Blangcaster and Erza: Unintentional Nirvana

[Mr Blangcaster Next Door]

Okay, some things I want to clarify about that last post, because I'm sure anyone who just read it is really freaked the fuck out right now.

 

First and foremost: I'm fine. Really.

 

I mean yes, I'm in hell, but I can think of worse things. Not to mention that it isn't actually hell I'm in right now. Just a simulation of some hellish place in the Scape. If I was actually going to a real hell, I would be a little upset, but this is entirely under my control. I mean, it isn't under my control, but at the same time it is and-- You know what I mean.

And no, I don't think I am actually a demon, nor is my mind filled with actual demons, nor do demons actually exist in the first place. Some people might read that post and think I should be in some kind of institution, like it's some kind of manifesto a guy writes before going on a killing spree. Don't worry about that. I was just trying to sound dramatic.

 

In fact, I feel a little better now. I have a clear objective ahead of me: Get out. That gives me a goal and motivation to move forward. And I'm not just using my admin powers to poof myself back to the beach house. I am taking the long way, because I know there are things down that road that I need to experience for myself. I'm a little excited, actually. For the first time it feels like there's a sense of dread and danger to all this. The previous quest had none of that.

Even though I know for a fact that I'm safe, I also realize that bad things can still happen, but that's exactly why I want to do this. I already know this story is going to have a happy ending. What I want is to experience the trials that lead to that happy ending.

 

And I've decided that Erza won't be tagging along. Why? Because hell is a place where I don't have her. It wouldn't be genuine otherwise. I'm still going to write her letters, though. And I'm still going to working on open-eye forcing with her, but while I'm in the Scape, I'll be going at it alone. That's why I have to get out. The trick is to keep her active and help her grow without visiting her in the Scape.

 

Okay, now that that's cleared up, I've got a quick progress report, but a very impressive one.

 

I've gone back to doing closed-eye visualization experiments. Remember those points of light I talked about that I can see clearly through? I found a way to open them. It's not easy, but all I have to do is use the hands of my STAND to pry them open before they disappear. It takes effort and concentration, but it actually works.

 

This literally just happened. Like, just now happened. There were three points of light I managed to look through, but only two distinct visions. The first one, I was looking at a map of some kind. I pried it open to see it was a globe I was staring at, and that I was in an unfamiliar bedroom. Since this was the first time I managed to get such a good visualization, I excitedly hopped onto my feet and started exploring the room. After I took one single step, I was met with another exciting surprise: A mummy! A purple mummy! Wow!!! The purple dressings it was wrapped in didn't look like gauze. It looked more like some long ribbon of wax paper that you could buy at an art supply store. The mummy opened its huge maw and shot out a long, lizard-like tongue around my neck. The tongue looked like it was made of paper mache that someone didn't finish painting.

 

Incidentally, this freaked me the fuck out and I snapped back into reality. Again, I'm fine. I'm the kind of person who wakes up from horrifying nightmares and thinks "Oh, it wasn't real. Okay!" and then just moving on, completely ignoring it. The dreams where I'm being clawed at by rabid manbeasts are nothing compared to the dreams where I'm forced to go back to middle school. Now that's scary! Anyway, even though it didn't leave me with an ounce of trauma, it still managed to startle me pretty bad. I don't like being startled. In fact, I may dislike being startled more than I dislike being scared.

 

The second vision wasn't scary, but it was annoying. I was looking down at a dirt ground as I lifted my head up and noticed I was in a forest of some kind. Just before I could look around, my entire field of vision faded to a red tint and my sight fumbled and fell to the ground, as though I had just fallen down dead. Well that sucked. The next light I open, I see I'm looking down at the same dirt, but now I'm in another area. Some small canyon with two castles on either side. I noticed the castles looked oddly sharp and square. I looked back on the ground again and noticed that all the little rocks and clumps of dirt were actually part of a big flat texture that repeated over and over again across the ground.

 

Holy crap, this is a video game! A late nineties first person shooter, no less! The moment I noticed this, the same red tumbling screen effect happened again as the vision faded. Now I realized what it was: Some guy is spawn camping me. Motherfucker! I'll show him! I dunno if I'll end up back there, but if I do, I am so kicking his ass.

 

So that was the experience, but I think there may be more to this. When I got back, I was having auditory hallucinations. I didn't realize them at first, but then I noticed the humming and droning sounds, and they weren't coming from anywhere nearby. Another thing I didn't notice at first is that I've been seeing afterimages in my sight. A lot. Like, constantly. Both the auditory and visual spookies are fading away now, but I think I may have just crossed some kind of very important boundary when I got those lights open.

