Level 4, Intermediate, Post 2, 'The Best Holidays/Concert Ever'

I'll talk about concerts. In my life I have participated in a lot of gigs as a performer with some metal or rock bands, and a few concerts as a spectator. In both cases there are some very good memories, nice experiences that I will never forget, specially in the cases when I was a performer. There are also some presentations and a particular concert that I didn't enjoyed that much, but in a long-term they also get special in some way, sometimes as a learning maybe. I could tell about the deep and inmersing experience in a concert of Interfæce (a Tool tribute band), or the goddamn great moment that I lived and enjoyed in a concert performed by Alice in Chains and Judas Priest (and other bands that I didn't care) at Movistar Arena (not a very good place for metal concerts). But I will talk about the goddamn awesome moment that me and my friends lived in a gig where my main band, Drainer, had the chance to participate. It was an event organized by students of FACSO to help to the mother of a student that died in a unfortunate accident. It was prepared in a week, and a lot of people prepared and brought things to sell. The idea of the gig was to attract the people to the place and that they buy the things. All happened at Patio de los olivos, and me and Drainer were ready to join the cause. The gig started at three o'clock or something like that, and it lasts like 5 or 6 hours. All bands and performers had 15 minutes to make their shows. A lot of students were there, and our friends went to hear us when we played. But is was not easy. We were almost the last ones, but the last ones talked to us to change our turns, and we accepted. That was good because my brother, the bassist, was getting late! But it was also complicated because there were delays in the event, and the FACSO personal were about to cut off the energy, and we were about to be the only band that wouldn't play! So the organizing group talk to us very worried and stressed, and I understood because making a gig is usually really hard and sometimes a real f****** s***. So I told to them, specially to the man in charge of the soundboard, that they explain the situation to the FACSO workers, asking for a little more time, and that they talk about the objective of the event. So everything worked, and we had exactly our last 15 minutes to do everything. So, for that moment, we passed from being nervious to being dying to play after we prepared, so the energy and electricity and atmosphere and the sound and everything were just goddamn cool and awesome, and we really enjoyed, one of our best performances, and one of my best life experiences. Here a video about it, it was in 2017:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NWVIB7pbaTQ

Level 4, Intermediate, Post 1, 'A Country I would like to visit'

The country which I would like to go is Vietnam. Why? Well, I am just interested, it calls my attention. Maybe these are some reasons: is a country with a lot of nature and forests, where there's even species of animals recently discovered. Also, is a country with a lot of history, in part a very hard history (but they won that terrible war); we must remember that Vietnam was divided in North Vietnam and South Vietnam, and there were a lot of problems about it. One of those episodes was related to Thích Quăng Đúc, a budist monk that burned himself until death, under total silence and calm, helped by other monks to protest against the repression from the government in South Vietnam. There is a monument in Vietnam in honor to that monk, that I would like to visit too. In Vietnam there are also a lot of budist temples, and they have a beautiful spiritual culture. Maybe I would like to study or live deep in that spiritual ways. Here some photos:

POST 10 >> EVALUATION OF BLOG EXPERIENCE / SOME REFLECTIONS.

It had been a very intense semester. All my subjects were well selected, but also they were very demanding. A lot of works and not a single usual test in class, with the relative exception of this english subject. I learnt a lot, that is the best thing that happened in the whole semester. The other great thing that happened is that I felt a lot of connections between the subjects during the semester, which made feel inspired for being feeding the central matter of my interest in the career.
In any case, not everything went so well. From all my semesters, this was by far the one with more delays in works delivery. But I am making it and I feel proud because of that.

About the blog experience, is not weird that it has remained as the main activity of the english subjects, because is funny to customize your own blog and talk about what you want to talk on them, even with some rules. For me is always funny to customize things, and it was interesting to write about some things that reminded me what I like and what I like to do. Nothing else to mention.

POST 9 >> THE TRASCENDENCE OF THE EGO-CONSCIOUSNESS, PART 2 (FREE/THEMED POST)

In the last free post I talked a lot about meditation as a practice, but not too much about its effects, or the concept of trascendence of the ego-conciousness itself. Neurologically speaking, the rest that meditation implies for the brain during the process is a state of mind characterized by a lot of synaptic activity. This could sound like a paradox, but it isn't. Something similar happens during the sleeping, with the exception that during the sleeping we can barely have control of what happens, and sometimes we have bad dreams or a very bad sleeping. It's very interesting the point about the aware quality of meditation. Some research shows how during meditation people learn to have a better control of their emotions, a more easy encounter with a lot of situations and a more prudent interpretation of some things. However, there are some studies that show that these results are, in most part, culturally influenced in the sent of a intentioned meditation. In other words, these studies said that meditation could be or not a budist practice. In any case, there are more research that shows other interesting results. One of the most importants, is the proven growing of grey matter in the brain during meditation. This is very interesting because it could be interpreted as an intelligence evolution during meditation because of a proliferation of neuronal connections. About this, my brother said to me once: "evil people can also meditate and became more intelligent". In any case, "intelligence" is a very complex concept.

Well, one more time I have run out of words, so, next time I'll talk about the concept itself. Farewell!

