Washington L.O.W.F.I

Posts Tagged ‘DJ Camp’

Recently, I met up with Taos Public Radio program director, producer, and radio personality Ben Camp. Along with Ben was his cohort, DJ Elario, who comes from a long line of New Mexican medicine people. Elario’s brother is a medicine man, and Elario is an apprentice. What I found interesting is that right before I arrived, Ben had a sighting of an apparition. He talks about it here. It’s ironic, for last year he was saying that he is quite the skeptic, who never has paranormal experiences.

Birdman painting from Rio Puerco, close to where the Camp/Elario interview took place.

Ben Camp (BC): [When I encountered the entity] I got scared. The hair on my arms stood up. I looked over, yet didn’t see anybody. It was pitch black. I finally got in my car and drove off. I convinced myself that I was spooking myself. [It was like] a horror movie. When I came back, my hair was [still] standing up on my arms. That’s the honest truth.

Andy Colvin (AC): What do you think was going on?

BC: I think I was [maybe] trying to creep myself out, psychologically. [I was] thinking that there was somebody there, when there wasn’t.

AC: Could it be your unconscious coming out?

BC: I don’t know. I thought I heard somebody there. I was jumpy. When I got back, I couldn’t overcome my irrational fear of the unknown.

AC: Maybe you have a psychic link with someone. I had that happen once. I walked into our garage a year or two after my father died, and I heard “him” speak to me. It was right after I saw the tree entity on Woodward Lane. One explanation for this is that my subconscious wanted to experience Dad again – to hear his voice – and so re-created his voice in my head. In order to make it seem more genuine, it made it seem like it was outside of myself – as the ancient Greeks reportedly did.

BC: Whoa… I didn’t hear any words, but I thought I heard somebody there. I don’t know why I would be scared. [Normally] I would just walk over and take a look.

AC: Isn’t your dad a master of the game Go?

BC: Yes. The game’s [essential] structure resides in momentum. It’s all about deceiving people and taking advantage of their attacks, turning their attacks on themselves. Computers don’t really understand momentum [so they can’t compete as well in it].

AC: Physicist Rob Godbey, whom I interviewed for the reality series, feels that the study of “probabilities” and creativity should be stressed more in the educational system.

BC: Yes… As a way to get kids thinking that way, my father was really into teaching Go at the Waldorf Schools in Seattle. An enemy’s advance doesn’t have to be an advance. You can turn it around, like in martial arts.

AC: There’s a Native American story about that – about a woman and the Thunderbird. Thunderbird was coming down and scaring people, so the old lady went into the longhouse and built a fire. She got some stones, threw them in the fire, and got them really hot. When the Thunderbird came to the door, she acted like she was eating the rocks. She picked them up, turned sideways to him, and made them look like they were going into her mouth. She was actually throwing them behind her… She said, “Oh these are really good! Mmm…”

BC: So he ate one?

AC: Yes, he bursts in and eats the rocks. It teaches him a lesson, and he never comes back again. That’s an example of turning your enemy’s momentum around.

AC: The first thing that we said to each other today was, “How can you really know what you’re seeing is the truth?” I think that question comes across in that piece you just did. It places it in the realm of the paranormal. Maybe there’s some energy moving around here today.

DJ Elario (DJ): Yes, you never know. Maybe I will touch on a point that might make somebody else realize something. You never know [the importance] of what you’re saying, you know? I think it’s all just sent from [elsewhere]. There’s a different energy out there making us [or] not making us, whether we know about it or not. [But] we can choose to participate in it, if we want.

AC: Several people I’ve interviewed recently have talked about this inner struggle. They seem to be saying that there are sometimes battles within yourself between “good” and “evil,” and that supernatural entities seem to show up at those times. In that “battle,” Einstein thought that creativity, or imagination, was more important than knowledge.

DJ: I [don’t] like to say “good and evil” because people right away take it as religious. [But] I was telling Ben today that I thought I had met you before somewhere. You looked familiar to me. When we picked you up today, I told Ben, “I’ve met this guy somewhere before.” [But] we’ve never met.

AC: That topic comes up a lot with me. I’ve been told that in every city I’ve lived in, that I more or less have a doppelganger. Harriet claims that she saw my doppelganger in Mexico and in Greece. I met her friend who was with her on those trips, and the friend was eyeing me as if to say, “Man, that was you.” But I wasn’t there. I keep hearing that people have seen me in places. Maybe I was cloned, or maybe I’m a “Manchurian astral projectionist” – someone who astral projects but doesn’t remember doing so.

The latest incident came in Dec. 2007, when a waiter at Flying Fish restaurant in Seattle told me that he had waited on “me” several times in Los Angeles… According to the book Garuda: The Celestial Bird in Indian Art and Literature by Shanti Lal Nagar, the “English counterpart of the Garuda has been believed to be an eagle… In South Africa these birds are popularly known as fish-eagle.” Hence, the term “flying fish” can be interpreted as an indirect reference to the Garuda.