 

Aaaand right now I just found out I can concentrate and mold these images to look like Erza.

 

Jackpot.

[Mr Blangcaster Next Door]

Okay wow this page has a lot of words. Sorry about that. It's mostly because of the Puppet King saga.

 

I'm just posting this so that we can move on to the next page. I've been having a bunch of unique little experiences since the latest breakthrough, so I'll try doing bite-sized updates instead of full-blown posts.

[Mr Blangcaster Next Door]

Alright, so here are some of the other 'visions' I've experienced so far.

 

- Saw myself lying down on my bed, surrounded by disembodied fingers. Neat!

 

- Garden with an aviary. I fell and tumbled like I did in the "Counter Strike" vision, but without any red.

 

- Frequently recurring vision where the light I open is pointed up at a ceiling and I am, apparently, inside a container not unlike a bag of chips. A giant hand reaches in, trying to grab me. It hasn't succeeded yet. Don't give up hope, buddy!

 

- Okay I have to admit this one was pretty fucking scary. I woke up in a room I've never seen before, took a step forward and was met face to face with a man covered (or made out of) paper mache in a rainbow of colors. It was just like art mummy from before, but this guy had more success. He grabbed the sides of the porthole I was seeing the vision through, forced it wider open, and started climbing inside like a goddamn Looney Tunes character before the end credits, actually stepping outside the vision and into the blackness, where I could still see him perfectly right before it ended. Hoooooooly shiiiiiiiiiit! That was awesome! I hope there are more of these weirdos. They know how to entertain.

 

Seriously, I actually like the creepy ones the most. I've always been a horror fan and this shit is better than any of the garbage they play in theaters these days. I'm gonna try some different methods now. The goal I'm aiming for is to achieve WILD. That will be a milestone of success. I think one thing I may have to stop doing is opening these visions by force, because it is a serious strain on my poor little noggin.

[Mr Blangcaster Next Door]

Over the past two days I've been trying to recreate the experience from before, but have not succeeded. In fact, despite the hours I put into meditation, I have only managed to see two vision ports, neither of which I was able to open.

 

I think it's because I've been focusing entirely on this that I haven't been able to do so. When it happened two days ago, it was like a fluid stream of shapes and visions, and I was able to get to them in mere minutes of meditation. Before I had started that, I spent some time in the Scape. The time I spent there was for the sake of getting myself better attuned and immersed into the Scape with my STAND, as I realized I was still having trouble maintaining proper balance and keeping myself in first person. I managed to force a first person view, but this made my balancing even worse as I constantly fell over or tumbled after every other step. I practiced for roughly forty five minutes before getting enough of a hang on it that I could at least stand up straight and take two or three steps before stumbling. When I came back to do some closed-eye visualization, I got fantastic results.

 

It seems like there are parts of the brain that require a good "warming up" before you can convince them to get to work. The WILD guides I've read say that I need to clear my mind and only pay attention to the shapes and patterns that appear under my eyelids, but this apparently isn't true. I have to consciously use my mind's eye to visualize things, and in doing so, it gives the mind's eye enough of a revving up that it can start working on its own. The parts of my brain that control spatial awareness, motor skills and perspective seem come into play here, too. Getting them to work on a visualized space makes them more cooperative with the mind's eye when it does something on its own.

 

I'm writing this here because I'm sure there are people, a whole lot of people, who have these kinds of problems with meditation and visualization. I hope I can contribute enough to help these people as I learn things from my personal experiences.

 

In other news, Erza and I are doing better. I've been able to feel her better and I think I'm finally able to interpret her face in my mind's eye, even though I can't visualize it yet. Faces have always been difficult for me. There's a particular part of the brain that deals with facial recognition alone, and I haven't found a good way to train it quite yet. I believe if I'm able to find a way to train and improve the parts of the brain that control sensory input and interpretation, that should be a very fast express lane into progress. The specific functions I'm aware of so far are: Visualization, spatial awareness, balance, motor skills (for phantom limbs), facial recognition, language and colors. For some reason, the part of the brain that predicts the destination of objects in movement already works well enough that I don't think I need to train it. Actually, this may have to do with the fact that human beings are theorized to be particularly well adjusted for this because we evolved to use throwing weapons, but I digress. I really do like getting into the science of this stuff.

