Hello everyone! I am glad I found this forum. I have been looking for a community to share my work with. I am new to fiction writing but I have to say it's an itch I have to scratch. I am used to professional writing on the graduate level and I haven't even found my voice in that yet! As an academic and a know it all, I'd like to get my hands on some books that teach literary devices, and methods to bring out the master writer in me. Know any good resources? I feel a little behind and undeserving of a masterpiece in Fiction because all through high school I slept through English classes. I missed out on so much good stuff! I blame it on sports mostly. But I will say this -- that which I invest in I always get good at. After all I was a state champion wrestler. I had fun writing in my first ever college rhetoric course. We had to write an essay a week. We took them into class and let our peers read the essays for feed back. One time a girl gave me a comment that made me feel like she didn't understand what I was trying to say. I thought it was just over heard head. But you know what great writers say," It's never the readers fault." In the end I knew my essay was rubbish. I mean who could make the argument that all art is beautiful? I cant wait to get started! This forum gives me a great opportunity to edit and comment on others work as well as hold my own to higher standards -- and I wouldn't mind winning a contest either. You can expect a lot of spiritual fiction, random short stories with spiritual themes, and personal experiences transmuted into fictitious characters. I absolutely love all spirituality's'. I sat with a very enlightened man once. I practically poured every spiritual experience I had into the conversation. I told them all! He was inspired but what he instructed me to do with my meditation was priceless. Lets just say before I met him I believed that the brain was teh most important organ in the body; makes sense considering I am a psychology major. But now I know that the space directly in the center of the chest bares the most fruit. Whoever you worship, concentrate on them while feeling your heart center and watch the magic happen! If anyone would be interested in an essay to be written about the importance of the heart center and why the brain is crucial but not the most beneficial place to consider subjective reality, let m know and Ill try to put my ideas on paper. I cant wait to meet you all, p.s. is this forum made by WordPress? this site is absolutely beautiful and has some great plugins Id like for a forum or blog I'm thinking of crafting. Jmatlack
Interesting poll: heart vs brain in a biological sense? Or as short hand for innate vs learned behaviour? I would be interested if it were based on the latter. In the mean time, please enjoy this Stephen King reading: -
Im not sure what category it would go in. I can tel you this. When a surgeon performs a surgery on the brain, your awake for it because there is no pain. Everywhere else in the body there is pain. That indicates, to me, that there is no reason to concern ourselves with how emotions effect the brain. Emotions, while they are physiological and measurable, are also only interpreted by by subjective means. For example if you see someone clench their fist and grind their teeth we would use the word angry. Later, we could discover that he was doing some serious goku style energy work. It entirely subjective! So why not study emotion subjectively as well? In that regard, the most notable place to study would be the heart. That's because we are keen to notice changes in breathing, pulse, and so many other physiological changes trigger awareness to the heart more often than anywhere else first. In an essay I will use research to back this proposal that the heart should be considered instead of the brain for emotional research. Its definitely just an idea and I'm almost ready to scrap it already but still, I might enjoy thinking this one through.
But surely your brain is filtering memories of equivalent behaviour and coming up with the best correlation. So your eyes see gritted teeth, send it to the the brain, your brain searches for examples of gritted teeth, the most common is anger, therefore it is a reasonable assumption that you are witnessing anger. Correlation obviously does not always equal causation, but we are fallible. Since the heart is utterly incapable of any of these functions and can only pump blood it would be a huge waste of time to even consider it. By the way, did you enjoy the Stephen King reading?
I did enjoy the Stephen King reading! In regard to quantifiable and rational data the brain is the only organ to look at. when looking at qualitative experience, although the brain comes up with words to describe it, what is being described should be taken into account. For example every culture since time immemorial has placed the heart center as the governing area on the body that attributes love. Most people, when they experience love, refer to their heart. Today, however, scientists are saying that is a fallacy and we should look at the brain for answers. Well we know what the brain is doing; the limbic system is engaged as well as the insula cortex and cingulate gyrus. These area are associated with emotion, compassion, empathy, and calm abiding control. We know that by practicing meditation these areas are strengthened. my argument is that in meditation, instead of making the point of concentration (point of reference) the third eye (forehead) it should be the heart center. This space between the breast is not the actual heart pumping blood, but something magnificent happens when you pay attention to it. there would be no reason to acquire quantitative data around this experience at the heart. It would not merit fruits, but self-reported qualitative data would! Anyway it's just a thought. You have a very rational mind I think pinkymcfiddle
