28 May 2017

Notes - friendly note / scrambled eggs / dreaming



       Early afternoon. You sent Doug a copy of yesterday's blog. He returned with a comment, and you just sent him a reply. Drop these in here and we can continue with what you suggested in general where you think you are going with this. - Amorella
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Hi, Doug,
If you have a few moments I would like your opinion of the concepts towards the conclusion of today's posting. Thank you.  
Dick
Sent: Sat, May 27, 2017 10:59 pm

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Dick, Very interesting concepts. Keep up the good work.
Doug
Sent: Sun, May 28, 2017 5:25 am
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Thank you for the encouragement here, Doug. I very much appreciate it. This material is basically for Soki's Choice. The concepts are helping me solidify a fence in which I can mold a sense of how consciousness is (at least in a fiction). At the same time it might spark some imagination in the reader. I remember Crick and Watson working on the DNA and how it helped them produce a 'model' of the double helix. Now in fiction this should be easier as long as it is plausible as a concept -- an eleven part string-like point in which consciousness exists -- confined as egg-like, if you will, within a non-shell or as a spark-like place where consciousness can grow from.  Does this continue to make sense?  Right now, I'm just working on the preliminaries. :-)

The reason for this is that my two machinery characters feel they have heartansoulanmind too and as such may be immortal (that is exist consciously outside a physical form). Anyway, this is where I am. I love thinking on these things.

Trust you and Nancy are having a good day.

Your old friend,
Dick
Sent: Sun, May 28, 2017 1230 pm
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       You are uneasy with this because you didn't think out what you were writing to Doug, that is, you wrote it to a friend from your heart because you trust him with it - Amorella
       1308 hours. I agree Amorella. I did not consider dropping this in the posting when writing. In fact, I was waiting to see if he has a response.
       This is why I would like you to include it here. Post. - Amorella

       1311 hours. I will because it is a friendly note to an old friend. 

       You had scrambled eggs with two kinds of melted cheese. Carol can't taste but you thought it was a quite good combination. While eating you watched ABC News and set the trash out by the street. At least half the recycle can was full of papers, shredded in bags and otherwise. - Amorella
       1908 hours. Doug did not reply and actually I did not ask him to do so. We have five dimensions so far:
       1.  Amorella, the Betweener
       2. The Conscious Dead
       3. The Conscious Living
       4. A Sense of Space in Consciousness
       5. A Sense of Time in Consciousness
       This leaves dimensions six through eleven. (1923)
       You are wondering if 'dreamtime' can related to consciousness in its own right. Let's see what Wikipedia has to say. - Amorella
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Dreamtime

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Dreamtime (also dream time, dream-time) is a term devised by early anthropologists to refer to a religio-cultural worldview attributed to Australian Aboriginal beliefs. It was originally used by Francis Gillen, quickly adopted by his colleague Baldwin Spencer and thereafter popularised by A. P. Elkin, who, however, later revised his views. The Dreaming is used to represent many Aboriginal concepts of "time out of time," or "everywhen," when the land was inhabited by ancestral figures, often of heroic proportions or with supernatural abilities. They were often distinct from "gods" as they did not control the material world and were not worshipped, but only revered.
The term is based on a rendition of the indigenous (Arandic) word alcheringa, used by the Aranda (Arunta, Arrernete) people of Central Australia, although it appears that it is based on a misunderstanding or mistranslation. William Stanner remarked: "why the blackfellow thinks of 'dreaming' as the nearest equivalent in English is a puzzle". It has been argued that the word's meaning is closer to "eternal, uncreated". "
By the 1980s, "Dreamtime" and "the Dreaming" had acquired their own currency in popular culture, based on idealised or fictionalised conceptions of Australian mythology. Since the 1970s, "Dreaming" and "Dream time" have also returned from academic usage via popular culture and tourism and are now ubiquitous in the English vocabulary of indigenous Australians in a kind of "self-fulfilling academic prophecy". 