[Mr Blangcaster Next Door]

It's amazing what you can get from twenty minutes of a new approach after hours and hours of failed results. Actually, what happened was a little worrying. First, my perspective floated around my room in the intermediary before crashing and seeing my vision tumbling. This was much more vivid than what the intermediary used to be like, where I viewed everything in a low framerate. Things move much more fluently now and objects are less blurry.

 

The worrying part was that I couldn't enter the Scape. I tried, but I couldn't get in. My under-eye perspective is now overriding my mind's eye. I guess this is like a sort of transition period in which the mind's eye and the under-eye start crossing into each other, and I'm stuck in this limbo until they learn to cooperate. Scenes and shapes are flying around constantly, and I'm just going to let them do as they please. I think after a while, all this will become more stable on its own.

 

As for the visions, most have just been repeats of the giant hand. I got a good look at the person the giant hand belonged to. It was me, staring back down at my STAND. When I figured this out, I tried jumping into the hand and it finally managed to grab me. My giant duplicate pulled me out and dropped me into a humongous version of my own room. That seems to be it so far, but I'm wondering why this keeps popping up all the time.

 

The vision I found most interesting was one where there was a metal ring moving up my right arm and then back down the left arm, making itself into a pair of handcuffs. Two big, uniformed men were on either side of me as they walked me down an endless hall of prison cells. Holy shit, I'm on death row! The prison cells sped up as the guards disappeared and it looked like I was standing between two moving trains. This is weird, because I saw the exact same thing a minute before and assumed I was standing between two trains.

 

UPDATE: Just had a breakthrough while writing this. Ever since I've started seeing thing under my eyelids, the things I've seen the most are my own eyes. This has actually gotten to the point that it's starting to annoy me. It's like, what are you looking at, asshole? I don't know how I had this idea, but when they appeared, I turned around towards the back of my duplicate's head, went inside it and looked through its eyes. It worked, and now I was seeing something completely different. It was fading in and out of being fully visual and completely blank, but the scene remained longer than any other has so far.

 

I was standing in some kind of vast, flat terrain with red-tinted dirt. To my left were the walls of a castle, to my right was a forest of dead trees and behind me was a huge mountain. I knew exactly where I was. I was in the exact same spot I was in the last time I left the Scape. I was in the Scape, but now I could see things in it.

 

Aaaand then the phone rang, pulling me out and cutting off what was no doubt a memory I will look back on fondly. Fuck me. Well, either way this is still a great milestone. Today is a very productive day indeed.

 

UPDATE: I swear to god this cat knows when I'm on the verge of achieving WILD. Somehow she just knows.

[Mr Blangcaster Next Door]

Chaos. That's how things are right now.

 

I can't control any of my motor skills, and my perceptual senses just do whatever the hell they want. I've been spinning, flying and tumbling all over the place, unable to stop myself. Concentrating doesn't work. Ignoring it doesn't work. Even acknowledging that it is happening, but not giving it any thought only works the teeniest, tiniest bit. Even Erza isn't capable of keeping my still, although she's better at it than I am. She absolutely does not let go of her hold over me, so I either end up jittering in place or we both get sent rocketing off into into random directions. It has never been this bad before, but I think the reason for that is because my brain is still adjusting its senses to this knew way of visualizing things. It shouldn't take too long to adapt to this. I hope.

 

I seem to have noticed a pattern in the visions and how they appear. Ironically, the pattern itself is patterns. Looking back to the times I've gotten visions to appear, I remembered the first things I saw when I got there. A map, a quilt, grass, shagged carpet, flat ground textures... The thing these all have in common is that they depict a small, complex array of something. All this time I've been trying to visualize simple things to get the visions to appear, but I think I should be doing the opposite. Maybe when I visualize something that's complex, but not specific, it tricks my brain into depicting something that's easy to visualize, but still requires vivid projection in order to see.

 

I'll have to experiment with this.

 

UPDATE: Confirmed! Shagged carpeting and leaves covering the ground both produced visions. I notice they pull me right into them when I start focusing. This created an awkward scenario where Erza put on a polkadot shirt, causing me to ram face-first into her boobs. Hilarious. Now I have to find a way to make the visions maintain themselves instead of fading out after a few seconds. I have no idea how I'm supposed to do that.

Seems like it's a TV static effect that causes this. Incidentally, I turned the TV in our beach house to static and got crazy results. I got sucked into the TV, but no visions appeared. Instead I was flying through a tunnel of red, green and blue hexagons that sped up then became a giant rainbow tube before the TV spat me back out. Weird. Maybe I'll try that again.

