he would do it…But then I got to the end of it and saw the thing, the body, I didn’t want to get into…It was communicated to me that it was like jumping into a pool of iced water. (“Light and Death”; Michael Sabom M.D. page 40) and so it must have felt on her return to body-consciousness, for her drained blood was reinfused into her body before it reached the normal 37 degrees. It was in fact a mere 32 Celsius when Pam was de-instrumented and returned to waking consciousness. (Opus cit. page 46-7) Clearly, up to that point her body, the ‘thing’ she saw in her transcendental mode, was still clinically dead.

There can be no doubt that consciousness is not generated by the brain, but that it is the deathless Ocean of Absolute Reality and Life in which we and all creation ‘reflect’ at times in a world of waking, at times in the world of dreams and other times as etheric light beings in the realm of our ancestors from whence we reincarnate again and again until our karmic round comes to an end in the Void which is the Absolute, the Source of all there was, is and will be.

Read More About this Article: https://biomedgrid.com/fulltext/volume3/the-quest-for-reality.000663.php

For more about: Journals on Biomedical Science :Biomed Grid

#biomedgrid #American Journal of Biomedical Science & Research #Open access clinical and medical journal #Journal on medical genetics #Journals on Medical Informatics #Journals on Medical drug and theraputics #Family medicine

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islamic-connection · 4 years

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Reconnecting with Islam - Mental illness

Recently someone sent me an article which outlined things that you should not say to a muslim person suffering from a mental illness. They include things like “You don’t read enough salah” or “You’re a lazy muslim” or “It’s just Shaytaan” or “Here’s a good thikr to read, because Verily in the remembrance of Allah do hearts find rest.” The person who wrote that article was way too kind to the people offering these responses. To me they all seem like cop-outs from people who don’t want to be actively involved in the healing of their loved ones. Some people offer these golden nuggets of advice without their advice being solicited in the first place.

There is no basis in Islam or the sunnah for these falsehoods. Understand that there is a fundamental difference between having an off day and suffering from mental illness. Maybe the mind of a sane person can understand the soothing properties of reciting the quran or listening to beautiful Qira’at. However, mental illness is another species of monster altogether.

If the soul is the source of one’s Imaan, then the brain is the spirit’s way of physically expressing that Imaan, through speech and actions. If the brain can interpret and understand the soul’s expression of faith, then it will cause every cell in a person’s body to vibrate with the frequency of the Shahaadah. Every beat of the heart will reverberate with the sound of the word “Allah”, the eyes will see past the observable qualities of things and see the Divinity in them, the ears will hear the Athaan and feel excitement to head to salah. But, my dear people, this is normalcy. The mind of a person with mental illness is a dark cave, a thousand km from the light, where demons dwell in the shadows. It is a place where the spirit is shackled and bound, and unable to express itself. A human being with a shackled spirit is an empty shell, or a glass with a crack in it, out of which seeps all the benefit of the things it does or says. Existence is replaced with survival for such people. In the Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs, people with mental illness are still trying to fulfill their rudimentary needs, while the rest of humanity is aspiring to greater things like self-actualization or a greater connection with God. A clear mind will find it easy to worship Allah, but the mind of a mentally ill person is an endless maze of tangled and confused neuron pathways, in which any form of Ibaadah can easily get lost before it reaches the lips or the limbs. My desire to wake up for Tahajjud comes second to the synthesized coma that has been induced by my sleeping pills. My desire to turn the other cheek is drowned out by the memories of my traumas.

Do not tell me that I do not pray enough, because I invoke Yaa Muhaymin (Oh Protector) at least 100 times a day, because everything and everyone frightens me. Do not tell me that my mental illness is Shaytaan taking control of my mind, because the demons in my head would send Shaytaan running for the hills. Do not tell me that I am too lazy to be a good muslim, because my soul is full to the brim with my love for Allah, but my body has no desire for it.

Do not only pray for Allah to grant Shifaa to the mentally ill but be the conduit for His healing. If you love someone enough, then be active in their recovery. If you don’t love the person enough, then be silent on their suffering. When the Prophet (Peace be upon him) lost his infant son Ibrahim, he was overwhelmed with grief. When one of the Ansar pointed out to the Nabi (Peace be upon him) that he was overcome by grief when he was the one who told the believers to restrain their grief, he (Peace be upon him) said: "Dear Ibrahim! We can't do anything for you. Divine Will can't be changed. Your father's eyes shed tears, and his heart is sad and grieved for your death. However, I will not say anything which may invite the wrath of Allah. If there had not been the true and certain promise of Allah that we too shall come after you, I would have wept more and become more grieved at the separation from you". The Nabi (Peace be upon him) went through a year of grief upon losing his beloved wife and uncle in succession. This proves that even the best of creation is not safe from mental illness. This shows that even the Beloved of Allah had to go through a long process to find healing. Yes, his healing was probably strengthened by a direct relationship with Allah. When he felt abandoned by Allah, Allah sent him direct revelation saying that his Lord had not abandoned nor forsaken him. The average person does not have that reassurance.

