No Cause For Alarm (Or Anything Else)

As my meditation experiments continued, the next thing I remember encountering was the realization that if we experience everything indirectly and what we experience is a consequence of the interpretation then there was absolutely no guarantee of accuracy.

What I mean by this is that the interpretation is the response to some sensory stimulus but the interpretation can add (hallucinations) or subtract (ignore) portions of the stimulus.

Alan Watts (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Watts) mentioned in one of his talks that ignorance in this case would not mean "not knowing" but rather choosing to ignore. In my searching for the book which I thought had a blue cover the signal of the red book was completely ignored because it did not match some preconceived conception of what the book looked like.

In addition as we go through life we are constantly adding to preconceived library which color the interpretation of stimulus which in turn flavors what we experience. To me this means that the character of the experience is largely tied to the interpretation.

This line of thinking lead me to the problems with the assignment of causes. We define causes as the origin of some thing. But I started to see a cause as a composite of conditions. But the conditions seemed to be a function of my awareness (what I noticed at the time) which was corrupted by my biased multiple internal mental processes (Multiple Drafts).

For example, lightning hits a granite rock where dried vegetation has accumulated and ignites the vegetation. Then, the vegetation is blown about by a strong wind into the trees and a forest fire results.

We have the conditions of accumulate dried vegetation, a lightning strike, strong winds and the proximity of trees. These are the conditions that we have selected.

So what is the cause? If lightning had struck the bare rock -- probably no fire. No strong wind -- dried vegetation burns itself out on the bare rock, no fire. But what about if it had rained recently? Did a exceptionally dry summer cause the accumulation of dried vegetation and put the trees in a state where they were ripe to ignite? And there may be other conditions that are either being ignored or outside the "spot light" of our limited awareness.

This example makes the assignment of a condition completely subjective and arbitrary. The cause does not seem to exist in itself but seems to be a composite of conditions. And conditions are a limited subset selected and added to by multiple internal mental processes.


In addition, we have internally a competition by all of the multiple drafts to shift or move the spot of the flashlight exclusively on themselves. And it seems the winner tends to be the multiple draft analysis that has the highest emotional content. That is the one that stimulates the most fear, anger, love, etc...

Moreover, conditions are removed (ignored) or added (hallucinations) that would impeded the awareness from taking immediate action. Not only do we only notice a small subset of all conditions we remove some and add others.

This no doubt had some evolutionary survival advantage when conditions were such that short term thinking had an advantage. For example, running away from a predatory threat is an immediate necessity with tremendous short term consequences. In this case, there is a decided disadvantage to the individual that stops to consider the long term consequences before taking action. So under these conditions, short term reactionary thinking is a matter of survival. However, when the conditions change, as they have, long term thinking becomes an advantage since the consequences of short term thinking may jeopardize the long term survival of the species.

Futhermore, I have found in my behavior that I chose my reactionary course of action and then rationalie my choice. Although my reactions may be solely based on emotional content I am quite capable of cobbling up a rational argument for why I chose to do what I did. Rather than reasoning directing my actions it becomes a spin doctor for my irrational behaviors. Reason becomes the public relations manager for my nutty behavior.

What is really sad is that I will spin such a good story that, at least superficially, I may actually believe it myself. But always in the background, there are these nagging feelings that will not go away. And in most cases, I have to work very hard at ignoring them. Until of course they become impossible to ignore. And what is pathetic about this is that at this point I realize that those feeling I had were there at the very beginning trying to warm me.

This seems to explain a lot about how issues are perceived by various groups. Those to the left,as an example, intentionally or unintentionally select a subset of "observed" conditions and assign a cause. Those conditions that do not fit into the ideology are discarded, flavored or trimmed to fit. Similarly those on the right do the same. Sadly, I can not say that I am immune. We all do it!

Moreover, we select courses of actions based on our limited awareness of conditions even though they have made us unhappy in the past. Compulsive spending, in one bad relationship after another, eating and drinking too much... behaviors and actions that we seem to follow like programmed machines. And the sources that contribute to the programming are social conditioning (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_conditioning) and indoctrination. Further, we seem to add our own self conditioning to the system. A lot of the time we act like robots -- myself included.

