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| My Day on the Green T-shirt and novel with the gnome on them. |
I was curious as to what the dream meant, so I did a Google search on the terms "Nine"+"Naked"+"Synchronicity", but the only thing that seemed to be relevant was a book by the title
Nine Kinds of Naked by Tony Vigorito.
I went to Amazon to see how it was reviewed by previous readers, and it looked pretty impressive, so I put it on to my 'Wish List' and then forgot about it.
Weeks later something else prompted me too buy it, so I did.
It arrived in the post with a bundle of other books, and I threw it into my "To Read'' pile ... and forgot about it.
Something else prompted me to dig it out to read it (it must have been important ... because I can't remember what that was either) and I just left it to lay on my computer tower promising myself that I would read it soon.
But I don't really like fiction books that much, and if I can read a good non-fiction book instead I will, so I left it to lay there, thinking if I'm meant to really read it, a sync will draw it fully to my attention.
Well, I was at a Day on the Green concert
(Steely Dan & Steve Winwood) and a band by the name of Oh Mercy was playing before Steve Winwwod ... and they were good.
When they finished their set an announcement came over the PA saying that they were signing copies of their new CD
Great Barrier Grief at the merchandise tent.
I thought I would get one, because I liked their music and wouldn't mind a copy for my CD collection.
But as fate would have it, they had sold out.
So, I thought while I'm up here I"ll see what merchandise they were selling.
There was a Steely Dan coffee cup and a Day on the Green hat that I had my eye on (I needed a new hat, anyway), but as I was waiting ... and waiting, the girl in front of me asked to see one of the T-shirts they were selling (which I hadn't noticed).
But it was a 'Medium' size and she wanted a 'Small', unfortunately (for her) that was the smallest they had (which just happens to be my size).
The shirt had a picture of a gnome on it, which reminded me of the book cover of Nine Kinds of Naked with the gnome on it.
So, I bought it and decided that I just had to start reading the book now.
While I haven't finished it (I've only read about 100 of the 400 pages) I can tell you Tony has become one of my favourite authors already.
Every page is a winner, so far.
It could all go down hill from here, but so far this guy is really good.
http://www.tonyvigorito.com/
I'll tell you more about it after I've finished it (whether I liked it as a whole, or not), but it sure is turning into one of the best non-fiction books that I have read.
I hope he doesn't let me down.
I should have known there would be a Bob Dylan sync here.
Update: Nov 8th, 2011
Tony Vigorito is a bit of an enigmatic person, last night I tried to find out what he was doing lately, but try as I may, I couldn't find out anything current about him.
But on my Goggle search I came across this link;
Thoughts? Chaos, Collapse, and Synchronicity by Tony Vigorito |
dropout50394.yuku.com/.../Thoughts-Chaos-Collapse-and-Synchron...
9 posts - 7 authors - Last post: 23 Sep 2009
Since Sept 23 is my birth-date I thought maybe this sycnc is worth checking out ... and boy was it.He wrote a post about synchronicity that just about struck me dumb.
I'll reproduce it below, in case the post gets taken down.
It is really worth reading in my opinion, so here it is below;
Chaos, Collapse, and Synchronicity
From imploding economies to hurricanes and tsunamis, from astounding corruption to war and terrorism, from catastrophic climate change to thermonuclear weapons in the Middle East, the clichés of doom that lately populate the course of human events is more than enough to tilt a sane citizen into apocalyptic anxiety.
I am certain that I paint too broad a stroke on it, but I'm nonetheless going to venture to say that worrying about civilizational collapse is like worrying about whether or not one's relationship will end in a painful breakup.
I don't mind admitting that I've spent some time worrying about both of these things-indeed, one of them even came to pass-and I can testify that no amount of worry could have prepared me for the agony-and the ecstasy-that eventually came of it.
I am certain that I paint too broad a stroke on it, but I'm nonetheless going to venture to say that worrying about civilizational collapse is like worrying about whether or not one's relationship will end in a painful breakup.
I don't mind admitting that I've spent some time worrying about both of these things-indeed, one of them even came to pass-and I can testify that no amount of worry could have prepared me for the agony-and the ecstasy-that eventually came of it.
As it happened, I was in the midst of writing my second novel,
Nine Kinds of Naked, a novel which presumed to explore the theme of synchronicity.
I really don't remember how or why, but I had dared myself to write Nine Kinds of Naked without a plan and only according to the synchronicity of my daily experience.
This turned out to be a terrifying endeavor, and one that I was entirely unprepared to meet.
