OAR16 Gathering starlight

Mystical Camping, Old Age Retreat 2016 day 5 on 3/4/2016. Here's what I wrote at the time.

Vision

I need to gather some starlight. Just thought of it as light that has traveled this huge distance. It must have different qualities or abilities or consciousness than photons emitted near here, from Sun or planets.

Maybe I should do yoga in the next two hours so can start star-gazing from sunset on.

I saw a star over there but when focused it wasn't there. Still isn't. Is it possible that I perceive way more stars than I see with eyes? That is that eyes receive, signal goes to visual cortex in brain, and mind recognizes as a star. Could be that this screen blinds me, so my funky old mechanisms can't adjust.

Dedicating this night to star-gazing. I watched as sun went down. I waited for the first star and it was Sirius.

Not to look for patterns that are familiar. Not to look for constellations. Not to look for the brightest stars. Look for the dimmest I can see. It could be small close and new. Or it could be far and older. If it were farther, the light would have been traveling longer and I would get older messages. I need perspective. As a base line of being beyond what came to me after birth, was taught to me by older people, studied or learned from old trees like the Bristlecone or lichens.

At one point the whole environment seemed star-studded. We only see a tiny bit of stars with eyes or telescopes of wavelengths, even radar and pulsar are limited. Actually there are or is nothing but stars. We project an empty space unknowingly. Actually I don't know the relationship between stars and space. But in that perceptive moment of insight, stars are allspace filling.

Imagine a dome or sphere of stars close packed. There was a sense that they weren't like marbles, they were paths, so more like indefinite thin cylinders. OMG I guess they could be called fibers. Maybe I am connecting with Castaneda here. But there was also a vision of honeycomb or hexagonal shapes close-packed along with the perception that it wasn't a surface or a mesh. Take it as a suggestion of some aspect of this connection.

Back to Old Age Retreat 2016.