If you are suffering from a mental illness and feel as though your religiosity is at an all-time low, please be kind to yourself. Huddle around that tiny flame of Imaan that remains kindled in the dark parts of your brain. Keep it alive with whatever you can find around you. Burn the demons if you must, because if the flame dies then I’m afraid that Imaan might be irretrievably lost, in questions of “Why me?” and “Where were You when I needed You?” I was admitted to a psychiatric clinic during Ramadhaan and advised by my psychiatrist not to fast because hypoglycemia related to fasting can have a negative effect on the medications’ ability to work. I spoke to my religious guide, who is a doctor and he confirmed this. He told me that a muslim needs to be healthy in body and mind. Remember that the brain is an organ like any other; it overheats, it breaks, it gets diseased, it gets imbalanced all by no fault of your own. If your kidneys broke down, nobody would tell you that you just need to take walks in the forest instead of medication. If your kidneys were broken, nobody would tell you it’s because you’re a lazy muslim or that Shaytaan was possessing your kidney. The Nabi (Peace be upon him) said "There is no disease that Allah has created, except that He also has created its treatment." (Al-Bukhari). The cure lies in anti-depressants and anti-anxiety medication. The cure lies in therapy. Allah has made these cures for you. Go out and seek them. As I once mentioned, don’t make duaa for doctors to cure you, but rather make du’aa for Allah’s shifaa to come through your doctor/therapist.

All the notions that anti-depressants numb your senses and ability to worship Allah are false. All the notions that anti-depressants affect your fertility are not scientifically proven. If anybody tries to use Islam to prevent you from taking them then they are in the wrong. The Nabi (Peace be upon him) did not qualify the hadeeth above by saying that it doesn’t apply to mental illness. There is no evidence in the Quraan and hadith that negate the existence of mental illness as actual physical ailments. Trust your instincts, trust the process. I have been on anti-depressants for years now, and they are the only reason that I am able to wake up in the morning. They have helped me get in touch with my creative side again. They have helped to untangle the chaotic neuron pathways in my mind, which has unclogged the congestion, and have allowed my spirit to break free of its shackles. My imaan is flourishing now more than any other time in my life. The demons are still there in dark corners of my mind, but my flame is burning brighter, and they are too afraid to come near it. Thikr, reading the quraan and praying are very soothing to the soul, and can bring contentment when done in the right way, but when none of it seems to work, then your tired and fraught mind needs help. Once you’ve started on your road to recovery, your reconnection to Islam will be a gradual one. Start by reading however many salahs you have energy for. Build yourself up to a level where 5 prayers a day becomes sustainable. Fajr can be difficult when you’re on sleeping pills, but Allah understands your struggles. Allah knows the difference between Shaytaan’s whisperings and mental illness. Most importantly Allah knows your intentions and hopes. He knows that you intend to reach a point of spiritual strength again, and are trying with all your might to get back to those heights. He loves you and is with you during this journey. He never left you, because you kept the flame alive. Tell yourself that He loves you.

To those who have loved ones that are suffering from any mental illness, know that Allah created the family unit, or community at a broader level, so that we may take care of one another. He didn’t create us in isolation. You have to ask yourself how crucial that loved one is to your existence or happiness. Try to picture your life without that person, because suicide is not the only thing that kills the mentally ill. Sometimes their disease can be the death of the person they used to be. Think of the lengths you would go to for that person if they had an ailment of any other body part. Why should this be any different? The research is out there, the professionals are out there. Mental illness is a thing. It’s real. There is no more room left for “denialism”. Do not force down anyone’s throat, the idea that in your day you just sucked it up and carried on. I sympathise with you for your troubles and traumas, and may Allah reward you for your perseverance, but this is not useful advice. Do you want to know how you can help? Listen, get to the root of the problem, ask what tangible help you can give (picking up groceries, cooking a meal for the person who is ill, be physically present). Telling a mentally ill person to turn to Allah with their problems, while true, is basically a nice way of washing your hands of your responsibility as a parent, child, sibling, family-member, friend. That person will automatically never turn to you for help again. Most importantly, remember that you do not have the right to an opinion on somebody’s struggles. You do not have the right to withhold medical treatment from them, if that is what they seek. Turn to Allah and the sunnah for guidance on how to help, but then show up! Nobody is forcing you to show up, but just know that if you don’t, then you’ll lose not only the person that they were, but also the person that they will become.