I remember complaining aloud one day, voicing my frustration that this wasn't working, that I was trying to write about synchronicity rather than allowing the story to simply proceed by its own design.
I had read every book on the topic, taking careful notes the way my graduate training had habituated me to do, and there I was writing the book as an exhausted intellectual rather than as an inspired artist.
I found myself writing about a phenomenon that I only dimly recalled from years earlier in my life, not something that I was experiencing in the present moment.
I felt like I was failing my project.
Nine Kinds of Naked, a novel which presumed to explore the theme of synchronicity.
I really don't remember how or why, but I had dared myself to write Nine Kinds of Naked without a plan and only according to the synchronicity of my daily experience.
This turned out to be a terrifying endeavor, and one that I was entirely unprepared to meet.
I remember complaining aloud one day, voicing my frustration that this wasn't working, that I was trying to write about synchronicity rather than allowing the story to simply proceed by its own design.
I had read every book on the topic, taking careful notes the way my graduate training had habituated me to do, and there I was writing the book as an exhausted intellectual rather than as an inspired artist.
I found myself writing about a phenomenon that I only dimly recalled from years earlier in my life, not something that I was experiencing in the present moment.
I felt like I was failing my project.
Then my relationship of eleven years abruptly ended.
I only mention this very personal detail of my life at all because of what happened to me afterwards: I was propelled into a six-month period of unparalleled and nearly nonstop synchronicity that continued to reverberate for another full year and upon which I'm still surfing the shockwave.
I'm not speaking here about the typical tripe: seeing your former lover's initials on a license plate or hearing another lovesick pop song every time you click on the radio.
Cripes and jeezus gawd, there was plenty of that, but if those wan synchronicities are supposed to be the thumbprints of Providence in the margins of my life, then Providence has grown much too tame.
I'm speaking here of the truly uncanny, the highly improbable, the perpetual co-incidence of my life intersecting perfectly with the lives of everyone around me.
Shortly after my split, suffering with grief one summer day on my porch, a rare car passed my house, windows open, broadcasting the gaudy voice of a radio commercial advertising I know not what: "It's a big change," the radio yapped in passing.
"Heal naturally."
And that's the most insignificant example I can remember.
I'm not speaking here about the typical tripe: seeing your former lover's initials on a license plate or hearing another lovesick pop song every time you click on the radio.
Cripes and jeezus gawd, there was plenty of that, but if those wan synchronicities are supposed to be the thumbprints of Providence in the margins of my life, then Providence has grown much too tame.
I'm speaking here of the truly uncanny, the highly improbable, the perpetual co-incidence of my life intersecting perfectly with the lives of everyone around me.
Shortly after my split, suffering with grief one summer day on my porch, a rare car passed my house, windows open, broadcasting the gaudy voice of a radio commercial advertising I know not what: "It's a big change," the radio yapped in passing.
"Heal naturally."
And that's the most insignificant example I can remember.
In my research on synchronicity, I had learned that it is most likely to emerge during and after ego-shattering experiences.
These include near-death experiences, the death of loved ones, the end
(or the beginning) of love relationships, shamanic / visionary experiences, travel, and so forth. Psychology typically deems this a form of dissociation in response to psychological trauma, and this is probably correct.
After all, when I measure it against my own experience-in which the entire world and my very presence within it seemed indistinguishable from a dream-that defines dissociation, certainly. And yet, this explanation by itself left me feeling deeply dissatisfied, implying as it did a dismissal of my experience.
And the experience of synchronicity is profoundly personal.
It relies upon your subjectivity and the meanings you bring to your life.
Because of this, it is irrelevant to debate whether or not it's real in the sense of what we might vainly refer to as objective reality.
There's an unavoidable arrogance in presuming to evaluate not merely the truth of someone else's experience, but actually the truth of the meaning of someone else's experience.
In the latter case, it has absolutely nothing to do with anyone but the person involved.
These include near-death experiences, the death of loved ones, the end
(or the beginning) of love relationships, shamanic / visionary experiences, travel, and so forth. Psychology typically deems this a form of dissociation in response to psychological trauma, and this is probably correct.
After all, when I measure it against my own experience-in which the entire world and my very presence within it seemed indistinguishable from a dream-that defines dissociation, certainly. And yet, this explanation by itself left me feeling deeply dissatisfied, implying as it did a dismissal of my experience.
And the experience of synchronicity is profoundly personal.
It relies upon your subjectivity and the meanings you bring to your life.
Because of this, it is irrelevant to debate whether or not it's real in the sense of what we might vainly refer to as objective reality.
