Alternative Sleep Cycles

"Every moment of experience is contingent on a vast complex of myriad conditions.
Nothing exists separately in and of itself as 'this' or 'that,' 'self' or 'other.'
Everything is what it is only in relation to what it is not.
To recognize this emptiness is not to negate things but to glimpse what enables anything to happen at all."  --"Nagarjuna's Verses from the Center"

 I've been thinking about  alternative sleep cycles  for a while, and now that I am focused on my thesis project and nothing else, I feel like it may be time to experiment with one in order to save time. I am particularly interested in the Dymaxion cycle: "Bucky Fuller invented the cycle based on his belief that we have two energy tanks, the first is easy to replenish whereas the second tank (second wind) is much harder to replenish. So Bucky began sleeping for 30 minutes every 6 hours. That’s 2 hours a day of sleep! He reported feeling, “the most vigorous and alert condition I have ever enjoyed.” Doctors examined him after several years of using the cycle and pronounced him perfectly healthy. In fact, Fuller only stopped the cycle because his business associates were still stuck on monophasic cycles. This is by far the most extreme of the 4 alternate cycles, but also the most efficient." Doesn't that sound incredible!? Have you had any experiences with this kind of stuff?
Leigh introduced me to this great German pianist, Nils Frahm. You will probably like him, too.

I recently reread the posts on religion by William Irwin Thompson, and pulled a few delicious quotes for you: "We became human by coming down out of the tree canopy—a move forced on us by weather change and desiccation-- to get together on the ground. This emigration required new skills for a new world: like recognizing many faces, organizing in hierarchies of dominance, developing a culture around sexuality and child-rearing, and learning how to communicate through language. To manage all these new cultural skills, our brains over time grew larger and more complex. In a good Buddhist fashion, there was no such entity as an isolated self; we became human through a process of dependant co-origination in which an I was an expression of an Us."

 "By lifting Jesus out of the muck of sexuality, and elevating Mary with an Immaculate Conception, the men of Rome sought to create an idealized Woman that could help them keep actual women in their place--and that was out of the priesthood. But, hey, historical facts are not what religious storytelling is all about."

 In response to this quote, my old painting professor and fellow Buddhist practitioner, Robert Price, comments: "From the Dzogchen or great perfection view, all births are immaculate as are all phenomena in general immaculate and empty beyond human designations."

And here are some words from Ken Wilber that have been passed around on the FB: "I think that there are two great archetypes of the awakened soul on this planet, and I think that they both speak to us very strongly. And I don’t want to say that one belongs to the East or the West, because you can find them in both. But one is classically thought of the Awakened Buddha, who is at peace and has found his way off the wheel of suffering. The other is the Christ figure who recognizes the intersection of the human and the divine and suffers enormously for that realization. And the epitome of the truth of the intersection is the Passion on the cross. And I think it’s very interesting that it’s called the Passion, because you will passionately be upset at every piece of suffering that arises. It will tear you apart. And the Bodhisattva Vow is to engage that suffering without ever turning away. Again, it hurts more, bothers you less. There’s a great perfection about it all. And they’re both true. But I think it’s very important to honor both sides of the street on that. So why should you get involved? Because you made a deep deep promise at the bottom of your soul to do that. And you really can’t turn away."