I was meditating while listening to Lateralus. I was using the technique of looking upwards and clearing my mind so that I could construct a model. I began to picture my journey as going through a series of twisted tunnels, initially it seemed to be the same tunnel, but at points I was just in transit until I would re submerge. I then came to realize that there were multiple tunnels (4 smaller around a much larger tunnel) At times I would miss a tunnel and be influx for a moment but as long as i was actively searching I could find my way back. I started trying to go through the larger tunnel but it would disperse once I crossed into its threshold, and I would be left searching again. I then began experimenting with the sequence in which i would enter the tunnels, this caused the larger tunnel to materialize much stronger. I should note that, at first, I was discouraged when I had lost my way. However, throughout the song some of the lyrics helped me get back on track. Maybe it was only because of my visualization technique that the lyrics synced up or maybe subconsciously I constructed visuals to be in congruence, the lyrics that helped me were "swing on the spiral" and at the end "spiral out keep going" I realized that the sequence was important because from a small scale I was trying to take the path of least resistance into the large tunnel... I feel that, in terms of ego, this represents my love of immediacy and my need for immediate gratification. In this meditative exercise I realized a bias of mine and in changing the sequence to strengthen the tunnel I had found an objective lesson to help me unravel this ego driven bias. The symbolism of the journey relates well to the concept of lateral thinking, and from a large scale it's just a tool to acquire the same end, whcih is access to the larger tunnel.
“Black then white are all I see in my infancy.
red and yellow then came to be, reaching out to me.
lets me see.
As below, so above and beyond, I imagine
drawn beyond the lines of reason.
Push the envelope. Watch it bend.”
To me this concept is discussed well in the thread “Black and White” by Roopey. It’s basically just a way of recognizing the connectivity of our perceptions, realizing how complicated and elegant they are. In constructing a mental map of how our own perception works we can then use that as a tool to build connectivity will others.
“Over thinking, over analyzing separates the body from the mind.
Withering my intuition, missing opportunities and I must
Feed my will to feel my moment drawing way outside the lines.”
Lateral thinking. It goes into the concept of intuition and in establishing a healthy relationship with the subconscious we can begin to build a better understanding of our intuitions. In trusting our own intuition we free ourselves from getting lost in the details because they lock us into a scale that is too focused on the wrong information, if we would use a scale that used the details in a broad sense would could begin to see interactions in economic terms instead of filtering everything through our own buffer.
"Over thinking, over analyzing separates the body from the mind.
Withering my intuition leaving all these opportunities behind.
“Feed my will to feel this moment urging me to cross the line.
Reaching out to embrace the random.
Reaching out to embrace whatever may come.”
For me this just parallels my experience perfectly, so an explanation isn’t necessary
“I embrace my desire to
feel the rhythm, to feel connected
enough to step aside and weep like a widow
to feel inspired, to fathom the power,
to witness the beauty, to bathe in the fountain,
to swing on the spiral
of our divinity and still be a human.
With my feet upon the ground I lose myself
between the sounds and open wide to suck it in,
I feel it move across my skin.
I'm reaching up and reaching out,
I'm reaching for the random or what ever will bewilder me.
And following our will and wind we may just go where no one's been.
We'll ride the spiral to the end and may just go where no one's been.
Spiral out. Keep going, going...”
Since I didn’t make it into the large tunnel I feel like I don’t have the context to really understand this part, I feel that I must first unravel part of my ego bias to gain access. However, I see what he’s saying and It’s a sentiment that I share, for now I can use it to understand what to expect.
I guess the best place to start in terms of diving deeper into the mechanics of what lateralus means to me would be to figure out what the tunnels signify.
Though since I'm still a beginner, in terms of meditating, it's hard for me to solidify something so abstract
You're a moron. In case you haven't noticed this board is about analyzing and interpretation. As such, I put a great deal of effort into my post and would like to hear from other like minded individuals so that their experience and interpretation might help me think build onto my initial thoughts.
If you're looking for a great place to hang out and talk about nothing you might want to check out this forum www.nickelback-forum.com
You're a moron. In case you haven't noticed this board is about analyzing and interpretation. As such, I put a great deal of effort into my post and would like to hear from other like minded individuals so that their experience and interpretation might help me think build onto my initial thoughts.