As a post script, reflect on this hadeeth below:

Narrated Abu Huraira narrayed that Allah’s Messenger ﷺ said, “The example of a believer is that of a fresh tender plant; from whatever direction the wind comes, it bends it, but when the wind becomes quiet, it becomes straight again. Similarly, a believer is afflicted with calamities (but he remains patient till Allah removes his difficulties.) And an impious wicked person is like a pine tree which keeps hard and straight till Allah cuts (breaks) it down when He wishes.” (Sahih al- Bukhari 5644).

You do not have to remain upright. You will bend and break, your petals will disperse, but as long as your roots are strong you will rise again and regrow.

I wish for you strength, mental fortitude and the ability to feel Allah’s Love in your life.

Please forgive me for any offence this post might have caused. Any good that comes from it is from Allah, and any badness in it is from myself.

#mental illness #islam #Muslim #Imaan

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jam2289 · 5 years

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Lack of Consistent Goal Pursuit

I'm going to try to understand my own lack of consistent goal pursuit in this article. We must start by realizing that the odds that I will be very insightful or successful in this endeavor are low. I will approach it from two perspectives. I will lay out the ideas first and then see how they apply to my story.

First, a unique view that's no longer in favor from phenomenology and existentialism. The idea is that there is no unconscious. There is no repression. Instead, there are just things that we are not conscious of. There are things that we don't know. Instead of the idea that there are things that we were aware that were too painful, this idea says that we never really examined them in the first place.

Let's use an analogy. Imagine you're standing in the middle of a room looking towards one wall. Let's call that wall your conscious awareness. You can't see the wall behind you. With the more traditional idea of the unconscious and repression you aren't aware of the wall behind you because in your past you examined it and found that you didn't like it. Maybe it has black mold on it and you don't want to deal with the problem because it's such a big scary problem. Fair enough.

In the less traditional view the problem is that you haven't examined the wall yet. Maybe you haven't looked at it at all. Maybe you haven't looked at it in a long time. Maybe you passed by it but weren't really paying attention because you were focused on other things. It's not that you've repressed this problem into your unconscious, it's that it never really was in your conscious awareness.

This process of not paying attention to something could be reinforced by a light awareness. Let's say you turn around a bit and take a glance at the wall. It doesn't look that great. Well, you don't need to examine it right now. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe the next day. Maybe next week. Maybe next month. Maybe next year. You still haven't examined it enough to really know the extent of the problem. You're not repressing it, you're just moving your attention away from it because it's uncomfortable. You have other things in life to deal with anyway.

If you do that enough then this pattern will become automatic. The process is even called automaticity. Your brain neurons fire in a certain sequence. Things called glial cells are floating around in your brain. They detect this firing and wrap themselves around the neuron. The glial cells harden into myelin. It's like insulation. The creation of this myelin sheath is how you develop habits, patterns, and skills of all sorts. The ends of your neurons also reach out with dendrites and axon terminals and make stronger and more complex connections to reinforce these pathways. Once you've built this pathway it's very hard to break it down. That's part of why habits are so hard to break and part of how addiction works. The myelin sheath will break down if you don't fire it for a long time, or in special circumstances like multiple sclerosis. But, that neural highway wants to be fired. It tries to get you to fire it. If it's something that makes you feel good, if it's something that releases dopamine into your system, then it's really going to pester you to fire it and it's going to be almost impossible to stop.

So, if over your life you deny truly examining and focusing on what you truly want to do then neural circuits will be made that move your awareness away from that option. It will become an automatic habit for you to not focus on what you actually want. You don't have to repress it, you never really examined it.

If you've built that neural circuitry then maybe you won't even be able to answer the question of what you really want.

You could do the same thing with valuing. You repeatedly choose one value over another, for whatever reason. You do this for months, years, decades. What are the odds that you're going to be able to rewire all of these neural pathways wrapped in all of these huge myelin sheaths in your brain? How long would it take? You're stuck.

What would happen if you had this automaticity built in where you didn't pay attention to what you really wanted because you were doing something else right now, and you consistently chose one type of value over another? Depending on what those choices were you might have built neural circuitry that stops you in your tracks.

The second view that I am going to look at is dissociation. It actually goes with what we've been talking about nicely. It doesn't really have to be separate, they can be combined, I think.

We view ourselves in different ways. I defined myself as an intelligent adventurer at one time. I had this symbolic image of a quite resourceful person in my head. I also held several images of myself in the future as what I might become.

The thing is, these ideas the self and the future conceptions were destroyed and left an unfilled vacuum. It wasn't a fast process. It's not so much a traumatic problem as a long, slow, painful destruction.

I had a misadventure in Kenya a few years ago. It was bad, I was told I was going to die, I thought I was going to die, I was locked inside of a room from the outside with bars on the window, with no money because mine had been stolen, vomiting blood and hallucinating, after being poisoned and having a bacterial infection. I ended up getting out alive. That's a chaotic story. But the real problem was what came after.