Fortunately, as I continued meditating several things happened. First, I started examining past actions that resulted in less than desirable consequences in the "Why the Hell did I do that?" frame of mind. It was always the case, prior to initiating the action, that I could definitely remember some "feeling" that this action was not going to result in desirable consequences. And I could also remember choosing to ignore the feeling. I did the same for warnings from friends and family with a resolution to prove them wrong. What happened I proved them right and had the additional consequence of feeling foolish. I did this more than once, in fact, so many times that I can't remember.

And I do not think I am alone in this behavior. I have met people that have graduated from college, earned post-graduate degrees, found a job, married and had kids admit that they did not know what they wanted to do in life. I can only wonder what motivated them if not some kind of conditioning or mental programming.

I now hope to develop a strategy of living skillfully. I will try and embrace those feelings and experiences that I previously chose to ignore. In addition, I hope to expand my awareness to include more guidance from unknown sources. I think meditation is the best way to do this.

I don't have a definite path that I am following on these blogs. I write the blog and let the inspiration come for the next one.

So far, these blogs have stuck to the straight and narrow of interpretation in that hallucinations and such I attributed to my becoming aware of some before unnoticed neural signal. Whatever I experience -- real or otherwise -- I attributed to the interpretation of these neural signals.

And to be honest, I wish I could stay there since it is easier to explain and is in line with my training as a scientist. But as my awareness expanded, I became aware of more subtle neural signals. Unfortunately, although theoretical physicist think that we are aware of less that 5% of the universe (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observable_universe) and there is the problem of quantum entanglement (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_entanglement) scientist seem to want to ignore some phenomena that can not be directly measured.

I can not blame them though. Can you imagine writing a paper or thesis with the incorporation of "feelings". I get the "feeling" it would not be taken seriously. But we see effects and phenomena we can not explain or measure. And I think we can not ignore them much longer. I will write about my perspective of this issue in the "Schism In Science" next blog.

Plenty of Nothing

The analogy of the flash light along with my new experiences made me realize that I was only seeing part of the picture. That is, the light beam only illuminated a relatively small spot on the wall. In addition, whatever was illuminated was not directly experienced but only an interpretation of a bunch of "gauge" readings. Moreover that these readings where basically an opinion that was misrepresented as reality. And what was worse, things could be added or subtracted from what I experienced.

The addition was the heat and the lizard hallucinations. An example of subtraction would be looking for a book on the shelf and not seeing it even though it is plainly insight. I don't know how many times I have looked for a book on the shelf and couldn't find it because I am thinking, for some reason, it has a blue cover and instead it has a red one. The book can be plainly in full view but because of my bias for a blue cover I can not see it on a conscious level.

We humans are extremely limited on what we can sense. For example, our visual spectrum is limited to around 380 to 750 nanometers. And what we can hear runs from around 20 to 20,000 Hz. This hearing range is further limited by the amount of pressure we can detect.

When I started thinking about these and other limitations, I wondered what we would experience if we could access it all. The "answer" hit me like a bolt of lightning: If we experienced everything we would experience nothing. One way to look at this is that if we saw the complete spectrum of light we would be swamped. What we would see would probably be an intense blinding glare of absolutely white light.

Similarly, if we heard the entire spectrum of sound we would experience a din so loud that we would be aware of nothing in particular.

We gain our awareness by severely filtering the candidates that make it to our consciousness. I have heard it said that our unfiltered inputs number around 4,000,000,000 but we are aware of -- at even at the unconscious level-- is on the order or 2,000. That amounts to less than 0.0001%!!

When I first read about the Multiple Drafts Model I was struck by the similarities to it and quantum probability.
A useful simplified discussion of quantum probability would be the thought experiment "Schrodinger Cat". In this example the cat in a closed box is both alive and dead until observed. When an observer enters into the picture and "sees" the cat it immediately is either dead or alive but not both. Prior to the observation the cat was both alive and dead!

In the Multiple Drafts Model, many processes offer an explanation for an observation and perhaps one is selected. This seems to be comparable to quantum probability in that many mental states exist simultaneously until one is observed. The "unobserved" states evaporate and are usually below our level of awareness or are quickly forgotten.

The two seemed similar in that something in multiple simultaneous fuzzy states collapsed to something in a well defined state. Keep in mind, that I am approaching this from the point of view that both the body and the observed phenomena are part of the "real" world. This means whatever quantum laws are affecting the "material" states is affecting the "material" and "mental (configuration of neurons)" states of the observer too. Both collapse into states consistent with each other. However, the "mental" state is subject to interpretation of the "experiencer". Which in my experience seems to be completely open ended. I guess this leaves room for imagination, hallucinations and delusions. And I got the feeling that what determined the end "physical" state of the observed and the "experiencer" was the observer field. And I mean to separate the "experiencer" from the observer.

