Solar Power, Sunlight and human aggresive behavior Options

It was high noon, EST, when I walked out my front door and had a cigarette. I looked up into the sky and saw it's brilliant blue, fluffy white clouds dotting the sky. The very feel of it was very positive. I immediately felt calmer and more at peace. It got me thinking of a few things, like my days in High School, where I would have to get up at 6:00 AM every morning, and finish at 2:30 PM. I remembered the zest for life I had then, and I compared it to now, when I wake up just an hour or two before noon, and stay up well past midnight, mostly indoors and avoiding direct exposure with the sun and almost any light, and where I go day to day feeling mostly like crap. I started to wonder:

Do people who wake up early have a mean streak? Or are they like me, who enjoy peace of mind with their sunlight? Am I just a solar-powered organic meat-bag? Is there any correlation with sunlight exposure and feeling at peace?

Then I made the resolve to ask SM: Is there a proven correlation between behavioral tendencies and sunlight exposure?

I vote that people who have more exposure to sunlight and more daylight hours have a generally deeper sense of inner peace. From my observations, people who get up later are more irritable, hand-in-hand with people who stay up later.

Thoughts, comments, and votes! Gimme, gimme!

ain't the cosmic signal wonderful?

for those that are aware of it (even subconsciously), it is a calming nervine

for those that are unaware of it, it is an irritant they can't explain or medicate except with major depressants