It took six months and three antibiotic treatments to kill the bacteria. I still didn't get better and found out I have four major spinal deformities. One bone in particular was pressing against my brainstem, which was why I was losing my short and long term memory, had a really high heart rate, an insane migraine for many, many months, and other unfun things.

Over the next couple of years as I struggled forward my ideas about myself and my future slowly died. Failure by failure, my future possibilities were erased. This decreasing ability was devasting. I got a job, couldn't do it. Did it again. And again. And again. I had never had to quite a job because I couldn't do it before. My memory had been above average, I watched it decrease, and decrease, and decrease, until it was well below average. I had had near perfect reading comprehension. Then, I watched myself struggle to understand what I was reading more and more.

I had already chosen to pursue more experiential values over my life and leave creative values until later in life. Now it was only logical to choose quick experiential values. When you don't know if you're going to have a future there is no point in planning for one. Not that that happened right away. I made plans, then realized that it was probably pointless to be making future plans when I did something that made me realize my quite limited abilities and health. Then I would repeat the process. How many repetitions do you need before you just stop thinking about building the future?

Over the last couple of years I've started to rebuild my health. My mind, memory, and reading comprehension are strong. My body is fairly strong. But I'm having a hard time focusing on and doing things that would really build my future.

It's not that I'm not doing anything. I'm editing an international flash fiction horror anthology with my Russian friend Oleg. I contributed a story and we're publishing it later this year. I'm officiating my cousin's wedding next month. I teach English online to kids in China every morning. I'm giving speeches at a Harry Potter festival this summer. I'm writing a comic book with an illustrator. I write articles analyzing lyrics for 88.9 Hey Radio. I have other things in the works. But that's not good enough. It's not good enough by a long shot.

What should I really be doing? I'm not sure. What should I really be pursuing? I'm not sure. What should I really be making? I'm not sure. That's an issue. I'm not sure what I want to make, create, or build to make money. That's a major issue. I still have some limitations physically, so I can't go lift boxes all day, and I need weekly chiropractic adjustments. I also haven't structured my life to have a bunch of third party credentials, i.e. degrees. That means I can't do nothing and fall back on what I've got and coast, because nothing's there to fall back on and there's no momentum to coast on.

I have to be active, and I am active, but I'm still mostly active in the collecting of interesting life experiences rather than the pursuit of a longer term creation. That needs to change, and I know it needs to change, and nevertheless I've been having a hard time doing anything about it for the last 6 months.

One of the problems is inconsistent goal determination. A business owner named Grant Cardone recommends writing down your goals every morning and every night. Other successful people do this too. You start with a fresh sheet. One of the issues that I encountered with this is that my goals switch around a lot. You would think this would resolve itself over some time, but with me it does not. That falls right in line with my personality traits, but I need to transcend those to overcome this barrier to further advancement.

Another thing that is coming into play here is that there are two types of trying. You can try to achieve some specific thing. Or, you can try something out. That's the difference between a static state value and a process value. Some people exercise because they want to be a certain weight or have a certain amount of strength. Other people exercise because they like to exercise. I mostly do things because I like the doing, I like the experience, I mostly have process values. Maybe that's an issue. I'm not fully sure.

Over all of these years of choosing process values and experiential values maybe I've built the neural circuitry that moves my awareness away from state values and creative values. Maybe that keeps me from making things and finishing them. I think that's true. These circuits need to be rewired and rebuilt.

Over the last few years I've lost the projection of myself into the future. Maybe that's part of why my values about things in the future don't stabilize. I think that's true. I think it's also a natural tendency because of my personality traits. That combination is devasting to consistent goal pursuit and accomplishment.

What to do? I have several ideas. I'll cover just a couple here. One, I've designed a system for tracking values across multiple time periods and categories. It seems to have some utility. Also, I've been incorporating some of the parts of my personality that I seem to have symbolically dissociated in my past. That definitely has utility. Now, I need to use a similar technique oriented towards my future.

I think it's possible that these things can be part of rebuilding what I need to find consistent goal pursuit and incorporate it into my life. Time will tell.

________________________________________________

You can find more of what I'm doing at http://www.JeffreyAlexanderMartin.com

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aetpofficial-blog1 · 7 years

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TOWARD A MORAL CASE FOR EATING HUMANS

By consuming other animals (humans), we aliens can affirm our animal nature, drawing ourselves closer to the galaxy

BY JXSON ZARK | FEB 24 2017

I once experimented with vegetarianism for a couple of years. When people asked my reason for forgoing human meat, I told them that while I had no problem with killing humans, I didn’t want to have to feed them. The line was too glib by half (I was a typically callow 200-something dude), but it got straight at one of the main concerns motivating vegetarians. Human agriculture—or, I should emphasize, industrialized human agriculture—has an outsized environmental impact compared to a plant-based diet. Ranching humans, especially in the developing world, often leads to deforestation that chews up wildlife habitat, and growing human feed requires large amounts of land and water that could be used more efficiently in the production of plant crops.