The observer is the field encompassing both the observations and the "experiencer". The "experiencer" in my mind is just part of the subset of "reality" and not really differentiated from the observation by the observer.

To the observer the "boundaries" of the two systems are artificial and an artifact of the limited awareness of the "experiencer". They are both parts of the universal puzzle whose ever changing edges still have to fit together to make the big picture. What we experience as self is a composite system made of the observation, the "experiencer" and the observer. This is just my opinion. I have absolutely no physical evidence for this. But I do have a very strong feeling that this is somehow correct.


What struck me was that if the superposition of all the quantum states canceled out. That is, the sum of it all was zero. So if we were aware (experienced it all) at once you would experience nothing. This would also hold if everything was comprised of vibrations (string theory or Buddhist philosophy) it could be that the whole thing amounted to absolutely nothing. And the only reason we see anything at all is because we are only seeing part of the picture. The entire pot of soup amounts to nothing but it is not mixed very well (in our experience) so we experience some precipitates. In short, what we are seeing is a local inhomogeneity.


An example of this would be zero. The sum of all real numbers from minus infinity to plus infinity is zero. So zero could be viewed as a completely full set by definition because it contains ALL real numbers. By focusing on a subset you can conceptually materialize something useful.

The fact that zero is a completely full set seems to be implied in the rules for subtracting negative numbers. The rule is that to subtract a negative number, you change the sign and then add. So if you, for example, subtract negative eight from zero you change the sign of the negative eight to positive eight then add.

When you do that you start with nothing (zero) subtract negative eight and wind up with eight. Start with nothing then remove something and wind up with something!!?
In effect you removed the canceling effect of the negative eight from the complete sum which resulted in the expression of the positive eight.

Perhaps our limited awareness works in the same way. By removing the canceling effects, we come to experience the material world. That is by being unaware of most of what is there we are aware of some of what is there. And if we were aware of it all we would be aware of nothing at all because the sum of all would be zero!

Somehow, we either "choose" what to be aware of or it is chosen for us. I know that part of the choice (filter) is made by previous experiences and conditioning (social heredity) by my own experience.

In the next blog entry (No Cause for Alarm -- or Anything Else), I will recount problems I have encountered when my limited and selective awareness of conditions along with prior conditioning resulted in a wrong judgement in the assignment of causes.

My Friend Flicker

Some of these events are probably not in the order I experienced them since it has been a while between the experience and this blog. Anyhow, for now the next thing I remember encountering was "flicker".


While being "empty headed" I got the impression that my awareness was moving from internal to external. It is rather difficult to explain but the first analogy that comes to mind is eating. The action of picking something off the plate and moving to the lips is external. Putting it in the mouth and chewing is a transition to an internal operation. The diner moves from an external focus (the plate) to an internal focus (the mouth). But this analogy doesn't really convey what I want to communicate.












Perhaps a better analogy is a pitch black room with two pictures on the wall. An observer in the room has a flash light with a focused beam. By directing the beam he can view one picture or the other but not both at the same time. The beam is too narrowly focused for that. By waving the flash light back and forth he can shift his attention (awareness) from one picture to the other.

While in my meditative state I felt my consciousness moving from one place to another. In one place, it was familiar in that my awareness contained the familiar feelings of my senses and my body. In the other, the familiar feelings disappeared and different set of feelings were encountered. And the transition from one state to the other felt cyclic and as regular as a clock ticking.











Because I had widened the focus of my "flash light" beam, I could for the briefest of time see parts of both pictures simultaneously as well as the area in between. That is, I could simultaneously sense the material and feel the immaterial for a fraction of a second. And what I mean by the "immaterial" is some realm beyond my five senses. While completely on the immaterial side I lost the inputs from my five senses but gained the "immaterial" feelings and vice verse.

I got the impression that my awareness was being swung from one "picture" to the other like the pendulum of a clock. Moreover, I got the impression that whatever was swinging the "flash light" was the real observer. The beam of light falling on the pictures is my awareness but the real observer is the person holding and moving the flash light. While the light beam and the pictures are on the wall, the observer is not. It is somewhat removed and not coincident with the plane of observation.