signal.pdf attached story

The Cosmic Signal
by Esoterica
Copyright 2007. All Rights Reserved.
Katie stretched her arms and rolled her head around on her shoulders – working on
the computer gave her a neck ache sometimes – the emanation coming from the screen
sometimes even gave her a headache.
She couldn’t wait to go on her long awaited vacation to the ocean – she was staying
right on the beach – and it was just her that was going this time, there would be
nobody else there to spoil her relaxing.
Her plane tickets came that morning and was near to bursting with the excitement –
even her coworkers had noticed the excitement radiating from her.
The next two days went uneventfully – just some last minute packing to do and
confirmation of reservations.
The big day came, and some small things came up to block her way to paradise, but
nothing she couldn’t handle quickly or sweep under the rug for while she was going
to be gone.
She always treated her vacation as if it was a permanent thing – choosing to live
for the moment and letting tomorrow take care of itself.
She made it to the airport, which was a madhouse with all sorts of people rushing
here and there, only to wait in line when they got there.
The plane flight was a little bumpy, but she kept calm and blanketed the fear with
a image in her mind of the calm ocean.
She was going in the winter, which she really liked to do since there was hardly
anyone there at that time except her – and she got a really good rate – it was cold
even at the beach but she didn’t like swimming in the ocean anyway, there were too
many things in there with teeth or that stung.
She preferred to just sit and relax – on the beach outside, if it wasn’t too cold,
or inside with a nice view of the slowly rolling waves if it was.
She wasn’t into going out – preferring instead to stay at the beach house and
‘commune with nature’ as she called it.
She arrived at the smallish beach house – she didn’t see it at first since it was
almost the exact color of the ocean – only the brighter sand gave a hint to the
house being there.
She settled in and put away the small amount of groceries and clothes she had
brought, drew back the drapes and was astonished at the changes the beach had
undergone since she had been here last year – the water was much closer than it was
before – almost up to the foot of the boardwalk used to access the beach.
“Such was the nature of things – always in dynamic flux.”, she remembered an old
organic chemistry professor saying – the more we try to hold things the same, the
more they try to change – like the other end of a see-saw tilting up, as the end we
are on goes down.
Her life never changed much, she thought, except for people around her – employees
would come or go, or some family member either would die or were born – and it was
always a quest for her to find rest from the stress of her job.
She liked doing her job though – was that such a crime?
She settled into the big soft chair she had turned toward the window and sipped on
a glass of warmish fruit juice – no time for it chill yet – and then she saw him
walking down the beach, not at the edge of the waves, but up nearer the house along
the high tide mark.
He had golden hair and was brown as a nut from the sun – he was looking for
something in the wreck of stuff that gets washed up by the high tide.
She got up reluctantly when he lingered too long, disrupting her rest, and went
outside onto the deck-like balcony and yelled “Hey, this is private property!” at
him.
He looked up – his eyes were washed-out pale blue-gray, almost silver, then he just
waved and continued to paw through the discards of the tide.
She, feeling a little angry at his offhandedness, shrugged on a jacket and walked
down the length of the boardwalk connecting the beach with the house.
He looked up and smiled - “Well at least one thing about him wasn’t perfect – he
had a crooked smile – but it looks natural on him.”, she thought.
“This is private property.”, she said again.
“I’m looking for something.”, he replied, “then I’ll be gone soon enough.”,
rebuking her with his tone, if not his words.
She said “The owners...” - and then stopped as he pounced on a straight bit of wood
within the pile – it was about five inches long and was covered in buds, almost
like a tree could grow from it if it was just planted in the earth.
“Thanks.”, he said, brushing off his trophy, “Just what I was looking for.”.
“What is it?”, she asked, “What’s it for?”.
“I’m going to make a magic wand.”, he said, smiling and walking down toward the
water, leaving her standing on the edge of the boardwalk with her mouth hanging
open.
Surely he didn’t say what she though he said – she shook her head.
He had moved on down the beach, but she stood there awhile, listening to the sea
birds and the ocean and the wind – it was too cold to stay out long because she
would get sick – but this was something she didn’t really notice before – the waves
rolling in in slow time, the incessant blowing of the wind that seemed to be
following the sun and the noise the sand made when it blew around and hit the
boardwalk.
She shivered and went inside, fearing getting a cold – but she noticed the same
sounds were inside – muted but still there – something she had never noticed
before.
She resettled herself into the big chair, put her feet up and relaxed to the waves
of sound mixing with waves of water and wind and blowing sand.
As she slipped into a light sleep, she realized the sound was out of phase with the
visual, then the sound took on a buzzing quality and her eyes closed – her
breathing became slow, the long indraw with a fast exhale that purged her lungs of
carbon dioxide and facilitated the body’s recovery and rebuilding processes.
She dreamed.
There was someone with black hair in a white robe – it was a girl, young – no, it
was a fun-loving middle-aged woman with golden-red-blond-hair and a bright white
smile – she was both at the same time – the double-woman beckoned with her finger
and Katie flew to her over the tops of the waves – she could feel the spray on her
feet.
The double-woman held up her hand and in her palm was a picture, and it changed