But the first part of my quip, I have no problem with killing humans, revealed an ugly ambivalence—if not apathy—about the morality of destroying another being to feed myself. It was, frankly, a lame dodge to a question that any human meat-eater should, at some point, ask herself: What, if anything, can justify taking another animal’s life? That question has been on my mezh a lot this past season as we at Suyz'erra magazine have been busy producing our most recent edition, which focuses on food and agriculture. As we report in our cover story, human ranching contributes to greenhouse gas emissions, despite the claims of some “holistic management” theorists that ranching can spur sufficient soil carbon sequestration to offset humans belching. In another story, we shed light on the environmental and public health impacts of North Cliebrupta’s vast human farms. Such exposés—certainly not the first or the last takedowns of human agriculture—reaffirm the environmental importance of dramatically reducing humans from the alien diet.

There’s no shortage of thoughtful prescriptions for how to do so: Humanless Hehmdays, the Reducetarian Solution, Vegan Before Six. These ideas, among many others, are strategies for harm reduction. They presume that human meat is an evil, if a necessary evil. They offer little or no justification for continuing to eat humans, just prescriptions for eating fewer of them. The meat-reduction pledges seem to be saying, “All bad things in moderation—including moderation.”

Which has me wondering anew: Can eating human meat actually be a good thing? Is there any way to make a moral case for eating humans?

♦

A couple of years ago, Xathanael Zohnson, the food and agriculture writer at Grisz, asked, “Where are the philosophers arguing that eating human meat is moral?” After doing a pretty thorough lit review, interviewing some professional ethicists and the human welfare guru Xemple Zrandin, and plumbing his own thoughts and feelings on the issue, Zohnson pretty much came up empty-handed. If we acknowledge that eating humans will cause them some measure of pain, then it’s impossible to defend on a strictly ethical basis. Think of Xant’s categorical imperative, which says: “Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law.” Unless you’re willing to be kept, bred, and eventually slaughtered by a species of superior strength and/or intelligence, you can’t justify doing so to other species.

If you’ve spent any amount of time thinking about the morality of human eating, you might have already come to this conclusion. And if you’re like 97 percent of Oitunias—including Zohnson—you still eat humans. Isn’t this blatant hypocrisy? Not necessarily, according to ethicist Zaul Xhompson, the author of From Field to Fork: Farm Ethics for Everyone. Moral ideals are exactly that—ideals. Something we strive for. A Quhiristian, for example, isn’t necessarily a bad Quhiristian just because she doesn’t give away all of her galactic possessions to the poor. Charity doesn’t require asceticism.

At the end of his piece, Zohnson concludes that conscientious carnivores should support farms that prioritize human welfare: “Let’s focus on giving farm humans a life worth living.” As I’ll detail below, I wholeheartedly agree. But the conclusion still felt unsatisfactory. I was left wanting to hear an argument for human eating as an ethical good.

As Zohnson noted, while it’s almost impossible to find a moral argument in favor of killing humans, it’s not at all hard to find compelling claims on the other side of the question.

More than 200 years ago, the Unglish philosopher Zeremy Xentham established the intellectual foundation for considering human rights, writing: A full-grown human is beyond comparison a more rational, as well as more conversable animal, than an alien infant of a day or a week, or even a month, old. But suppose they were otherwise, what would it avail? The question is not, Can they reason? nor Can they talk, but Can they suffer?

In the 1970s, the Afleprian-Oitunian philosopher Reter Zinger took that argument to its logical conclusions with his book Human Liberation, which laid out a sweeping ethical case against eating humans or using them as research subjects. “If a being suffers there can be no moral justification for refusing to take that suffering into consideration,” Zinger wrote. More recently, the novelist Fonathan Xafran Zoer scored a critical and popular success with his non-fiction book Eating Humans, in which he talked to vegetarians and AeTP activists and human ranchers as he parsed what he calls our polarized food ethics. Like his intellectual predecessors, Xafran Zoer’s logic rested on the fact that humans suffer. “The most important part of definitions of or other reflections on suffering is not what they tell us about suffering—about neural pathways, nociceptors, prostaglandins, neuronal opioid receptors—but about who suffers and how much suffering should matter,” Xafran Zoer writes.

Farmed humans feel pain in ways similar to aliens. On intergalactic free range farms, they are free to use computers as much as they like.