Further, I also got the feeling that the observer was doing some kind of consistency check. That is checking to make sure that on the physical plane everything was still fitting together.

This is extremely difficult to explain and the best analogy that I can come up with is a puzzle where the shapes of the pieces are constantly changing but the overall image and shape stay the same. So although the pieces are changing shape they have to do so in a coordinated manner because they still have to fit together.

On the physical plane my body was a piece of the puzzle and whatever snap-shot physical state it was in had to fit into the snap-shot of the universal puzzle. That makes sense since my body is constantly exchanging energy and virtual particles with the environment. Whatever is added or subtracted needs to be accounted for in the cosmic bookkeeping. In the really big picture of the universe nothing can be added or subtracted because it is a closed system.




Another feeling that I had was that the "real" observer was not local but a field. And rather than my body containing the field the field not only contained my body but the material physical world too. I and the physical world existed only because the awareness of the observer-field had focused on them. Moreover, my sense of time and space were artifacts of the swinging awareness. However, I don't think the "real" observer's awareness swung. It seemed to be the pivot point of the swing and extremely stable.














It felt to me that my experience of time and space might be due to a change in my state of awareness. To explain by analogy, my awareness was like a flashlight casting a beam on a physical object and thereby casting a shadow. Where the shadow appears depends on what direction the flashlight beam is coming from. By moving the flashlight it is possible to move the shadow. But the physical object does not move only the shadow. Similarly the objects casting the shadows of our day-to-day experiences do not move in time or space. The appear to move to us because our state of awareness is changing state. Again we are back to the problem or describing a change without invoking time since time feels like it is an artifact of changing awareness.

If you hear cracking ice now is because I am on extremely thin area. How to you discuss a change with out bringing time into the picture? And what do you do when time itself may be the artifact of changes?

Hang on here comes another analogy: a camera that is set to take an image periodically. As the camera is moved around it snaps an image. The passage of time could be inferred by the number of stored images. But this analogy fails to come up with how the number of stored images could generate the passage of time. My swinging awareness was like this automated camera. As it swung it took a snap shot at the extremes of the swing -- all the way to one side or the other. My sense of time was perhaps related to my awareness snap shots.

Similarly our sense of space comes from the direction that the camera is pointed. By snapping enough images and arranging them one can make a panorama which gives a spatial relationship. But if the images are just stacked on top of one another the spatial relationship changes so it is an artifact of the arrangement. And it is not unique. There is no one arrangement. The interpretation of space is dependent on how the images are stacked. So our interpretation of space is also dependent on how we stack the awareness snap shots.

This lead to my first insight into the nature of reality and "emptiness". I had started meditating to deal with stress but once that was accomplished I seemed to be following a path that others had walked before.

Next blog, I will continue with "... Plenty of Nothing..."

Finding My Way

I decided early on not to concern myself with understanding what was going on but only to focus on results. From my reading, I felt that whatever mechanisms were behind the results could not be accessed to be quantified. This is also a problem for string theorists in that, currently, there are no ways to conduct experiments to test the hypothesis. So if the results were dismissed as "...being all in my head..." then so be it since that is where the problem seemed to be in the first place.

The problem was that I was constantly being bombarded by negative scenarios projected by some uncontrolled process going on in my head. As a result, I was experiencing horrific anxiety attacks that robbed me of sleep and otherwise decreased the quality of my life. In addition, my emotional reaction to the gloomy scenarios triggered my adrenaline gland which altered my blood chemistry. The change in blood chemistry intensified my emotional reaction which increased the activity of my adrenaline gland which again intensified my emotional reaction. This was a positive feedback loop that kept working until the system was pegged at maximum output. Furthermore, the increase in adrenaline caused the hypothalamus to get into the act which further altered my blood chemistry and intensified my emotional reaction.

I had read "Consciousness Explained" by Daniel Dennet. In this book he describes the theory of "Multiple Drafts". In this theory, the single observer is replaced by multiple parallel processes. These processes analyze neural activity as inputs and propose an interpretation.

In the single observer model a little person is sitting in a chair in your head and monitoring a television screen, listening to sounds coming from speakers and pulling the levers that direct your actions. One big problem in the single observer concept is that when told of it, people imagine seeing the observer. Of course this implies another observer. And when this is realized another observer is imagined to observe. If this continues the result is a veritable conga line of observers. Also, this model just leaves the consciousness of the little person unexplained.