over time like a slide show, except there was no sound.
The pictures were extraordinarily clear and precise, but they had no meaning –
still, Katie looked anyway as it seemed that that was what the double-woman wished
her to do.
There was a old oil lamp like a gravy boat with the wick coming out of the spout –
and a young blond-haired boy who turned a small stick over and over in smoke rising
from a very tiny fire.
Beneath her bare feet in the ocean (she herself was wearing a robe, but her’s was
brown and green intermingled), there was a flash and everything went black for a
moment – then Katie awoke in her big chair.
The altered reality feeling of the dream persisted for a good while and it wasn't a
bad feeling so she held to it and the dream as long as she could.
The next day dawned sunny and bright but with the chilly bite of high pressure in
it.
It was just another day in paradise and she puttered around a bit around the house
and made a quick search of the frozen beach to stretch her legs and look for some
neat shells.
She always felt so open here – something she didn’t have at home – the grandness
and hugeness of it all – as if you could stretch all your senses as far as they
could go and still you’d come nowhere near the end.
She saw that boy again – she was tingling with the idea of going outside, but it
just so cold – he was bundled up in a big jacket and walked with his hands in his
pockets – acting like he was going somewhere not just walking down the beach.
She struggled to hold herself back and just watch from her armchair, but soon she
was struggling with her heaviest jacket and getting the key to lock the door behind
her.
She set off in the direction that he had gone, but was impressed with his ability
to keep so far ahead of her, then she saw a flickering light between two dunes and
steeling herself with her mind, she headed straight there.
He was there – somewhat out of the wind at least, and the light was from him
building a pocket sized fire from a few sticks and some black blobs like charcoal –
she wondered again about the wisdom of her impulsive desire to follow him.
She cleared her throat.
He looked up, startled, then after a few seconds of what appeared to her to be
listening to something, he waved for her to join him beside the tiny fire.
She clambered down into the dip between the dunes and said “Hi.”, to which he,
without looking up, replied “Hi.”, and continued tending his tiny fire.
“I hope that gets warmer.”, she said, shivering.
“Not what it’s for.”, he said – putting something into the tiny flames which gave
off a wonderfully sweet and clear smell as it burned.
Dream overlapped with reality.
She was in the same dream-like state she had in her dream and she wasn’t alarmed or
anything – he took her hand and walked her to the other side of the fire where she
stood breathing in the sweet smoke.
She watched him take out the budded branch and perform the same task she watched
him do in the dream last night.
“You making the wand?”, she asked.
He just nodded in the affirmative, all concentration at the moment, but he did not
rebuke her for disturbing him, so she just stood there, not desiring to do anything
else at that moment, but watched his hands as he drew the wand through the more
concentrated plume of smoke just above the flames.
It began to warm considerably within the dip between the dunes and she unfroze and
sat down on the sand cross-legged.
As she watched him, she unconsciously relaxed and leaving him to his dream-task,
she spread her senses out as she had in the dream.
She could feel his energy as he concentrated on his working with the wand.
Over and over he pushed and pulled the wand through the column of smoke and she sat
there on the warm sand, her head spinning with remembered dreams and feeling so
good like the way things should be.
Finally the fire died down and the wonderful smelling smoke was gone and she came
back to her senses as the wind sent icy fingers between the dunes again.
“Will i see you again?”, she asked.
“Tomorrow.”, he said – packing her off toward the beach house and even giving her a
short push to get her moving.
Her lungs felt clean and her spirit was free to soar along with her walking body –
she was truly in paradise if it weren’t for the cold wind which bit at her hands
and face.
She made it home and collapsed into the big chair which now smelled of mustiness
and dust to her heightened senses.
She had experienced something so extraordinary as to be unbelievable if she had
heard it told as a story somewhere, even by someone she knew well.
As she analyzed the events of the afternoon, the delightful smell of the tiny wand-
fire the boy had made returned – she thought it might have been incense but she
wasn’t sure.
It was all of the occult – she had dabbled in the new age addiction back when
everybody else was doing it, but she didn’t remember incense being so sweet – it
was more scary-ish breaking-the-rules kind of feelings she remembered from her
previous experiences than the sweet and just ‘right’ feelings she had felt this
afternoon.
She got on the internet and was astounded at the mass of occult and new age
materials and information that was available – but no way to smell the incense to
identify it by name – and she got a bad feeling from some of the sites on the web.
Still, she was interested enough to overcome her inbred caution and she saw that
there was a local ‘spiritual’ store – she would go tomorrow.
After visiting the store the next day she was more confused than ever – the shop
sold everything – truly everything – and there were instructions that made no sense
whatsoever, mixing traditions and stuff she recognized from a whole gamut of
different traditions – as if someone had taken all the totally different recipes
throughout the world for chicken pot pie and mixed them all together, ruining the
taste.
She even recognized two different spellings of the same ancient goddess called out
as if they were different entities supporting different ideas.
Before, she had delved into wicca and the nature based religions, but had not
joined in as they required being naked, something she was not prepared to do, and