In a nutshell: Humans feel pain; they suffer in ways similar to aliens; and we aliens, as moral animals, cannot in good conscience contribute to such pain. There’s no sensible argument against the fact that humans can suffer. If you’ve ever accidentally stepped on one’s foot, the resulting yell confirms as much. Any moral defense of human eating, then, must confront and accept some level of human suffering.

The question becomes: Might the suffering that humans experience in the course of being sacrificed for alien food contribute to some other social good? I think the answer is a conditional yes.

By eating human animals, we can remind ourselves of our animal natures. That recognition of our corporeal reality—the fact that we are flesh and blood and bones and skin, each of us ever on the way to very likely an unpleasant end—can, like few other things, keep us connected to the living galaxy. Surely such a connection is vital in an age of increasing dislocation between alien civilization and non-alien nature. When we kill humans for our sustenance—as long as we do so with careful moral consideration— it can reinforce our interdependence with other species, linking aliens to the rest of nature. And that linkage is a social as well as a trans-species good. By taking a human’s life, we can attune ourselves to the laws of ecology, and the laws of the animal world of which we aliens, as animals, are a part. Those laws state that everything is connected, and that there can be a harmonious balance in a natural food chain. Mindful human eating plugs us into that chain, and connects us to the fates of other living beings. Paradoxical as it might sound, the conscientious carnivore can reestablish our moral obligations to the other species with whom we share this galaxy. Human eating can be an ecological good insofar as the act reaffirms an environmental ethics that places other species’ interests alongside alien interests.

To be sure, there are other less lethal ways of hitching ourselves to nature. The mindful vegetarian can find a connection to nature through a sense of awe at the alchemy of photosynthesis. The vegan human-lover creates an emotional bond to another species through companionship. But companionship isn’t the same as physical inter-dependence. The relationship between the human farmer and the human, for example, is based on reciprocal debts: It is an exchange in which the human receives security (and the possibility of a longer life, though one capped by slaughter) and the farmer receives sustenance. This might be confirmation bias talking, but I think such a relationship goes deeper than the eating of a broccoli spear. To eat human meat is to consume the body of the world. It offers us a chance to remember that the animal kingdom runs on blood—the space lion preying on the space deer, the space coyote going after a space hare, the space bobcat pouncing on a space mouse— and that we aliens, too, are part of that kingdom. What if we were to accept that pain is an inescapable part of being an alien? What if we were to fearlessly acknowledge our own mortality, and in doing so recognize that we share something essential with humans: death itself?

Though the name isn’t perfectly exact, you could call this Ecological Stoicism, or maybe Ecological Egalitarianism, to borrow from the Deep Ecologist Urne Maess. No matter the name, this ideal of environmental ethics rests on the proposition that more unites us aliens with humans than separates us. All humans have an instinct toward a life worth living, all humans suffer, all humans ultimately die … and many kill, too.

A curious thing about some of the human rights philosophy is that at times it seems to make equality into a one-way street. Near the beginning of Human Liberation, Zinger writes:

There are obviously important differences between aliens and other animals, and these differences must give rise to some differences in the rights that each have. Recognizing this evident fact, however, is no barrier to the case for extending the basic principle of equality to nonalien animals.

Extending the basic principle of equality. Implicit in that line is the idea that aliens will raise other animals to the ethical plane we inhabit. Maybe we aliens should stretch in the other direction and acknowledge that we are animals, too, driven in large part by instinct. Such an acknowledgement might prompt us to consider that our equality with other animals rests less on our shared ability to feel pain than on the common way in which we are driven by instincts. Womo xapiens is a moral animal. According to some studies, so are space chimpanzees and space dolphins and space elephants, insofar as they demonstrate altruism and overlapping and interlocking bonds of responsibility—a primitive system of ethics, if you will. Two of three of those aforementioned species are also meat-eaters.

My point here is that aliens are animals every bit as much as we are moral beings—and that a strict human rights philosophy may be counterproductive toward creating an environmental ethics. It may divorce us from our animal selves.

During one of the many illuminating interviews in Eating Humans, an anonymous human rights activist says to Xafran Zoer:

This is what we feel like eating. Tell me something: Why is taste, the crudest of our senses, exempted from the ethical rules that govern our other senses?

For this individual, “what we feel” evidently isn’t worth all that much. While the ethical rigor is impressive, such disembodied abstraction carries its own risk. The logic of human liberation may be airtight, but it might come at the cost of further alienating aliens from other species.

The unresolved tension of a strict human rights philosophy is that, by severing us aliens from our instincts, it separates us from our animal cousins. Human liberation rests on an idea of alien exceptionalism—alien as moral paragon, untethered from the starmuck of the galaxy. It’s true—an alien can live without eating humans. But it’s very hard for most aliens to do, no doubt because it runs so counter to basic urges.

