Meeting #3

(photo: Annika studying astral projection)

Part 1
This week we did not have a lecture or research meeting agenda. We began by exercising our internal visualization skills with “Breathing” and “Mirror” imagination games from the fabulous book, Put Your Mother On The Ceiling, by Richard De Mille. At the end of this exercise we were already rolling with excellent questions, such as, “..if you close your eyes and you see darkness in the front of your eyes and you think of something, you can still see it. You can’t see it, but you can see it. How does that happen? if you rub your eyes, you can see shapes in the darkness, and if you rub your eyes again, you can see different shapes…why?”

Part 2
All independent research time. Everyone could go work in their notebooks, play games, ask questions or discuss their topic with a friend. Most chose to work independently or participate in general interviews or sketch audio/visual commentary. Not everyone wanted to do interviews or be videotaped. In the coming weeks, we will be working on creating high quality narrative interviews for the public. For now, we have some introductory, lower quality interviews, both video and audio clips.

Lia, age 7 1/2, Think Tank Interview

Lia: “I’m interested in… mythology… and some questions books don’t explain to me…. how gods are born, how magical creatures are born, why and how people became kings, the plants in the gods lands… and they don’t tell me the details of what really happens…”
Read along with the transcript here: Lia’s Interview Transcript (.doc)

Here are some examples of what the pets of the gods might look like according to Lia:

Spencer: “I’m comparing… a baby’s stomach… to the Milky Way.”

This is Spencer’s beginning of his list, comparing how parts in the human body have a correspondence to something in the universe. So far, he thinks that a baby inside the mother’s stomach is the same as the Milky Way. He also thinks white blood cells are the same as galaxies or stars. Although, he said that some galaxies may be be “bad cells” as well. He also thinks rockets are the same as lego rockets.

Warner: “…and then you die, and you realize what happened in your life, everything that you shoulda done better, like not financially or anything….spiritually.”

Read the transcript along here: Warner’s Stages of the Human Spirit Transcript (.doc), and follow along while looking at his notebook from Meeting 2.

This week, he also began to develop his theory of “energy” in spirits. Here is his energy map, as dictated to research assistant, Ashley North Compton:

On the opposite page (not pictured) it reads (as written by Warner), “So your spirit gets created and goes into an awaiting body. AND Your Body has short lasting and less energy and a Spirit has long lasting and a lot a LOT of energy and the Energy goes to Heavey Dutey energy OR good energy. Heavey Dutey Energy needs POWER and if they don’t have it they get Really phicical [physical] (killing)! IF they do get power they want more power and get Really REALLY ” ” phicical.”

(Annika listening to research assistant, A.N.C., read a book about Astral Projection)

Annika’s Notebook Excerpts:

Before (feelings)
“Calm, confident, ready for adventure”
What I feel about the current space
“Tiny, lazy, tired” Annika “feels she has all the room in the world”
Goals (for the first attempt)
1. Figure out that she did it
2. Get it straight / learn about how to do it

After
Annika felt “tired, like nothing, like air, mind felt blank and empty, but all this gush fell into it and it was heavy.”
Questions
1. “Am I really supposed to jump up, or do I do it in my head?”
2. “Am I really going to be able to do this.” (her own answer) “Duh.”

1st attempt, Annika saw nothing.

This is where she wants to go on her 2nd attempt.

Initial success.

Clara and Sylvie decided to consider aliens more together as a team and discuss this together. They were not interested in participating in interviews today, plus at the end, we ran out of time for them to really try to answer some questions. We will have to give them their own recorder in the future to capture the entirety of their conversations, but for now, here are some examples from their notebooks about aliens:

(Sylvie’s)

(Clara’s)

We’re excited for our library trip next week and our guest lecture on Annika’s topic of astral projection.

If you have questions for our researchers, suggested readings, or feel you could lecture on one of the topics presented by the children, please do not hestitate to comment or email us (heidi {at} earlyfutures {dot} com).

—
Researchers present: Spencer, Clara, Sylvie, Annika, Lia, Warner (6)
Research assistants present: Ashley North Compton, Devon Deimler and Zoe Friedman.
Next week: Library research, independent research, optional astral projection workshop by special guest expert, Gabriel Snyder.

Read more:

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2. Children’s Think Tank Meeting 4 Meeting #4 Summary: Our meeting this week took us out...
3. Children’s Think Tank / Meeting 2 Meeting Notes, Meeting #2 Part 1 Meet in group to...
4. Think Tank Notebook Each child in the Children’s Think Tank upkeeps a research...
5. Life, Death and Reincarnation Essay Warner’s Life, Death and Reincarnation Essay Ok so first is...
6. Presentations by Children Finally, here are the highlight clips from children who were...
7. Philosophies of Children In the past few weeks I’ve been focusing on obtaining...
8. Research Summaries The Children’s Think Tank completed their first session in December...