Well, another EsoZone has come and went. This year, the intention was to keep all the good parts and improve what was lacking last year- interaction. Once again, the Watershed came through with more than enough space and filth for everyone. Luckily, there was far less preparation going in. Adam, Klint, and I were able to handle it ourselves pretty easily.

The unconference format translated very well. Last year, there were a lot of interesting ideas floating around, but sitting in a folding chair for hours on end was excrutiating. This year, it was all about creating and moving more than ideas. Garrett’s workshop on Hyatt’s self-deconstruction, another on altar building, and a collaborative comic book that got most the eventgoers so energized and buzzed we had to start turning lights out to get people to go home. Last year, they were so drained our music acts played to nearly empty rooms.

The next morning, the event got off to a very, VERY slow start. Doors opened at 11, but by noon when the sessions began, there a was barely a participant to be found. I’m used to tech events that start at nine a.m, but the EsoZone crowd seems to be quite nocturnal. One of the best features about unconferences was that we easily solved this by moving the sessions to later time slots and waited for people to trickle in. Saturday was the day of the big presentations- the ones my friends and I have been preparing for months.

First was Nick Pell’s motherfucker tantra. I, unfortunately, got sent out on an errand and missed most of it. Hopefully he will post some notes! The day gained speed with a session on electronic beats as invocation; meanwhile, in the lounge, once again we did the “impossible”- cramming 25 Discordians into a single room. Perhaps our angle this year, as Johnny Brainwash suggested, we should take a break freak-izing the mandane and give mundaning the freaks a try. He also notified us that since Discordianism is still officially dead, any work we do in the name of Eris happens in the underworld.

At this point, the event turned pretty introspective as frater zir led us to the Eztral Temple accompanied by the Psychetect’s binaural soundscapes. It was exactly what I needed to calm my nerves before doing my own presentation on fringe psychotherapy. Nick Pell rounded out the afternoon with a session on self-rebuilding with tarot and sex magic. I missed this one as well, hoping to snag a few more sales before the event was through. Outside, people got their fight on with Mu Ryu:

And then… it was on to the Subgenius Devival!

Thanks to everyone who came and co-created this event. It would have been nothing without you.

These guys will see you at EsoZone. Patterns will be coming soon.

Zeroing in on my presentation. Can’t give much away, but it should be fun. Here’s a tidbit from the Wikipedia entry on Gestalt Therapy:

“In field theory, self is a phenomenological concept, and is a comparison with ‘other’. Without other there is no self, and how I experience other is inseparable from how I experience self. The continuity of selfhood (personality functioning) is something achieved rather than something inherent “inside” the person, and has its advantages and disadvantages. At one end of the spectrum, there is not enough self-continuity to be able to make meaningful relationships or to have a workable sense of who I am. In the middle, personality is a loose set of ways of being that work for me, commitments to relationships, work, culture and outlook, always open to change where I need to adapt to new circumstances, or just want to try something new. At the other end, it is a rigid defensive denial of the new and spontaneous. I act in stereotyped ways, and either induct other people to act in particular and fixed ways towards me; or I redefine their actions to fit with the fixed stereotypes.

From the perspective of this theory of self, neurosis can be seen as fixed predictability—a fixed Gestalt, and the process of therapy can be seen as facilitating the client to become unpredictable, really, more responsive to what is in the client’s present environment, rather than responding in a stuck way to past introjects or other learning. If the therapist is working from some theory of how the client should end up, this defeats the aim of the therapy.”

K and I recently attended Barcamp 3 at Cubespace in Portland. In addition to inspiring me to finally get this blog set up, it also served as a test run for soma therapy, a subject I’m planning on presenting at this year’s EsoZone. The reaction was very good, and the conversation ended up flowing pretty naturally, something I assume will happen again this October. I figure asking people to breathe, evaluate their own posture, do a few simple exercises, and then analyze their own psychological armor is something that will basically present itself. And after attending a few un-conferences and seeing how engaging they are to participants, the last thing I want is to preach at people. Kinda why I picked anti-authoritarian psychology as a subject anyway. For more info, you can check out this Wiretap article.