POST 8 >> A SUBJECT I'VE ENJOYED STUDYING THIS SEMESTER

Well, particulary this semester I have enjoyed all the subjects. In previously occasions of the class, I have mentioned one of them or things about it: Psychosocial Trauma. But today I will talk about another subject of this semester that I like very much: Psychosocial approaches to quotidian life. It is teached by María José Reyes, a great teacher who matters much the content of the class as the way how it is done, including the participation of the students. Consequently, one important thing that we do in every class is to sit in circle. For the teacher, when the class takes this form, the relations between its participants have differences in its dynamics, so the class happens in a totally different way: more horizontally, more equally, and able to us too see each other faces. The contents that we have seen include theorical and methodological approaches to undestarnd, conceive and investigate the quotidian life, from different epistemologies of social and human sciences. Also, we have to present logbooks of observations that we made in quotidian spaces along the semester (my group made observations in the market, other group made observations of street christian preachers, etc). Just yesterday was the turn of my group to present a text of Shotter called "The conversational font of social life", that talks about the interesting things that happens in our conversations, as a web and as individual and unique events of our daily life, and the daily life of the cultures, and how it builds our social reality and our ways to think and behave.

I like very much this subject for two important reasons: It talks about fundamental levels of the psychosocial phenomenons, and consequently it gives relevance to quotidian life in its observation and analysis.

POST 7 >> CARRER-RELATED WEBSITE OR AN EXPERT ON YOUR FIELD

Hi class! Today I'll talk about Ignacio Martin-Baró, who was a psychologist, philosophist and a jesuit priest. He was born on November 7th in 1942, in the spanish city of Valladolid. He studied in universities of Spain, Ecuador, Germany, United States, Belgium and El Salvador. But the most important place of his career was the Universidad Centroamericana "José Simeón Cañas" (UCA) of El Salvador, where he studied psychology, and also was a teacher. He is known for his work about Social Psychology, where he proposed and defended the idea that psychology has a close relation with the social and historical conditions of the territory where it is developed. Therefore, he writted a lot about psycho-social phenomenons in Latin America, and others related to the people experience of the social events and periods that they lived. His work was an important contribution for Political Psychology, Social Psychology and Community Psychology, and a lot of critical theories and disciplines. These are some examples of his work:

- An strange remedy for homosexuality: his legalization
- The complex of macho or the "machism"
- Psychology of the stroke
- Psychodiagnostic of Latin America
- Psychology of the salvadoran farmer
- Some psycho-social repercutions of the demographic density in El Salvador
- Social Psychology of the War: Trauma and therapy
- Social Psychology of the liberation for Latin America

I like him very much because he worked a lot of concepts and analysis of the relation between society, history and psychology, and that is what I am looking for in this career.

He was murdered by the army of the conservative government of El Salvador.

 

POST 6 >> THE TRASCENDENCE OF THE EGO-CONSCIOUSNESS, PART 1 (FREE/THEMED POST)

To talk about the trascendence of the ego-consciousness, we need to talk first about how this can be possible from our own experience. So, today I will talk about a proccess related to a practice and to an oriental phylosophy, specifically the chan budism (zen budism in Japan). This practice is the meditation. To be rigorous, meditation is a practice that a lot of cultures discovered naturally, even us. Is related to those moments when we want (and maybe we need) to be alone to think or release the mind from thinking; those moments when we feel lost and we want to find ourselves, when we are looking for a self-encounter. It's some kind of rest. A mind resting. But according to chan budism, is not any kind of resting, it's not like the sleeping. It's an conscient entering to a deeper and deeper calm. A deeper and deeper state of consciousness (for some people, maybe including me, it's not the same that state of mind, because the mind as we understand it commonly, is only one possibility in our consciousness).

How can we meditate?

Well, actually, this beautiful act is very simple to do... in theory at least. The only thing that you have to do is breathe and focus on your breathing. Breathing is something that everybody know how to do, with, maybe, some extreme exceptions. But breathing is one of those few actions that you can control and do on porpose, and when you don't, it is done automatically, always. If you feel that this it what happens with your breathing, then you can meditate. So, the way to start can be explain with steps:


1.- Look for a confortable place in a confortable moment, after you have, if it's possible, a good sleeping.
2.- Sit in this place, cross your legs, put your hands where you whant to put them, and be sure that you feel confortable. For some people, this could be problematic, but it's also something that you can practice.
3.- Close your eyes.
4.- Focus on your breathing.
5.- Begin to breathe every time deeper and slower. Every time deeper and deeper. Every time slower and slower.
6.- Let your consciousness become a peaceful and silent experience. At long-term, free of any thought.

0.- Necessary condition: you have to be genuinely determined to try it, even if it is just to explore it.

Meditation is recommended to be practiced one hour per day, if it is possible. If it's not, 10 minutes per day can work too. After a lot of meditation, some people have experiment something that the chan budism calls "illumination". It means the trascendence of the ego-consciousness. The ego is the "me". And a consciousness that realize the illusion of the "me", changes radically. But it is not something of one day to other. It is a patiently practice of the meditation.