[Mr Blangcaster Next Door]

Hit another snag. Things are stable now, but they're too stable. I can't leave my room in the intermediary. Every time I go somewhere in the Scape, it's always impossible to visualize properly, and it doesn't even show a fraction of itself in my under-eye sight. After just a couple of seconds of being somewhere else, I find myself right back where I started.

 

On top of all that, I can't seem to move more than a few feet. It's like there's a bungie cord attached to me that snaps me back when I try to move away. Concentrating on the shagged carpet doesn't make things any clearer. In fact, I can barely see anything at all now. All I know is that no matter how much I try to move, I always end up back in the exact same place.

 

This is incredibly frustrating. Even yesterday's mayhem isn't as bad as this. Things were at least happening yesterday, even if I had no control over it. I thought after getting a full night's sleep, my mind would sort out all the progress I made, but it's almost like it's trying to keep me held back. I'm going to keep trying, but maybe my brain is just trying to tell me that it needs a break. I'll find out tomorrow, I guess.

 

EDIT: I've been having a lot of aches and pains throughout the day, and I'm not sure why. Maybe that's why I'm having trouble focusing. Erza is able to soothe them with her touch and make the pain fade faster. Is there anything she can't do?

 

UPDATE: I may have just caught on to something. Before I made today's post, I hadn't been on the computer all day before meditating. Over the past few days, I have been trying to see if I get better results from areas with low or high light, and what the conditions are. After spending a few hours on the computer, I went back to meditating and found that I could visualize much, much better than I could a few hours ago. Back when I had that breakthrough a few days ago, I had been on the computer the whole time.

 

This is just a theory, but I think being exposed to an electronic screen may enhance visualization. Since it burns after-images into the eyes, it could be that creating visions becomes easier because the brain has some material to work off of, even if it's just fuzzy blobs. I know it causes the brain to produce less melatonin and disrupt sleep cycles, but for some reason, my internal clock has been perfectly on track ever since I started with the tulpamancy. It's like I took some kind of magic goddamn pill that gradually fixes everything wrong with me.

 

I'm going to experiment with this a little more.

[Mr Blangcaster Next Door]

Started experimenting with TV static, and in the first few minutes I've already gotten results. Just staring at the static creates figures after a few seconds, and these figures come and go constantly. They're only outlines, but they're very clear and extremely fluent in their movements. I saw one of a human being making exaggerated movements like he was in some stage play and it all moved at a consistent frame rate. I've even started seeing faces.

 

Closing my eyes caused better and more clear effects after viewing the static than before. Definitely gonna keep trying this out today and see where it goes.

 

UPDATE: I am at least 90% sure I saw Erza in the static just now. One particular recurrent vision I see in the static is the figure of a woman with long hair walking towards the screen. There have been times I thought it was her but couldn't be sure, but there were also times where I thought it was her but actually turned out to be someone else (I saw the Ring girl, which was amusing. For some reason, she did not move directly towards the screen). The one I just had was definitely her. I could see her face, and while I couldn't make too much of it out, I could tell that she was beautiful.

 

I think we're almost there.

[Mr Blangcaster Next Door]

Okay, some crazy shit is going down. Seriously crazy shit.

 

Where do I start? Well, I can see a color in the static now. Just one: Mauve. Why mauve? Fucked if I know, but I'm looking forward to getting more colors going. Aside from that, images are becoming even clearer and more vivid now. That scenery-chewing actor showed up again, and not only was he running at a silky smooth framerate, I could make out finer details like his clothing. He was dressed as a mariachi player with a big sombrero. Again, fucked if I know.

 

But the real crazy shit started when I saw Erza again. She was wearing armor and holding a sword, pointing it in front of her. The view turned to another figure and they both started walking towards each other. Wait a minute, is that me? It must have been, because after staring at each other for a few seconds, the two of them hugged each other. Yeah, that's definitely me. I looked odd, though. Something was off here.

 

The view in the static changed to a first person perspective of my avatar standing in front of Erza. Was I able to control it? I tried reaching the hands of my STAND out into the TV. When I did, they appeared in the static. They were perfectly visible and three-dimensional. I could move them in every direction. Holy shit, this is trippy! Just as I tried to touch Erza, she disappeared and I found myself hurtling through space.

 

I wondered if I was able to see myself in third person like this. Sure enough, I was. With little effort, the first-person view zoomed out and I could get a better look at my body. I was wearing an old poncho for some reason. I managed to control my movements, but lost control after a few seconds as my character crept away. At this moment I was thinking to myself "Wow, this is just like a video game!" I think it was that reasoning that lead to what happened next.