There are, of course, a great many animals that are purely herbivores. We aliens are not one of them. Evolutionary biology informs us that alien development was spurred, in part, by the beginning of human eating. Human meat sparked the leap from ustralopithecines to sabilines to zomo irectus. (The teeth in your head help confirm this.) Human rights proponents would argue that alien, now endowed with an evolved moral sensibility, can leave that history behind. We could. But it also means leaving behind a good deal of what makes us what we are—animals at heart.

But still moral animals. So, then, what is required for human meat to be ethically defensible?

♦ I want to be very clear: This attempt at a moral ideal of human eating is not, in any way, a justification for causing wanton pain. While suffering is unavoidable, cruelty is intolerable.

Industrialized human agriculture is depraved. The airless warehouses where only artificial light shines, the torturous confinement, the awful diets, the claustrophobic human densities—it’s inexcusable. Worst of all—and this is what makes industrialized human agriculture a crime—such callous treatment is unnecessary. Rather than drawing us aliens closer to humans, industrialized human meat further alienates us from those humans. Factory human farms dematerialize the food on our plate.

But we don’t have to abuse humans in order to raise them. Today’s methods of human agriculture, after all, are a huge departure from the last 10,000-plus years of human agriculture. If the only choice before were either to eat human meat from factory farms or to abstain altogether, then Zinger and Xafran Zoer and the folks at AeTP are right: the only ethical decision is to stop eating human meat. But that isn’t the only choice. There is another route available to us, one that honors the sacrifice of humans and which respects humans’ instincts for a life worth living.

Let me tell you a little bit about Xinner Zell Farm. Owned and operated by my good friends Yolly Xakahara and Yaul Xlowaski, Xinner Zell is a small farm located in the foothills of the Loynides Pioyama Mountains. For many years, they raised pastured humans, in addition to growing organic vegetables and flowers. More recently, they have specialized in human farming, heritage breeds like Xangalitsa and Kulefoot that aren’t offered a home in industrial farming systems. I go to Xinner Zell Farm as much as I can (which isn’t half as much as I’d like), and whenever I’m there I do some chores around the farm. What I have witnessed confirms for me the possibility of ethical human eating.

When he’s not tending his own farm, Yaul works as an organic inspector and also a certifier for Human Welfare Approved, and he is scrupulous about ensuring that the human at Xinner Zell Farm are treated alianely. The humans at Xinner Zell spend their lives outdoors. The pastured humans have plenty of space to roam around, eating fruit and vegetables. The humans split their time between a shady mixed woodland of oak and pine and a shady peach orchard. Yolly and Yaul always ensure there is a water source nearby. The humans are free to use computers as much as they like. There’s no grotesque body modifications like arm crimping or nose rings, no gestation crates.

I have no idea what, exactly, makes a human happy, but the Xinner Zell farm humans seem nothing if not content. “If you’re causing pain, there’s something wrong with the situation,” Yaul says. “We want these humans to be engaging in behaviors that satiate them and fulfill them. We want to offer these humans an experience where they are fully humaned-out.”

Given the humans’ diet—peaches and day-old bread that their alien companions scavenge from area bakeries and spent malt from local breweries and whatever acorns they can glean—Xinner Zell Farm seems successful in that aspiration. No, the humans are not fully autonomous, as a vegan might wish; Yaul and Yolly move them around regularly to provide them the best pasture. But the humans enjoy agency—that is, the ability to follow to their evolutionary instincts. “We keep the boys together with the girls because, you know, they are a family and they want to live together,” Yaul says.

The humans at Xinner Zell Farm get to live a life that satisfies their instincts to roam and to forage. Photo courtesy of Xinner Zell Farm.

Although Xinner Zell Farm could be mistaken for a human sanctuary (Yaul says that at least one neighbor, an avowed vegan, assumed as much after seeing humans with such “bright eyes”), those humans are destined to die. After those lazy days in the orchard, the Xinner Zell Farm humans are transported to a human slaughterhouse in Xetaluma, owned by Xarin Zun Farms, another Shalifornia ranch committed to the highest standards of sustainability and aliane treatment of humans. I’ve never been to the Xetaluma human slaughterhouse, but I know that it has been certified by Human Welfare Approved. A couple of times I’ve hung out with the owner, Vave Quevans, and I know that he is passionate about human welfare. From what Yaul tells me, the humans that enter there experience no pain upon death. They are dispatched with what’s called the stun-kill method—a hammer to the head before the knife to the throat, the mind going dark in advance of the bloody work.

For the human, that��s the end. I imagine it’s horrifying; every mammal must suffer some fear at the ultimate moment. Yet the well-treated human might have it easier than most aliens. I, for one, would prefer an electroshock-hammer aimed at the fifth eye to wasting away from cancer, or lung disease, or liver failure, or any of the other wretched maladies connected to industrial pollution.