Origin of the term

The station-master, magistrate and amateur ethnographer Francis Gillen first used the terms in an ethnographical report in 1896. With Baldwin Spencer Gillen, he published in 1899 a major work, Native Tribes of Central Australia. In that work, they spoke of the Alcheringa as "the name applied to the far distant past with which the earliest traditions of the tribe deal". Five years later, in their Northern tribes of central Australia, they gloss the far distant age as "the dream times", link it to the word alcheri meaning "dream", and affirm that the term is current also among the Kaitish and Unmatjera. 
Early doubts about the precision of this English gloss were expressed by the German Lutheran pastor and missionary Carl Strehlow, who noted that his native informants explained altjira, whose etymology was unknown, as an eternal being who had no beginning. In the Arrernte tongue, the proper verb for "to dream" was altjirerama, i.e., "to see god". The noun is the somewhat rare word altjirrinja, of which Spencer and Gillen gave a corrupted transcription and a false etymology. "The native," they concluded, "knows nothing of 'dreamtime' as a designation of a certain period of their history."
Aboriginal beliefs and culture
"Dreaming" is now also used as a term for a system of totemistic symbols, so that an indigenous Australian may "own" a specific "Dreaming", such as Kangaroo Dreaming, or Shark Dreaming, or Honey Ant Dreaming, or Badger dreaming or any combination of Dreamings pertinent to their country. This is because in "Dreamtime" an individual's entire ancestry exists as one, culminating in the idea that all worldly knowledge is accumulated through one's ancestors. Many Indigenous Australians also refer to the Creation time as "The Dreaming". The Dreamtime laid down the patterns of life for the Aboriginal people.
Creation is believed to be the work of culture heroes who traveled across a formless land, creating sacred sites and significant places of interest in their travels.
In this way, "songlines" (or Yiri in the Warlpiri language) were established, some of which could travel right across Australia, through as many as six to ten different language groupings. The dreaming and travelling trails of the Spirit Beings are the songlines. The signs of the Spirit Beings may be of spiritual essence, physical remains such as petrosomatoglyphs of body impressions or footprints, among natural and elemental simulacra.

"Dreaming" existed before the life of the individual begins, and continues to exist when the life of the individual ends. Both before and after life, it is believed that this spirit-child exists in the Dreaming and is only initiated into life by being born through a mother. The spirit of the child is culturally understood to enter the developing fetus during the fifth month of pregnancy.

When the mother felt the child move in the womb for the first time, it was thought that this was the work of the spirit of the land in which the mother then stood. Upon birth, the child is considered to be a special custodian of that part of their country and is taught the stories and songlines of that place. As Wolf (1994: p. 14) states: "A black 'fella' may regard his totem or the place from which his spirit came as his Dreaming. He may also regard tribal law as his Dreaming."
In the Wangga genre, the songs and dances express themes related to death and regeneration. They are performed publicly with the singer composing from their daily lives or while Dreaming of a nyuidj (dead spirit).
Dreaming stories vary throughout Australia, with variations on the same theme. The meaning and significance of particular places and creatures is wedded to their origin in the Dreaming, and certain places have a particular potency or "dreaming." For example, the story of how the sun was made is different in New South Wales and in Western Australia. Stories cover many themes and topics, as there are stories about creation of sacred places, land, people, animals and plants, law and custom. In Perth, the Noongar believe that the Darling Scarp is the body of the Wagyl – a serpent being that meandered over the land creating rivers, waterways and lakes and who created the Swan River. In another example, the Gagudju people of  Arnhemland, for which Kakadu National Park is named, believe that the sandstone escarpment that dominates the park's landscape was created in the Dreamtime when Ginga (the crocodile-man) was badly burned during a ceremony and jumped into the water to save himself.
Selected and edited from Wikipedia - Dreamtime
[The underlining is for my reference - a reminder of how a story is multidimensional in its reading or telling.]
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       2027 hours. I find the article interesting and I have read other accounts of dreamtime in terms of definition and significance to the culture. We add to facts as well as stories in our voice as well as reading. The story is changed. Film aspects change it more because each time it is told in a different context. It seems to me that I do the same each time I change a story by setting it in a different narration. I either add and delete a dimension along the way. We all do this. We do this with a story, personal perhaps, which changes with one's age and recollection. This movement of a story through different mental dimensions (insights) may not be a dimension itself but it is a shift of realties, no matter how slight. I do not have the words or background to study this; it is obvious when one sees two, three or four or more versions of the play Antigone for instance or Our Town. Alas, I am sure I have considered these things or similar in my student days of long ago, and as such I should not give it much worth. (2040)
       Post. - Amorella

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