DJ: You know, maybe we’re all going the same way. I believe if you just listen, you’ll see what’s real. But it’s so hard to listen most of the time, because we’re attracted to things like TV. The media is the strongest blanket over peoples’ eyes nowadays. It controls how we feel and what we should think about. It [selects] the images portrayed to our kids. A lot of kids around the world are sold a dream. I’m one of them, you know? Maybe it’s just a plot to keep people reaching for what’s not there…

AC: You seem to have broken free. Maybe you’re reaching for your higher Self.

DJ: Yes, or maybe it’s a form of redemption. It’s hard to say because once you start to pinpoint it, “they” change the program a little bit. You can’t really explain it because it keeps changing.

AC: That’s what happens with light. When they try to pinpoint light in a specific location, they find that it has moved. It changes the moment you observe it, and it instantaneously transmits information about those states of change to nearby particles.

DJ: I feel that that is what this energy is… As soon as we find this [or that] truth that we’re looking for, it’s going to change. There’s [always] a “higher” truth.

AC: The higher truth of change and regeneration? The cycle of life?

DJ: Yes, the cycle of life, whatever life is. Life is a dream to me. Most people go to sleep to dream. Then they wake up to go to work or whatever. I go to sleep to rest, and I wake up dreaming. I wake up to dream. Sometimes I can’t believe where I was yesterday. Was I really there, or was that one of those out-of-body experiences? You never know.

AC: Yes, because time is always in the now. The minute you start to try to go back and put a concept on it, it’s gone.

DJ: It’s funny… You need time to reflect on time. We have this now but in a little while, time’s going to take me somewhere else. Who knows where I’ll be? Who knows if I’ll even see you again?

AC: The sages say that time is absolute, and that our lives are stamped by a pre-programmed destiny – like a computer program. At the same time, the most responsible way for us to respond is to act as if we have free will.

BC: I’m for creating your own “reality control.” If we look at things as [within] our control, we’re not just existing in a set of circumstances we didn’t choose…

DJ: Don’t you think that maybe you create your own decisions? Maybe you don’t have control over the whole process of the whole movement of the world, but you do have control over your decisions. You get dealt with circumstances, but you do have a decision in those circumstances – that is what you control.

AC: I would concur with that. In an overall sense, you didn’t have any control over your birth, or how you got here – at least consciously. Yet you do have control over some things, like your responses, your ego boundaries, and your decisions, good or bad.

DJ: Maybe you [indirectly] control where you’re going to end up. Even though we still don’t know where we’ll end up by making these decisions, maybe we just go with [the] chain reaction. All you control is your decision in one split second, to either say something or not, walk or not walk, smile or not smile – whatever it is.

AC: It’s like you’re another electronic chip in the electrochemical flow, as it goes through organism after organism.

DJ: Who’s to say what you saw wasn’t real? It wasn’t viewed by anybody else [but] you yourself were there. I’ve been in a few crazy places, on drugs and off of drugs. It’s kind of like The Matrix, you can either take the pill or not. Do you choose to take the pill and take yourself out of that comfort zone and see where you end up? Because I don’t believe drugs destroy lives; I think people destroy their own lives. They just choose to blame it on something else. It’s easier to say “drugs made me do it” rather than “those were my own decisions.”

BC: There is a parable called The Empty Boat. I’ll paraphrase it… It says that if you’re on a boat on a river, and there’s another guy in another boat on the river, and he starts coming towards you, you’ll get more and more frustrated [and] emotional, especially if he hits you. But if the boat’s empty and it’s coming towards you, you don’t experience any of those emotions. You won’t get angry if it hits you because you see it as an event, or curiosity [brought on by the cosmos, not some other person].

DJ: I’m for putting your whole self in the boat, dawg. [Unfortunately] if you try to put more meaning into your life, the world [often] tries to take away that meaning [by] using everything against you. I guess that’s the balance of life [but] I’d rather have my boat full.

AC: The empty boat helps us not be attached to the outcome. There’s no one there to blame. Regarding Elario’s comment, I would say that you can put everything into a full boat as long as you’re not overly attached to your expectations. It’s better to experience things directly, without conceptualizing. For instance when you’re onstage performing, it’s best just to be there in that moment, without conscious thought. If you are not there, people will know and will think you’re faking it. They want to see you in the moment.

DJ: I can connect with that [because] I’ve taken every single moment that God [has given me. If] you say “God,” people usually see a man sitting on a throne [but] God to me is just the essence itself. Whenever those chances where put my way, I took every single one. I tried to make it the best experience it could be. There have been times when I’ve chosen not to be there, but most of the times I have. I’ve noticed that after those experiences, people look at you a different way. You start to somehow create their thoughts. With your actions, you’re creating their thoughts… All of a sudden you become something to them: something to look up to, something to believe in – maybe a legend. There have been a lot of great people in this world. I think it was because they knew something. Something was shown to them that they had to express. They were basically here to do their job, or not. Either way you’re going to face death, whatever death is… Most of us are scared of it. I’m scared of death, but only because nobody can sit here and tell me what’s going to happen after that. I think [the answer] is within myself. When I’m finally ready to admit to myself what it is, that is probably when the transition will happen. Nobody [else] will even know it; it’ll just be like a blink [of the eye] – an ending and beginning at the same time.