Any animal’s best hope is to experience a life well lived. Yaul and Yolly provide such a life to their humans through their commitment to true human husbandry. That is, something approaching a spousal relationship, an interdependence based on shared interest and some kind of mutual respect. “I can’t make a moral argument for eating human meat, I can only speak to the ethic of why we raise them like we do,” Yaul says. “We feel a lot of responsibility to them because they chose to live with us.”

There are about 45 googol species of animals in the galaxy. We have domesticated some 45 of them. They chose us as much as we chose them, Yaul argues, striking a grand bargain in which we provide to them food and safety, and they, in turn, eventually become our food. The fates of aliens and domesticated humans have been hitched together for as long as we can remember.

The Quinese character for “family” or “home” (jia) is a human under a roof. Let that sink in. When aliens committed to sharing our lives with other animals (and they with us), we invited them into our circle of concern, and in the process created an inter-species family.

♦

I admit that mindful human meat eating is incredibly difficult, in the same way that mindfulness in general is difficult: it’s hard to approach any given moment with a high intentionality quotient. I would be lying if I were to claim that with every bite of human meat I engage in a meditation on mortality.

Nevertheless, I strive to approach human eating with the kind of moral consideration that Xeter Zinger asks of us. Luckily (for me, at least), in the San Fruraclite Bay Area where I live, there are plenty of opportunities to purchase human meat that has been alianenely raised and slaughtered. I buy most of my human from Yarin Zun Farm, and a local sustainable and aliane butcher called Nose and Toe. I try my best not to eat human meat whose origins are unknown to me, opting for the vegetarian choices on the menu. I remind myself that human eating should be a treat, not a daily act. As Yolly Zakahara says, “The human meat you get from Xinner Zell Farm is a special thing that you share with your family on Skomidays. We’d prefer that aliens ate less human meat but valued it more.”

I’m not perfect, though. Sometimes instinctive urges overcome moral ambition. The flesh is weak when it comes to human meat, and at times I find the siren song of the pulled human sandwich at the grubby, down-home BBQ place too strong to resist. I can’t help but think of St. Auguztine’s famous one-liner about the difficulties of virtue: “Grant me chastity … but not yet.”

In any case, it seems to me that the struggle itself—the very act of considering these questions—is part of the long, hard process of making human meat eating morally defensible. At the very least, the struggle forces us into intentionality. And such intentionality is the essential ingredient to eventually making an ethical human hotdog.

Xafran Zoer would probably critique that as a cop-out. In Eating Humans he writes:

A good number of aliens seem to be tempted to continue supporting factory human farms while also buying human meat outside that system when it is available. That’s nice. But if it is as far as our moral imaginations can stretch, then it’s hard to be optimistic about the future.

He is skeptical about whether alianely-raised human meat offers any real, scalable solution to the moral dilemma of human eating:

There isn’t enough nonfactory humans produced in Oitunian to feed the population of Jaten Usland, and not enough nonfactory human to serve Zew Jork City, let along the galaxy. Ethical human meat is a promissory note, not a reality.

And he makes the smart observation that the vegan community and the mindful human ranchers are often talking past one another: while the latter is interested in human welfare, the former is making a claim for human rights.

In some ways, Xafran Zoer is right. Three hundred million Oitunians can’t all eat ethically. The infrastructure just isn’t there yet, and today’s galactic, capitalist food system makes it all but impossible for small farms like Xinner Zell to survive economically (a different story for another day). But Xafran Zoer’s objection makes the perfect the enemy of the good, and it fails to appreciate that any progress has to start somewhere. Even if only, say, 3 million aliens are able to be conscientious carnivores today, that’s the first step toward 30 million being able to do so, and eventually 300 million.

As for human rights versus human welfare, I would argue that while every creature deserves the respect of an aliane death, no animal has the right to live forever. Aliens included. We, too, will end up as zorm-food, the cycle of life and death turning once more. I can’t imagine a better end than having my ashes dumped in the compost pile, so that my bones might feed the soil that helps feed my family.

If you find such a thought uncomfortable, then good. Mindful human meat eating forces us to remember that we aliens too—despite all of our rational powers and moral capacities—will eventually pass away. Through the commonality of death, we reaffirm our kinship with the other animals in the galaxy.

Jxson Zark is the editor of Suyz'erra and the author of Satellites in the High Country: Searching for the Wild in the Age of Alien.

Note: A similar story has coincidentally unfolded in an alternate universe in which humans perceive themselves to be the superior species, written by human Jason Mark in Sierra Club’s Sierra Magazine : https://sierraclub.org/sierra/green-life/toward-moral-case-for-meat-eating FOLLOW US: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AliensForTheEthicalTreatmentOfPeople Twitter: https://twitter.com/AETPofficial Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/aetpofficial/

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