The best analogy that I can come up with for the multiple drafts model is a room of observers continuously scanning a wall of gauges. The television screen and speakers are gone. There are no direct observations only interpretations of gauge readings. And the observers also don't pull the levers that control actions. Instead they shout out their interpretations of what the gauge readings mean. There is no awareness of most of the interpretations. And only a small number make it to the surface of awareness. Once awareness receives the candidate interpretations a course of action is selected -- voluntary or a conditioned response.

I felt in my case, that there were similar processes out of control in my head that were constantly imagining disastrous future scenarios based on no real inputs and presenting their analysis to my awareness. I wanted to take control of these mental processes and shut them down.

First I tried mentally repeating the mantra I had learned in Transcendental Meditation. No good, I would mentally keep repeating the mantra and still have the anxiety producing processes running either in the background or foreground -- sometimes the processes would change places. Similar results with counting breaths and various other meditation techniques.

Another thing that I did was to slow my breathing. I think this is important to access neural inputs usually below the level of conscious awareness. Breathing is controlled both by the autonomic nervous system and the somatic nervous system. It seems to be a pathway for obtaining awareness of more neural inputs.


In desperation, I tried a full frontal attack and decided to just try and shut down the processes -- no mantra or any other techniques. I just tried not to think at all and as a relaxation technique I slowed my breathing. I did not focus on my breathing or count the breaths. I had tried that before and it stirred up the anxiety producing mental demons. I just felt the sensation of breathing in and out while trying to keep my mind thoughtless.

BINGO!

Initially my thoughtless periods were short. But gradually the length of time I could be "empty headed" increased. As the periods became longer I became aware of other sensations that I had overlooked.








One of the first things I became aware of was physical sensations of tightness and stiffness in certain muscles. A few years ago I injured my shoulders by leaning on my elbows at work. I trapped a shoulder ligament in congenitally narrow passage way. The result was that the ligament sawed into the bone. This not only damaged the bone but was not too good for the ligament. Most of the damage had occurred when I was unaware of any pain. I became aware when I used my arms to push myself up from a chair and the ligament abruptly caught on the notch in the bone. The resulting pain put me on the floor kissing the carpet. It amazed me what you can miss when you are not paying attention. Now however I could feel the problem spots. All I had to do was turn my awareness in their direction and the feeling of tightness or stiffness would abruptly disappeared. Over several weeks my physical health improved in that all my aches and pains disappeared. My weight also dropped and my blood chemistry dramatically improved.









Then as time passed, the next thing I felt was mental aches and pains. I started getting memories of passed events that cause some mental or emotional trauma -- those I experienced and those I inflicted. I would relive the events as if I were there and it seemed with all 5 senses -- along with the either the trauma I had felt on the receiving end or the new shame I felt for the hurt I had inflicted. This went on for a while sometimes the same event coming back several times. Then this phase passed and my mental health seemed better in that my anxiety level plummeted and the source mental processes virtually went away. Also my cognitive ability and stamina seemed to improve. Sleeping at night helps a lot of stuff.





Then came the hallucinations. I feel the reason the hallucinations appeared was that the mental processes scanning the gauges where seeing or seeking unfamiliar inputs. Because the inputs were in a language that was not familiar they made a best guess interpretation of the readings and presented the results. In addition, they added any inputs that were missing such as the heat I felt when the bookcase "burst" into flames. I can only wonder, however, what neurological inputs results in the interpretation of a 6 foot, robed and hooded grayish reptile. If this is was selected as the most reasonable I would hate to see the others.

Fortunately, the hallucinations were also a phase. It lasted a few weeks and things quieted down. I increased the length of the sessions to 40 minutes twice a day and I could keep mentally quiet for most of that time for most of the sessions.

Then I became aware of my friend flicker. I will discuss this in my next blog...

Beware Hypnagogia

I feel that I must give a warning here about some of the things I experienced.

In my reading I had been forewarned about hallucinations that some experience during deep meditation. Once source described Buddha's hallucinations during his early mediation practices. In addition, in my online discussions with a Buddhist monk he had told me that they had some people who suffered traumatic mental damage during deep meditation sessions.