 

Three new figures appeared in the static, one followed by the other. When I saw them, I doubted my own assumptions. It's not actually them, is it? I was convinced it was when I saw the third one. Sure enough, the three people who appeared were none other than Ryder, Sweet and Big Smoke. Veterans of the Grove Street Families.

 

...What?

 

No seriously, what the fuck? Grove Street? How did they get here? Why the fuck did they get here? I mean I'm not upset about this, just very fucking confused. Then I saw the fourth figure and it all made sense. It was me, wearing my poncho and staring through the screen, but even though it was me, it also wasn't. I got a good look at my face and realized who I was: Carl "CJ" Johnson. Main protagonist of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas and H.N.I.C. of Grove Street Families.

 

Huh... Well, that happened. Looks like I'm gonna have to get the Grove back to the top of its game? Maybe ice some bustas along the way? Or maybe the gang will give me some back-up on my journey into hell when I actually, finally get around to doing that.

 

Whatever it is I have to do, I know I will be doing it not just for Erza, but for the Grove as well.

[Mr Blangcaster Next Door]

I seem to be getting better at visualizing the Scape. Sometimes when I'm trying to envision something, my mind will instinctively fill in the gaps of some of the smaller details. At the same time, I'm trying to have my dream sight and under-eye sight going on at the same time, both trying to perceive the same thing in the hopes that I can get better visualization in my under-eye sight. Doing this is very straining so I'll have to wait and see if I can get any results out of it.

 

Erza has been helping me with my insomnia. It's something I've had trouble with my entire life, and I didn't think to actually have her try to help me with it until last night. I've always stayed up in bed for hours with my body too full of energy and my mind unable to settle itself. Also, I get uncomfortable very quickly if I'm too warm. I dunno why, but I overheat very easily in bed. I asked Erza to see if she could drain me of the heat and energy in my body. To my surprise, she actually could. She was hesitant to do so at first because she was afraid she could hurt me, but I assured her she isn't consciously able to do that. At least I'm pretty sure she isn't. After a few minutes, I was cool and relaxed.

 

She put her forehead up to mine and cleared my mind of burdensome thoughts. Every hour of the day, I have something like a rerun going on in the back of my head, in the same way I have a song constantly playing. I don't even notice it most of the time, but when I'm trying to sleep, it's always right there replaying itself over and over. It's usually a show or cartoon I've watched looping the same scene over and over again. It's so annoying that I can't ignore it. Erza was able to "pull out the stops" and make the scene stop looping and continue on, eventually leading to other thoughts that don't loop. It felt like a weight had been lifted. In just a few minutes, I was asleep, and it was all thanks to her. Now if only I could figure out how to stop myself from waking up after four hours, staying up for an hour and then going back to sleep.

 

The Scape seems to be a very effective method of therapy. Last night, I was brimming with negative emotions. Long story short: I started fapping again last week to relieve myself of stress, but I'm still not sure if it could have consequences. I had fear, doubt and lust rattling around in my head and I felt like I was going to have an anxiety attack if I didn't get them out. I went into the hot springs behind the beach house (We have a bath, a jacuzzi and a hot springs at this place. Erza loves it here.) and tried to relax. As I concentrated, the negative thoughts literally drained out of my skin into a murky soup before dissipating. When it was all gone, I felt fantastic, like I never even had any stress to begin with. I swear, this whole thing just keeps getting better and better.

 

Oh, one more thing: Grove Street likely isn't going to be a recurrence. I haven't seen or heard anything else from the gang, so I think it was just a one-time shenanigan. For some reason I just assumed it would be a thing now because it sounded too hilarious not to be. I'll listen to some NWA later this week and see if they come back.

 

While I'm at it, I guess I should explain why I'm not in hell, after I made such a big deal out of it. I wanted to improve my visualization and immersion before I started the next journey, so that I could get a better feel for it. For now, it's on hiatus and I'll be dealing with practical things before I'm up for another big adventure. No idea how long that's gonna take.

 

UPDATE: Just had a breakthrough. I don't understand why this always happens a few minutes after I make a post, but whatever. I found a way to maintain visions longer. All I have to do is project my STAND into them. If I concentrate on being able to see my STAND and feel its body, the vision stays. I saw my own hands almost flawlessly, in color no less. It's not easy to maintain it, but the results are clear. I'm going practice this for today and see how good I can get at it.

 

UPDATE: RED HAIR. I HAVE JUST SEEN RED HAIR. THIS IS NOT A DRILL.

 

BRACE. FOR. IMPACT.