There's an unavoidable arrogance in presuming to evaluate not merely the truth of someone else's experience, but actually the truth of the meaning of someone else's experience.
In the latter case, it has absolutely nothing to do with anyone but the person involved.
In any event, my understanding eventually relented to a view in which synchronicity is the face of a deeper level of interconnectivity.
This dovetails with Eastern notions of non-duality, the mystical perception that unity is the underlying reality, that individual consciousness is actually the necessary illusion of distinction, the dark side of the Tao, so to speak, that which hears the tree falling in the woods. In this view, then, whenever the structures of one's mind are shaken, the mind opens into a wider perception of reality that is hallmarked by synchronicity, understood here as a dissolution of the boundary between the interior and the exterior worlds.
Fundamentally, the ego is the illusion that you exist separate from everything else, it is that which walls you off from the flow of undivided unity.
Whenever these walls collapse, the flow of undivided unity rushes into your life, and synchronicity is the face of this perception.
This dovetails with Eastern notions of non-duality, the mystical perception that unity is the underlying reality, that individual consciousness is actually the necessary illusion of distinction, the dark side of the Tao, so to speak, that which hears the tree falling in the woods. In this view, then, whenever the structures of one's mind are shaken, the mind opens into a wider perception of reality that is hallmarked by synchronicity, understood here as a dissolution of the boundary between the interior and the exterior worlds.
Fundamentally, the ego is the illusion that you exist separate from everything else, it is that which walls you off from the flow of undivided unity.
Whenever these walls collapse, the flow of undivided unity rushes into your life, and synchronicity is the face of this perception.
So, dear and patient readers, my quodlibet is this:
Although my breakup catalyzed what an external observer may at first grunt judge to be a breakdown, from my point of view the only breakdown was the delusion that I was in control of my life.
All the walls-of identity, ambition, and security, of any illusion that I knew who I was, or where I was, or that I had any clue at all what was happening in life-all of this collapsed like an obsolete civilization and permitted eternity to course through me as never before.
Insofar as apocalypse derives from the Greek apokalyptein, meaning "to unveil," this was some version of my personal apocalypse, and since apocalypse is the etymological antonym of hell, which derives from the Latin helan, meaning "to veil," the only thing to mourn was the liberation from my own illusions.
Although my breakup catalyzed what an external observer may at first grunt judge to be a breakdown, from my point of view the only breakdown was the delusion that I was in control of my life.
All the walls-of identity, ambition, and security, of any illusion that I knew who I was, or where I was, or that I had any clue at all what was happening in life-all of this collapsed like an obsolete civilization and permitted eternity to course through me as never before.
Insofar as apocalypse derives from the Greek apokalyptein, meaning "to unveil," this was some version of my personal apocalypse, and since apocalypse is the etymological antonym of hell, which derives from the Latin helan, meaning "to veil," the only thing to mourn was the liberation from my own illusions.
In a similar fashion, this is what we're facing when we worry about the collapse of our social structures.
Despite our roads and skylines, despite our bridges and our borders, despite our military-industrial complexes and hyper-corrupt transnational corporations, society does not actually exist anywhere but the human mind.
As a mental construct, society provides us with a shared illusion of meaning, purpose, and order, and it stabilizes our existence thereby, but paraphrasing Terence McKenna, society is not our friend.
At best it is what Aldous Huxley referred to as a reducing valve to our perception, and at worst it is what Robert Anton Wilson called "the devil's masquerade," a Luciferian diversion from the truth of existence.
Despite our roads and skylines, despite our bridges and our borders, despite our military-industrial complexes and hyper-corrupt transnational corporations, society does not actually exist anywhere but the human mind.
As a mental construct, society provides us with a shared illusion of meaning, purpose, and order, and it stabilizes our existence thereby, but paraphrasing Terence McKenna, society is not our friend.
At best it is what Aldous Huxley referred to as a reducing valve to our perception, and at worst it is what Robert Anton Wilson called "the devil's masquerade," a Luciferian diversion from the truth of existence.
And the truth, or something resembling it, is that if you walk outside right now, hold your hand up to the sky, and pinch a millimeter of heaven between your thumb and forefinger, the truth is that if you were to focus the Hubble space telescope on that random sector of sky between your thumb and forefinger, that one dot on the overwhelming vault of heaven, you would discover billions of galaxies.
This is the cathedral of eternity in which we find ourselves, and this magnificent insignificance is what we do not see when we imagine that we are-or that we could ever be-in control of this juggernaut that is barreling down the shuddering tracks of history.