some of the practitioners should have had second thoughts about, unless it gave
them some exercise, but now those simple nature worship rites were all mixed up
with ceremonial magick and faeries and druidism.
Katie shook her head, ridding it of the multiple images of all different gods and
goddesses and different times and cultures all overlaid one over the other.
She went to bed that night and walked the stars hand in hand with the black-haired
woman, and this time the woman wore a black robe.
The next day she was still in bed when there was a knock on the back door – the one
that faced the sea.
She got up and saw it was him – fairly panicked, she threw on some sweats and
answered the door – still unsure if he was harmless or not.
“You wanted to talk.”, he said smiling.
She thought a moment, and then something inside her said he was trustworthy so she
opened the door.
“C’mon in.”, she said, “The place is a mess – do you want some coffee? - where do
you live?”
“In a beach-front apartment with a couple of other guys – they like to party, but I
like the beach cause of the connection to the signal.”.
“What signal?”, she asked, feeling again the mysteriousness of the night before.
“The cosmic signal is the star song – the whole reason people come to the beach –
to be near the water and things that carry the signal.”, he said.
She digested this info – she always had known that had to be something - that there
was more to her addiction to the beach than just sand and sea.
“I love the sand and sea.”, she said and he nodded.
“Oceans, caves, trees, wind, sound, light – they all carry the signal to some
degree.”.
“People go to all these places, but they don't know why they really go there – they
just say its relaxing and stimulating and they feel better there, but its really
that in those places, usually outdoors, that they receive the signal – everybody
spends all their time in buildings and are always away from the connection to the
signal.”.
“So what is this signal?”, she asked.
“It’s the artifact of the energy that I call the Source – its really all the energy
in all the universes in...”
“Wait, you mean there's more than one universe?”, she stopped him by asking.
“Some think there are millions of them – all parallel time-streams stemming from
the same Source”.
“Wow this is pretty deep stuff!”, she started to balk and look away from him.
“Oh c’mon!”, he said, “you’re better than that – don’t pull the wool back over
you’re eyes just cause its more comfortable, not when you’re starting to see a
little bit – you know that when they say ‘open your mind’ they aren’t talking about
just accepting new ideas – they’re talking about removing the barriers from your
mind that keep new ideas out.”.
“Like last night when it felt like I could feel forever.”.
“Yep – and if you weren’t already open to it you would have never seen me.”, he
said.
“And what were you making the wand for?”.
“To help me knock out a clog on the signal – there are some people here and there
who are afraid of the signal, cause they know that if others can access it, then
the others will be empowered, and they don’t want that, cause that threatens them
and their power over the others – most of them are politicians, but there are
others who just don’t want people to ever advance or be free.”, he replied, a very
sad look upon his handsome brown face.
“Thats not fair!”, she said.
They talked for a long time, and after he went, she sat for a long tine in the big
chair just thinking about what he had said.
She dreamed again that night, and once more she saw the black-haired woman, who
held hands with the golden-haired woman, who also held hands with her own, and she
wore again the robe of brown and green intermingled – they danced together to a
song from outside of time and space, and sent it on to other places and other
times.
She awoke before sun-up, feeling stiff, but the sun soon rose and warmed her as she
sat in the big chair and drank in the light, like water from a deep, sweet well –
and she heard within it the ringing of the signal of her dream.
She sat there all day communing with the Source Of All Things – no words passed
between them, but her feelings walked the distances of space like they had never
done before – she saluted the sun as it rode across the sky retransmitting the
signal from the stars.
Then the moon arose in the middle of the day, trailing the sun like a crescent
ghost.
She had never heard of such a thing, so in a fair panic, she checked the internet
for terrible trouble, and finding none, she looked up the moon rise and set times
and found that, in fact, the moon spent a lot of time in the same sky as the sun.
She saluted the moon – it gave off a quieter, more watery and out-of-phase version
of the signal, but the same cosmic signal it was.
Was the signal the thing that the religious called “God”?
She arose and lit a single white candle in honor of the Source.
She wasn’t much on religion, but she did know that God was supposed to be male, and
she had the distinct feeling that the Source was neither male or female – and felt
a flash of anger at those who would try to misuse the signal, or hide it, or lie
and say it was this or that and belonged to only them.
Her expanded feelings recognized the moon as the black-haired woman of her dreams,
and then she saw that the sun was the golden blond, and she was the earth with the
robe of brown and green intermingled.
She came to them as their sister – all resounding to the same signal - she was
their equal in this and some deep-entrenched and long-forgotten indoctrination of
her childhood screamed and howled as it died – she dropped her hold with the others
to cover her ears from the death of the thing that cried that we could never be
equal with our gods even though we were made in their image.
She took up the hands of the other two and joy exploded in her heart, filling her
eyes with tears, and her breath with shuddering, at the height of such ecstasy.
Once again she stood in a pocket between two sand dunes, with a boy passing a twig
through the smoke of a tiny fire – and over them arched a huge vault of stars and
sky and planets, all ringing with the cosmic signal.