If you're looking for a great place to hang out and talk about nothing you might want to check out this forum www.nickelback-forum.com
Thanks
I really tried to give feedback about your first post about meditation, but that is a bit unfamiliar to me and my little tryings of it have not resulted in any visuals or so forth.
About the Lateralus as a song, it is full of contradictions to me. I have always thought "lateral" thinking was a joke, but there was some truth in it too.
My view is that the lyrics contain material that is supposed to really get you into the mood of feeling good about a progress you are doing, whatever it might be.
Interesting, after re-reading my original post I think that the whole meditation spin I through on it makes is less accessible.
So stripped of having relevance to meditation the basic idea is that lateralus is a song most generally about reconnecting with people. Connectivity is so hard to establish and maintain. So many people wonder through their mediocre lives and feel such terrible distance from other people. Though life can be pretty mediocre without feeling like you can't connect with another human being, those lucky enough to have close friends benefit from such an experience. Society has established a culture of people who isolate themselves.
From an evolutionary context we evolved as a social animal, in the hunter gatherer societies we were a tribe. That's why people who completely sever their ties with people end up so damaged. No ones "reality" truly matches anyone elses, but we establish a generalized version of reality and everyone feeds into it. The way culture has changed our connection has caused people to not be able to communicate effectively. For the people on the fringes they are so often ostracized despite the fact that they still have worth.
However, to truly feed into the collective we have to first fix our own perceptions and the faults in our communication. Communication/Interaction = Connectivity. Lateralus as a song, as a concept, and as an album can aid in that process. As has been mentioned several times in multiple post Lateralus is reasonably straight forward.
So often Tools work only serves as the infrastructure of an idea, the viewer then builds upon those ideas in a way that he/she can understand the message. After they create a model that makes sense to them they can elaborate and dive deeper into whatever meaning they've constructed. A message board of like minded individuals can offer an alternative interpretation, but wouldn't try to force any one interpretation.
I have always thought "lateral" thinking was a joke, but there was some truth in it too.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lateral_thinking
That article might give you a little bit of background. Lateral thinking isn't anything too complex, it's basically the same idea as thinking outside of the box.
That article might give you a little bit of background. Lateral thinking isn't anything too complex, it's basically the same idea as thinking outside of the box.
Ah, I'm sorry. I mixed that one with lachrymology.
Ah, I'm sorry. I mixed that one with lachrymology.
I have mixed feelings about that one, the idea of being able to feel extreme emotions and have some control over them is interesting. Lachrymology itself, however, seems like the joke of that idea. Being in touch with your emotional cycle and being able to feel genuine and precise emotion makes sense enough to me. I feel that a lot of people use only a few emotions to deal with a vast amount of scenarios, then they find themselves in situations where they have to intellectualize emotion to fit a scenario because their "basic" response would be inappropriate... or better yet they're just inappropriate (by societies standard) all the time.
Maybe i'm just interpreting it the wrong way or not hearing it the right way but I don't think it's "to swing on the spiral of - our divinity - and still be a human" I think it's "to swing on the spiral of - how a divinity - can still be a human"
Maybe i'm just interpreting it the wrong way or not hearing it the right way but I don't think it's "to swing on the spiral of - our divinity - and still be a human" I think it's "to swing on the spiral of - how a divinity - can still be a human"
It sounds a little ambiguous, but I checked it out a couple of times and read through the lyrics posted on this site (I'm pretty sure they're official) either way it's of little consequence.
You're probably right about the lyrics being official, but it would be of consequence because "of our divinity and still be a human" would imply something entirely different than "how a divinity can still be a human" which would likely mean that the divinity "beings greater than us" can appear amongst us as humans. Think about it, if there's 200,000,000,000 stars in our galaxy and .000001% of them have life on them that means 200,000 other civilizations exist. Chances are a few of those are a few million years ahead of us, we are fucking infants at 10,000 years of so-called "civilization". Isn't it at least slightly possible that our galaxy is split up into different regions/countries just like our planet is. Isn't it possible we belong to someone that falls somewhere between us and God. Oh wait, "to look through to these - in-fin-ite-poss-i-bil-i-ties" haha I'm a retard, of course it's possible, also kind of pointless to think about I suppose, but someone has to otherwise we'll never even get beyond our own solar system. Irrelevant, I'm cooked and going to bed.
"of our divinity and still be a human" would imply something entirely different than "how a divinity can still be a human" which would likely mean that the divinity "beings greater than us" can appear amongst us as humans.