As McKenna also intones on one of my favorite Shpongle tracks: Nothing is wrong, everything is on track. And indeed it was, for as it turned out, my matrimonial cataclysm was just the apocalyptic knock I needed to inspire the novel some part of me had dared myself to fathom. I gave up, I surrendered, and it was only then that Nine Kinds of Naked could proceed according its own synchronicity. There was a tremendous relief in this giving up of control, in surrendering to some chaotic process infinitely larger than myself, in realizing not only that I am not in control of my life, but also that I don't have to be.
This is the cathedral of eternity in which we find ourselves, and this magnificent insignificance is what we do not see when we imagine that we are-or that we could ever be-in control of this juggernaut that is barreling down the shuddering tracks of history.
As McKenna also intones on one of my favorite Shpongle tracks: Nothing is wrong, everything is on track. And indeed it was, for as it turned out, my matrimonial cataclysm was just the apocalyptic knock I needed to inspire the novel some part of me had dared myself to fathom. I gave up, I surrendered, and it was only then that Nine Kinds of Naked could proceed according its own synchronicity. There was a tremendous relief in this giving up of control, in surrendering to some chaotic process infinitely larger than myself, in realizing not only that I am not in control of my life, but also that I don't have to be.
So here we yawn at millennium's dawn:
Bugles are blasting and the walls of civilization are crumbling, chaos is seeping through the cracks and crawling out of the shadows, survivalist monkeys are buying guns and the ice caps are melting besides as chaos gazes unfazed at the clamor of humanity sounding for all the universe like the echo of a distant wind chime.
That which we thought was stable, safe, and secure is not, that which we sacrificed so much for is failing, that which told us who we are is collapsing like a psychedelic kaleidoscope.
And as our social structures collapse, humanity-barbaric, beautiful humanity-humanity will rediscover the awesome divinity that inhabits the core of our consciousness as one by one we give up control because society may not be our friend but chaos is our mother and our mother is an order unfathomable, a layer of complexity much deeper than the dim and flimsy arrogance of ego can admit to itself.
Welcome our selves to the cathedral of eternity, the dimension in which we step out of that steaming pile of ego which passes for human consciousness and at last surrender into a higher order of experience in which our inter-connectivity one to another becomes blindingly obvious, and we see, and we know, and we remember, that there is so much more happening in life than we have ever been led to believe.
Bugles are blasting and the walls of civilization are crumbling, chaos is seeping through the cracks and crawling out of the shadows, survivalist monkeys are buying guns and the ice caps are melting besides as chaos gazes unfazed at the clamor of humanity sounding for all the universe like the echo of a distant wind chime.
That which we thought was stable, safe, and secure is not, that which we sacrificed so much for is failing, that which told us who we are is collapsing like a psychedelic kaleidoscope.
And as our social structures collapse, humanity-barbaric, beautiful humanity-humanity will rediscover the awesome divinity that inhabits the core of our consciousness as one by one we give up control because society may not be our friend but chaos is our mother and our mother is an order unfathomable, a layer of complexity much deeper than the dim and flimsy arrogance of ego can admit to itself.
Welcome our selves to the cathedral of eternity, the dimension in which we step out of that steaming pile of ego which passes for human consciousness and at last surrender into a higher order of experience in which our inter-connectivity one to another becomes blindingly obvious, and we see, and we know, and we remember, that there is so much more happening in life than we have ever been led to believe.
Synchronicity on the sultry soothe of your day~
Then this morning I tried to Google the link again using just
'Tony Vigorito', but I couldn't find it this time, so I put 'Sep 23' in with his name and got this;
September 23, 2010 Show Download : mp3. Synchronicity Radio Caroline welcomes Tony Vigorito, author of the splendid romp of a pertinent novel "Nine Kinds ...
Interesting, don't you think?
The Visionary Activist with Caroline Casey on KPFA, Thursdays at 2pm
September 23, 2010 Show Download : mp3. Synchronicity Radio Caroline welcomes Tony Vigorito, author of the splendid romp of a pertinent novel "Nine Kinds ...
September 23, 2010 Show
Download : mp3
Download : mp3
Synchronicity Radio
Caroline welcomes Tony Vigorito, author of the splendid romp of a pertinent novel Nine Kinds of Naked, w/skookum counsel for navigating the wild seas of now.
www.tonyvigorito.com Caroline welcomes Tony Vigorito, author of the splendid romp of a pertinent novel Nine Kinds of Naked, w/skookum counsel for navigating the wild seas of now.
Interesting, don't you think?