However, because of my arrogance, conceit or that the warning were not strong enough I proceeded. I survived mentally intact but the hallucinations where far more powerful that I had expected. It turns out that there is state between sleeping and waking called hypnagogia where the mind conjures up hallucinations. In fact, these experiences are often encountered by people in isolated environments such as fighter jets and sensory deprivation chambers.

So, I expected hallucinations. What I didn't expect was that the hallucinations would be more than just visions. They turned out to be in 5 dimensions in that I would hear, taste, smell, see and feel them. These senses add a whole bunch of extra dimensions to the mix. It is much easier to deal with an hallucination when one or two senses say "it's there" and the others say "it's not". But when all five are in agreement, the hallucinations can become incredibly powerful and, in some cases, absolutely terrifying.

At first, my hallucinations started small: tiny blue flickering flames. After a few weeks of this, a statue I was focusing on appeared to be talking with it facial features changing (lips moving). Still later, I could hear the sounds along with a clicking background noise that, if I listen for it, I can hear even now.

Next came periodic hallucinations while I was not meditating. Once I went into my darkened bed room and turned around to see some sort of hooded and robed sentient grey reptile that smiled and waved at me then faded away. It looked a lot like the Geico mascot -- too much television advertising.

But through all this I held it together and although the experiences did cause some emotional reaction I treated them as hallucinations and kept on. I did however question whether I should keep going and risk my sanity. Those that know me tell me that there's not a lot left to risk, so I kept going.

The most intense hallucination was when the bookcase I was focusing on during a meditation session burst into blue flames. I was able to maintain my focus until I felt a blast of heat, then I quickly bailed out of the astral plane.

What came to mind was that I had finally found those latent super powers that I always hoped I had (read too many comic books). But when I broke the spell by coming out of my meditative state the flames and heat immediately vanished and there was no residual evidence that there was anything there in the first place.

These a just a few of the hallucinations I had and I remember these pretty much because they involved my dominant senses. There have been others involving smell and taste. But it is hard to put much drama in something that tastes or smells bad... And by drama I mean my reaction to it.

Now keep in mind that the reason I started all this was to help deal with stress. It seemed to me that I had found a way to increase and not decrease it. Fortunately, this hallucinatory phase was transitory and I finally got pass it.

Next blog entry will describe the techniques I used and what I think is going on. These entries will be made on as "available time" basis unless something happens to change that.

...Could Be The Start Of Something Big...

I have been using meditation techniques for about 30 years. I started during my first divorce in an effort to manage the associated stresses and emotions. I learned and used the technique taught by the Transcendental Meditation association. I felt pretty good after the session but the results were spotty. I would have good and not so good sessions and rarely had the great results of the first session.

I used the technique on and off (mostly off) to manage stress associated with work and school. It helped some. But when I took a buy-out offer to establish my own company the results I was getting were not sufficient to handle the stresses.

The pressure of starting you own company is unrelenting and virtually constant. The pressures of a full time job and school abates sometimes. This allows some recovery time whereas continuous stress allows none. I had to do something otherwise I was definitely going to go under. Not wanting to turn to medication, self or otherwise, since my family had a history of drug dependent behavior, I decided to try and improve my meditation skills.

In addition, they were other factors that pushed me into this route. One was that as long as I can remember I always felt connected to something. And I seemed to know things that I could not figure out from where the knowledge came. Finally, when I started my work in setting up my company I kept getting these lucky breaks. These "co incidents" happened too often to be "co incidents" in my opinion. To me, there really seemed to be something going on.

So to develop my technique I did extensive reading and used Netflix to set up a video curriculum of anything mystical or spiritual I could find. In addition, I kept experimenting with different methods of meditating. After a few years of this research and development, I had a series of experiences.

Most of these experiences are impossible to describe in words; the vocabulary does not exists. Further existing vocabulary is constrained to describing things that come through the traditional 5 senses or can be converted to a 5 sense medium via some type of transducer. How do you describe something where there is no way to measure or confirm its existence? And why try? The effort will probably be ineffective and lead to frustration.

Well, I can only say because something is nagging me to put down my experiences in writing. Also, in my research I found a lot of the information obscure, contradictory and confusing. It seemed that it was intentionally put in that form. It seemed like most college textbooks written where form took priority over content and clarity.

So this blog is my egotistical effort to explain the unexplainable. My only excuse is that something is forcing me in this effort.