Chances are a few of those are a few million years ahead of us.
Either lyrical variation I think could represent the idea that humans are a vessel of divinity. However, I still think he says the first one.
In terms of how advanced an alternative existence could be, I don't think we can try to measure their technology or knowledge by our concepts. Especially something so free form as time. Chances are there would be such a vast difference that we would struggle to try to gather enough context for their existence to begin to understand the basics of their "reality".
Those numbers you worked up are pretty interesting, did you do the work yourself or did you snag them off a documentary. Not that it matters either way, I'm only curious.
Does anyone else consider Lateralus to be a borderline passive aggressive album?
No, not at all. Lateralus as well as AEnima opened my mind and allowed me to explore other point of views. I've only recently discovered sacred geometry and am at the saturn return stage of my life. Passive aggressive, no , but enlightening...defininetly yes. For what it's worth I do believe that we are all connected to everything, and I do want to learn more.
So you know how there have been a lot of people of TV lately for writing some book or making some video where they kind of make the claim "I'm not really saying it but I wrote it down didn't I" It turns out I have several thousand pages of this sort of shit in piles and piles of notebooks in my room. It's all mine, but it's just weird where it's all coming from. My laziness has been the biggest factor in me not typing it up, but that has changed in the past few weeks.
It's all in a Hunter S. Thompson style that I, for one reason or another I just have the ability to do.
Another ability I have that I was not aware of until just a month or two ago was I can sing, and I dont mean like your average singer at a karaoke bar. It scares the shit out of me because it's the same idea as these idiots I see on TV with their writings. I just let "it" take over and it comes out.
I can sing Lateralus. Has anyone ever tried to sing Lateralus, do you have any idea how fucking hard it is to sing that song. I look at myself in the mirror and dont even recognize what I'm looking at, it's unbeleiveable. If the upload tool on this sit was a little more retard proof I could show some of this shit to you. I'm sorry but when a click upload a video and that tiny little box comes up I'm not even going to attempt wasting 30 seconds of my time with it.
Some time ago I had one of those stories I was talking about pretty much planted in my head by whatever this is that is going on here. It was neat funny, creative and would have made people laugh their fucking ass off if I'd written the right way. I made the mistake of using it to go after a girl I was crazy about. I had a lot of friends telling me that it wasn't supposed to be about a girl, but I thought I knew what I was doing.
As a result a month or so later I was in a car with someone who works for the government and because I fucked it up for all the right reasons I didn't have to go to the quarry. Yes that actually happened and I'm at the point now where shit like that doesnt even weird me out anymore. I like they, they'll protect you if you do the right thing and they'll destroy you if you do the wrong thing.
And since I "shit the bed" for all the right reasons (and by that I mean I wasn't doing what I was doing what I was doing for money, or recognition, or power, or status, I was doing it because I liked a girl) they gave me another opportunity to go after this girl, apparently they never counted on the fact that a girl really can make a guy want to build a rocket ship and fire himself into the sun.
I somehow have the ability to sing like Bono now. I can sing Bad which is freaking ridiculous, and I can sing All I want is you. So later on tonight I'm going to make this really cool music video thing for this girl I like and near the end of it I'm going to sing for about 15 seconds, it's the part near the end of the song where the music builds up and then I'm going to scream out YOOOOOOUUUUUUUU - all I want is - YYOOOOOOOOUUUUUU - all I want is - YYYOUUUUUUUUU - all I want is - YYYYYOOOOOUUUHOOO, I've done it a few times already. Its so loud the whole house shakes. It's so awesome I can do it, it sounds just like Bono.
I also figured out (maybe) why 1:37 was the time I got my little attention getter. One minute and thirty seven seconds into Lateralus is where the lyrics start. After I do this video for the chick that makes me want to build a rocket ship and fire myself into the sun I get to begin with my lyrics. I have so many books to write. It's going to be so much fun.
Oh and one more thing, I've said all I have to say on the main pages here, I'm retiring to the Locker Room only emerging on occasion if anyone else has the balls to say some of the shit i've said, or if some poor bastard of a wandering lost soul needs advice or feedback on what it's like to be time-fucked.
Time-fucked is a great way to put it. Yeah, singin lateralus is very hard. I sound like a little girl with a strept throat every time i sing , especially in push-it.