SAD - Seasonal affective disorder. Its proven fact and has been known for centuries. Unfortunately we are no longer bounded by sunlight hours. We can't sleep and wakeup at hours which pleases us anymore, no thanks to Edison (IMG:style_emoticons/default/Lighten.gif)

I'd agree that there's generally a correlation, however at this point I hardly ever see the sun, sleeping as I do almost until 5pm most days, then school and work - the sun for me is more of a marker to let me know it's time for bed.

However, for me personally I'm as happy and peaceful as a person can be; in my case though when I wake up the first thing I do is smile and tap into the cosmic joy that is expressed through life itself. Even though I may no feel particularly happy when I first wake up, after that I'm prepared to face the day with a positive attitude and take joy in the 'little things' throughout the day.

Haven't had a bad day in some time now, and I get maybe 30-90 minutes of sunlight spread out over trips to the car, in and out of school for breaks until the sun goes down, and early in the morning before I go to bed.

Interestingly though, and the biggest reason I think there's some correlation is that when I do this little joy exercise I almost always visualize the sun, or feel a sense of the sun, as a kind of cosmic caretaker of life here on earth, it's light and warmth inititating and sustaining that joy in our world. Although I don't see the sun regularly almost at all, I do feel and and my awareness is drawn towards it - my awareness of it is quite spontaneous in this meditation, it was never my conscious intention in the beginning to include that imagery or feeling.

It's not a wonder that so many ancient cultures worshipped the sun. The moon as well - but without a moon our world is perhaps very boring, far less dynamic in the seasons, tides, etc. But without the sun we die and no amount of moon saves us.

peace

the moon is not self-luminous, but reflects a watery and out of phase cosmic signal, as well as sunlight - without the sun, there would be no visible moon, nor probably life to see it

and

you are obviously drawing up the cosmic signal with your morning draught from the eternal spring - not only does the cosmic signal radiate through space, but reverberates through rock and the ground and even water and air - we passed a wall of rock in the car the other day, just a regular road cut showing the sandstone bones of the mountain, and i smiled, feeling the warmth of the cosmic radiation - once i realized that it wasn't heat that made them warm, for the rocks faced north and were shadowed, i tuned my hearing to the signal's frequency and there was the signal and i feasted on it

the cosmic signal may be another name for something actually unnameable, but that is what i call it - it rides on the ethyr and envelopes and supports us gladly - it is the modulation, rather than the carrier wave

This post has been edited by esoterica: Mar 3 2009, 09:46 AM

I voted it can make things worse for the reason that the question didn't state how much sunlight exposure any person was given. In this case its not so much the sun light - but heat.

I wish I had some actual statistics at hand but several semesters ago in a class I took on the psychology of criminal behavior, we looked at some surveys done in major cities across America that pointed out during summer time in the hottest days of the year crime rates sky rocketed with temperature. Some of the cities we looked at were LA, Detroit, Chicago, Phoenix, Miami and New York City. All saw some increase in crime rates with a rise in temperature. New York was statistically the highest and Miami, the lowest (if I remember correctly - I do remember NY was the highest for sure).

As far as sun light exposure in general... well in one sense there isn't much scientific correlation except psychologically and in some cases of seasonal affective disorder. Humans are day time creatures. Our internal clocks are wired to work best during day light. People also react more positively to good weather and warmth (as apose to miserable heat). However with SAD, most cases are purely psychological. Your typical case is not just some Scandanavian at the top of the world who never sees the sun half the year. Rather its your hermit or recluse who shuts themself in a basement with not only no sun light but little social contact.

People with SAD can see some improvement with exposure to sun light and or melatonin suppliments but some are not responsive to these therapies. Some cases can be attributed to diet. During winter years in some countries, people cannot eat the same foods which can result in nutritional deficiencies. For a lot of people, usually winter months are just depressing to many people in general because its colder and darker. And not only that people with SAD often demonstrate mild problems with depression year round. And some people with SAD have no correlation to seasonal patterns at all. Rather their mood just part of a cycle (common with people who are bi-polar) or more related to dates where something traumatic occured in one's past.

There is also Reverse Seasonal Affective Disorder (IMG:style_emoticons/default/laugh.gif) which as the name implies - a person is more depressed during summer as apose to winter. Again, few reliable studies I have seen point out any connect between exposure to sun light and these disorders.

I am not saying the Sun has no mystical relivance at all. I think the sun does empower people and can rejuvinate people's spirits. And that can reduce aggressive behavior. But I also think that excessive sun light can sap energy and drain people and just make them miserable - which can make them more irritable and more likely to act on it.

Food for thought:

There was a French researcher (like I'd ever remember his name) who wanted to study sleep patterns and the human internal clock. So what he did was set up equipment inside a cave, that had no access to day light at all and stayed there inside the cave for something like a month. (how he went to the bathroom, is beyond me). Not only did he prove that humans have an internal clock that tells us when to sleep and be active, he also found that during his isolation, he became far more depressed and actually ended up stopping the research because he was simply loosing sleep due to his state of mind. Could this purely be due to a lack of social contact? Or could there be more involved, like exposure to the sun?

At the same time, prison inmates who are locked up in isolation seem to be more prone to suffer mental problems if they have no window versus those who do. Maybe its just the isolation of being totally concealed. But maybe people really do benefit from exposure to sun light? I tend to think so. in my humble opinion.