Smells and Bells

  This post is definitely going to be the hardest for me to write. I do not believe in ghosts or the supernatural, I am not horribly invested in astrology, and I’m barely able to collect my thoughts on a day-to-day basis, never mind think about how my every minuscule action could affect me down the line. I can count on two hands the number of dreams that I’ve had that I’ve remembered and on one hand the number of dreams that I could actually recall now and explain. When I was little, however, I had one recurring nightmare that I can still vividly remember.  The nightmare had a few key plot points that always happened whenever I would get it. It always started out with me wandering my house alone, with it ominously empty and eerily quiet. Eventually, I would end up in my younger brother’s room, searching everywhere for a sign of him. After I had checked everywhere else, I would get to the closet. I would open it up and a huge bear would emerge and start to chase me. It was ...

Credit: Health Matters, Stories of Science, Care & Wellness (NewYork-Presbyterian) David Abram’s Spell of the Sensuous reading made me think of how magic is portrayed in the media, like in movies, books, and TV shows, and how that is often different from the ideas and beliefs Abram talks about. One way he defines magic is:      “Magic, then, in its perhaps most primordial sense, is the experience of existing in a world made up of multiple intelligences, the intuition that every form one perceives…is an experiencing form, an entity with its own predilections and sensations, albeit sensations that are very different from our own” (16). I think that this definition differs from popular definitions of magic because it allows for the possibility of anyone experiencing magic and assumes that magic is natural and existing, rather than super -natural or brought on by special, impossible powers that only some people have. The concept of “multiple intelligences” and intuitions...

       I found a quote by Abram I liked, and I realized that it was something I could use to sum up a lot of my thoughts about this class:   The sensing body is not a programmed machine but an active and open form, continually improvising its relation to things and to the world. The body’s actions and engagements are never wholly determinate, since they must ceaselessly adjust themselves to a world and a terrain that is itself continually shifting. If the body were truly a set of closed or predetermined mechanisms, it could never come into genuine contact with anything outside of itself, could never perceive anything really new, could never be genuinely startled or surprised.     The sixth sense is so hard to understand, as a whole, because it encompasses experiences that aren’t able to be explained. It’s the experiences and perceptions of the world where we have no idea how to perceive it, just something happened that may or may not be within ...

It's probably a trite opening at this point, A monk meditating in half-lotus position 1854 but I never believed in the sixth sense. I still don't believe in the weird energy philosophies, the idea that you actually know when somebody's looking at you, and you aren't just being paranoid. The closest I ever came to experiencing something akin to the "sixth sense" was after I started meditating daily. Meditation can evoke altered states of consciousness, and I can't exactly describe the warm feeling and loss of sense of self that comes with meditation. When you come out of it, you feel like you've taken a long nap, and feel calm, awake, and aware. Speaking of awakening, I wanted to talk about one of my favorite albums: Tommy by the Who (1969). The story is of a boy, whose father was presumed missing in WWI. His mother moved on to a new relationship, but Tommy's father returns,  and Tommy sees him kill his mother...