Dancing, synesthesia, and education

I was listening to a groovy playlist last night preparing myself for slumber.  It was a bit upbeat for a nighttime playlist, but fortuitously that got me dancing and dancing got me thinking.  Sometimes I feel that dancing is like playing a musical instrument with thousands of control surfaces, each of my movements corresponding to a pattern of notes in the music, or in a musical accompaniment that I am writing in my head. What if a sensor, aka video camera, captured that movement and turned it into song?  By feeding back the dance moves as music realtime to the user, this could be the basis of a new dance training software. The student could hear in real time the differences between her goal "dance music" and that which her body produced.

More generally, how can we introduce more synesthesia into learning environments?  My mind drifts back to elementary school science classes, with wooden molecular models you could interact with through touch and sight, to chemistry experiments which heated, cooled, changed state, changed color, etc., according to what ingredients were mixed in what proportions.  Why were music class and physical education and the cerebral classes all taught separately?  Why were we taught to draw such large distinctions in the functions of our minds?

I focus on the music I'm listening to right now: Infected Mushroom.  This psytrance music has focused my mind and makes the letters I am typing dance off my fingertips and onto the screen.  I believe that this music has helped increase the scores in the mind-training games I've renewed interest in this last week at lumosity.com.  That's not synesthesia, but rather the correct sensory environment for learning/productivity.

Dreams

Worry about the future is really worry about the continuation and karma of past.  Let go of the past and live the future.  Buddhists call this "be here now," or "empty the mind."  Christians speak of "forgiveness."  In any case, the past is gone and we recreate ourselves in every moment by the substance of our beliefs and dreams. 

Write the future of your dreams. Malaise is the dissatisfaction of a dreamless life. With dreams comes passion and with passion all of life follows. Passion attracts passion, happiness, and excellence. 

Worry about the future without dreams makes me concentrate on minutia as that is all that is in my psyche. I care about what is in front of me, optimizing how I spend my time and money--within my current paradigm!  This is nearsighted. It lends me to spend as much effort saving a few bucks as several hundred or spend hours speeding up a 2 second operation. Seeing the big picture means BELIEVING in the big picture. 

Get ready to dream, and to dream big. 

Happy

Visualization and optimism together form the ideal environment for learning. Always hold in mind a clear vision of the divine within, presently, so that you are most capable to manifest the correct path. These visualizations aren't movies, nor roles to be played, but an intimate reality viewed from all angles and timescales simultaneously.

Ego

Self and not-self are but labels.  The key to transcending one's ego isn't to merely see others' needs as one's own, but to transcend the belief in self and in ownership.  "My" body is not my own.  It is a collection of molecules that is currently bound to the mind which I call "me," but it is not the same collection of molecules which composed me seven years ago, and not the same set as I will carry around with me in another several years.  I don't own this body, I merely rent it.  I don't cry over the molecules of skin I shed, nor the water I exhale and perspire, or over the waste I excrete.  I don't even cry over the tears I shed.  So this is a body, a body I steward, a body I love, a body that provides me with ambulation and sensation, but it is just a body, like many others.

Self and not-self label more than physical flesh.  I think of "my" thoughts as mine, and "my" emotions as mine, and "my" personality as mine.  But thoughts just pass through my head, sometimes seconds apart.  Emotions just pass through my endocrine system and are flushed away minutes or hours later.  And the personality that I call my own is just one I choose to wear more often.  If I choose to act like someone else, we call that acting.  But if I choose to behave like another person indefinitely, we say that I become that person.

Selfish and non-selfish are labels that have no meaning without ego.  Without ego, there are only selfish deeds, for there is no boundary between self and not-self; there is only self, and there is only the greatest good for self.  There is only wisdom and foolishness, as measured by the ability to see what is, and to make the smallest change to create what has-been-imagined-and-as-yet-unseen.  Wisdom is learned through experience, through trials and errors, and in particular, in the shared awareness of the greater self.  Wisdom of the individual only, rooting the mind in what is directly tangible, to the pains and wants of the flesh, leads only to selfish knowledge.  Awareness of the greater world, its pains and wants, its karmic path of unfolding, and its intimate, myriad, and fractal connections leads to the ego-less selfishness I call true wisdom.

Optimism

Reading my book on optimism (Beyond Positive Thinking), I began to see imaginary ships floating through my vision that, in my video game (Pew Pew 2), I would need to track and destroy.  Playing the game necessitates constantly seeing these threats and being aware of them, even in peripheral vision where a clear view cannot be obtained.  Thus, the game trains my mind to associate this pattern of enemy flying ships to whatever it sees, including the text of my book.  In the same way, I can train my mind to see the patterns of happiness, optimism, abundance, and you-have-it, by constant visualization practice and by feeling emotional connection to the desired context/outcome/situation.  In this way, my mind will naturally see the positive patterns in the world and choose to act on those instead of the ones which my environment and society have passively conditioned me.  This is the strategy for "manifesting" a certain reality as suggested by the book on optimism.

Transforming neuroticism into optimism

Awakening from neuroticism into optimism is akin to riding a plane up and through a thick, grey storm and, upon passing through the worst of it, entering the sunny, tranquil air above the storm, enjoying both the sun above and the newfound perspective of the storm below.  Similarly, it is like being on the ground during the storm and shifting the mind away from the cold muck, to the sounds of creatures stirring, to the prospect of new, green growths, to the free street cleaning gifted from above, for the opportunity to splash, to change clothes, to enjoy time indoors.  In short, perspective lets us rise above our problems and see the truth that life only presents challenges and lessons.

Mind-body connection

Talking to oneself is something people do to hear out their own ideas.  Most people learn to internalize this dialogue and shield its message from those watching.  But in so doing, they short-circuit a channel in the brain for connecting emotionally to your own ideas.  The enthusiasm of body, face, and mannerisms is self-contagious.  When we actually talk to ourselves in excited tone and cannot contain the physical energy boiling within, we allow our bodies to tune in to our emotional state, fueling a positive-feedback loop that again encourages the message's emotional content. When we only speak with internal dialogue, this channel cannot be used, and the message is stripped somewhat of its emotional content.

I believe people should feel comfortable expressing their energies physically.  We are taught from a young age to sit still and absorb information like a sponge, but that's not how our bodies are designed.  If someone is telling you a complicated mathematical concept, feel free to visualize it with your hands.  If someone is excitedly telling you about their day, reflect their enthusiasm back with some fist pumps into the air.  Walk around the house while on the phone.  Fidget in your seat at a lecture, or just get up and do something in the back of the room.  Share your whole self with others during conversation, not just your eyes, ears, and mouth.