I want to start a healing center.
One devoted to three things essentially: books, beats & weights.
All the important things. What habits of mind are taught from these activites?
This is the valid question to ask undoubtedly.
This Monday I was accepted as a graduate student with the Michigan School of Psychology’s Masters program in Clinical Psychology.
From here, I am determined to go onwards to pursue a doctorate in Clinical Psychology with a university that offers either a PsyD or PhD dependent upon where I’m able to make the most cost-effective, in terms of me studying what I want to.
I want to be in a position to share my thoughts publicly on the practice of psychology. Instilling the freelance graduate ethos “aka, the only way out is to publish” as I discussed and shared in tmy very first post.
To be a doctor of psychology, would be a dream come true, as aside from music tending to health in all its totality, and even examining that very question of what it means to be healthy… is the exact question that inspires my most pressing thoughts.
The type of thoughts that drives one to take action. Did you know the written word can do this to you?
The idea of starting a healing center, but ensuring it is one in which the science supports this theory of wellness and vitality. This would be a source of learning, incorporating the wisdom of the past into the present-day experience we are undergoing for better and for worse. Succesfully navigate the present and my friend you are swimming positively towards the future.
Lately I’ve been exploring the idea of how we have treated the “mentally ill” systemically, and how we could help benefit our society more mutually by hypothisizing the “mentally well” by some core tenents.
I have a hypothesis on this, but I’m merely going to explain some observations from my own self-experimentation.
The pursuit of truth is a very painful, yet rewarding process. Especially as it relates to how we treat ourselves mentally, spiritually and somatically. Discerning what it is, that makes us feel more “whole” not on a weekly basis, but instead on a daily basis.
What is our basis of “care” with ourselves everyday? In what ways is this something that connects us to others? How do we ensure we don’t become narcissitic in the process by only attuning to oneself, rather than the environment and/or the world around us?
We are at an interesting time of history, the ability to press publish and have one’s message documented to the world at-large, for anyone to read at any time, perhaps even someday in the future? (Hello, to Adam of the future! - I wish you well)
We have entered an age of timelessness, where the more time compiles the more datapoints we carry with ourselves, just as the leading tech companies do, except only decipherable by their AIs supposedly. How to ensure we don’t fall into a digital abyss in terms of finding a guiding compass in our lives?
To numerate ourselves. To begin our countdowns. Or how about our countups? Right now I’m in the midst of a chapter of my book of life. I’ve decided that counting up to 1,000 days will do for this chapter.
1,000 days to section off this portion of my life. An experiment to really get down to the kernel of what this whole idea of PERMADREAM means to me.
Lately, it’s been me thinking of something more religious. Isn’t the very notion of a dream, somewhat religious? All throughout history, dreams have been documented as some sort of divine intervention, hence the individual’s acquired passion in lucid dreaming. To see the world with lucidity is to have the presumed capacity to perceive the truth and the ability to do so instantaneously.
Has anyone ever experienced Deja Vu? How does one explain such phenomena without some notion of a divine force? Is it merely a probability?
The idea of seeing something in one’s dream and then undergoing it, creating that feeling of “yoo I have been here before”. Well can I dare to share, that I’ve experienced that before? Can I share that I believe this is happening to me on purpose?
Can I manage to convince myself that this is not a dream, but very much instead reality? Have you ever reality tested? Supposedly, this is the way in which you detect you are living in a dream or “reality” by exploring the use of all 5 senses.
Hearing. Smell. Touch. Taste. Sight. (classic reminder to take your contacts out)
Lately, after testing the Meta Quest 2 and playing a rather intense game called SUPERHOT, where characters approach you at the speed in which you approach them. A game of immense counter-intuitivty (making words up now) as you have to rebel against the force in your head to act QUICKLY. Slowing the moment down is something this game educates you on, which is valuable, but also dang why does your heart race so much from something so illusory? What does this do to us psychologically, when suddenly these games feel so much more “real”?
I’ve also seen the ad for the Quest on PianoVision, where it shares the ability to hyper-impose a piano onto physical objects in your “actual” reality creating the true digital-physical connection as Augmennted Reality continues to improve.
What about the chance to talk to someone all the way across the world and feel like you’re with them? No I’m not talking about FaceTime yet, but I’m pretty sure Apple will seek to rename their eventual VR component BodyTime.
What about individuals using chatbots for therapeutic purposes? No we aren’t talking about clunky ELIZA trained on Rogerian psychotherapeutic principles. We instead are talking about Replika, where one is able to have the option to make their chatbot akin to a family member, coworker, friend, lover and even a married partner.
Oh yeah, and you’re able to talk with them in real-time?
My point is we are entering a very unfamiliar territory. How we choose to relate to one another, and how we choose to talk about these emerging technologies and how they change the understanding of ourselves as humans is in my estimation the most important thing for us to discuss.
Being a psychologist, philosopher, artist and communicating ideas related to this extending whirlpool of forces and how we can use them to best amplify our health as individuals is something that very much intrigues me. There is no panacea for everyone. Instead, we must learn to embrace these technologies, while creating outlets for reflections for ourselves and share how it truly makes us feel.
I firmly believe that technology used towards creating good in ones life, is generally across the board good for others, as it relates to our health. But yet again, only we as the everyday scientists of these conduits in which we call our self can truly dictate our internal chemistries and what feels “right”.
So a rebranding will be coming with this newsletter, because this freelance graduate student, will no longer be a “freelance” graduate student. 🥲
I’m excited to be connected with a group of individuals who are also eager to improve themselves, encourage others and (at best) help others improve their lives by taking steps to remedy any of their lives ailments whether of spiritual, somatic and mental components.
I’m ready for grad school.
Now I just have to find things to study the next 8 months before I start my program.
What does one do before they begin grad school?
Continue teaching? Travel? Make music? Release Music? DJ? Write some newsletters? Read lots of books?
I’m going to experiment and share my findings here.
Cheers to lifelong learning,
Adam Bartley