AC: The mental processes that you’ve been practicing all along will probably just keep on happening, although on a less conscious plane.

DJ: You just leave your energy behind. You no longer have to be a physical, or be affected by the physical. You just are, or were, or have been, or will always be…

“Supernatural events have been reported for millennia (e.g. the miracles of Moses, Jesus, Mohammed); they have played central roles in history’s most important cultural transformations. They are frequently portrayed in the world’s greatest art and literature. The majority of the U.S. adult population believes in paranormal phenomena. In times past, the supernatural was seen as all-encompassing, providing a ground for existence, but it was also recognized as irrational and dangerous. In academe now, those ideas are viewed as quaint. [But] it makes sense to reevaluate those older, forgotten, marginalized, and discredited ideas [for] they can expose the limits of ‘rationality.’ Deception is frequently encountered with the paranormal (via hoaxes). Consider the trickster figure… The trickster was an important figure in many ‘primitive’ religions, but curiously, he is now rather neglected. Paradox, ambiguity, and marginality typify both [the paranormal and the trickster]. Marginality is a type of anti-structure [that is necessarily] anti-institutional. It is a salient characteristic of paranormal groups. Low status is vested upon those who conduct parapsychological research. Conversely, opposition to such investigation (i.e., CSICOP) has attracted endorsements of many elite scientists with little knowledge of the paranormal. [However] the paranormal does not lack large institutions to promote it. In fact, enormous industries are devoted to it – but portray it as fiction. Those businesses gross hundreds of millions of dollars annually (at least).

“Precognition and psychokinesis (PK) suggest that an effect can precede its cause. In lab studies, it is often difficult to ascertain who caused any [ESP or] psi effect. Psi accompanies processes of change, transition, flux, and disorder… The pattern extends from individuals to entire cultures. Times of personal change are associated with psychic functioning. Groups that engage the phenomena are typically unstable and rarely institutionalize successfully. During cultural transitions, paranormal phenomena gain greater public prominence. The late 1960s and early 1970s in the U.S. were times of accelerated social change, and they [saw] a surge of popular interest in the paranormal… Status differences [were] involved. Status is one of the central issues of this [research]. When examining any pair of persons, groups, or nations, one member typically has a higher status. Psi subverts these distinctions. Telepathy and psychic healing suggest that the dividing line between self and other is not sharp. PK challenges the mind-matter demarcation. UFOs are liminal and anti-structural. They have properties in common with angels, spirits, fairies, and demons. Psi has the properties of the betwixt and between, of transitional spaces, of the liminal and interstitial. Liminality involves an equalizing (or even an inversion) of status, a blurring of distinctions. One of the trickster’s duties is to lower or invert status and induce [events which can lead to] revitalization. He has no fixed shape, form, or image. Primary characteristics include disruption, deception, lowered sexual inhibitions, psi phenomena, and [social] marginality. Personification [into creatures like angels, werewolves, the Virgin Mary, Bigfoot, or Mothman] provides a way of organizing this melange [of characteristics] that otherwise seems incoherent.

“The trickster is difficult for scholars. The usual scientific concepts are inadequate to fully explain him. He has many meanings and cannot be reduced to a single interpretation. He resists being placed in any single category. That’s why [my research] covers such a range of topics – from ritual clowns who eat excrement, to experiments with random number generators, to literary criticism. The diversity is the reason so few people have any comprehension of the scope of the trickster’s relevance, including his pertinence to psi. The bureaucratic antagonism to psi is not a conscious conspiracy. Those who act in concert with the prejudice are not aware of the factors influencing them. This unconscious antipathy is a pervasive social phenomenon found in numerous cultures; thus not to be explained by the psychology of individuals. It demonstrates that social forces have an independent existence and that those forces can operate through individuals without them being aware of it. Both religion and science try to hedge off or repress contact with the supernatural [because it] stimulates change and disorder. The supernatural is irrational, but it is also real. It holds enormous power. We ignore it at our peril. It operates not only on the individual level, but at a collective level, influencing entire cultures. The witchcraft persecutions and the demagoguery of charismatic leaders are only two of many dangers. If we fail to recognize the limits of our ‘rational’ way of thinking, we can become victims of it. Parapsychology demonstrates that our thoughts, including our unconscious thoughts, are not limited to our brains. They move of their own accord and influence the physical world.”

-George P. Hansen, The Trickster and the Paranormal, pp. 422-430