Its funny, you hear what I am saying and I see what you mean. You are aural and I am visual and people put information into the context that they are most comfortable with. It sounds like you would probably be the type of person who remembers things best when they recall a sound or says things to remind themselves, I remember what I see and have more trouble with remembering spoken words. RE astigmatism if I recall correctly it is a fault on the lense that results on the incomming information not organising correctly on the retina? Off on a tangent mabey but not completly trusting what you see may explain your preference for hearing, conversley your preference for hearing may mean you unconsciously place less relevance upon seeing to believe. If you dont mind me asking have you got a physical defect of the retina or do you just display the distorted vision associated with astigmatism? You mention having very little visual recall of childhood, are you able to remember sounds and smells and sensations from childhood? Comming from the conventional education view it could be possible that you saw something that frightened or disturbed you and when you told someone you trusted they told you that you couldnt have possibly seen what you saw. For example, if you were sure you saw someone be beaten badly when you were 5 and it wasnt reported your parents may have convinced you it couldnt be true and you learned your eyes were unreliable but your ears didnt fail you. As a result from a young age you would develop a belief that your eyes distorted what was there. (just an example) Im incredibly sorry that something happened to you when you were young that is only just comming to the surface, but on the bright side the mind trys to protect itself so if you are remembering now it means you are in a good place and will cope with what comes back to you. I have read JDs articles you suggested so it looks/sounds like you are in good hands :) On a deeply disturbing personal note, I could never understand the extreme feeling of violence and anger I felt whenever I saw a dark haired man with a particular type of beard. It bothered me and I mentioned it to my uncle (who is a police detective) and he was shocked that I couldnt understand why so he pulled a case file and showed me. A man broke into our house when my father was away, I was 3 at the time and I woke up and went to see my mother and he was rapeing her, she didnt fight because she was frightened he would come after me or my brothers she just cried and kept telling me it was OK. I had no recolection of it but was nonetheless responding to it 20yrs later and feeling the urge to hurt people who looked like a man I could not remember. So I have a tendancy to disbelieve what I hear but trust what I see, I knew she was hurt even when she said she was not.
The physical sensation you mention for Qi, Im not sure I fully understand it. Sometimes when I am training for a brief moment I get this sensation that is hard to describe, I feel I have been sucked out of my body and am part of the universe but at the same time the entire universe is sucked inside of me so I become both insignificant and everything at the same time, your mind is empty but full to bursting at the same time, you are outside of your body looking in but your inside of you body too, fully aware of every movement and sensation but its like something else is making the moment perfect. My Irish grandma calls it "talking to god" a japanese friend says the japanese word for it is "satori" (spelling?) my trainer calls it being "possesed by the spirit of great fighters" it may just be getting the move right for once:) It is frustrating because if I could control it and make it come when I want it I could be a great fighter (its almost godlike how perfectly every move flows faultlessly when satori comes) but when the fight is left to me without the satori moment Im average :) God its sad, propper fighters talk about their fight record and I spout on about brief semi-religous moments that come about through sparring LOL.
Im having a hard time understanding what you said about the natives and columbus, it makes possible sense in my mind but at the same time I lean more towards them seeing it but being unable to name it or make sense of it their minds did not know how to file it so they were later unable to recall it, similar to being able to recall a square exactly but not being able to recall an inkblot, you saw it but couldnt file it in memory because of the irregularity of its shape. Similarly identifying criminals visually has a far higher success rate if the person is of the same race, they see detail that creates difference in their own race. A white person will nearly always have a harder time positively identifying an asian person than an asian would unless they personally know the person.
Mate Im spouting on so Ide better get off the net, but Im sorry if I got huffy over you doubting me I should have been adult enough not to let it bother me, but at the same time Im pretty pleased you dont think Im an academic write off :) All the best for your seminar and I am going to order the books you recomended. I found a budhist monastry a couple of hours away and there is a thai monk there. I am heading there for a couple of days to stay and the monk is going to do some MT work with me and try to teach me how to meditate without falling asleep:) There are 2 indian monks whos english is pretty good and the abbot thinks they can tell me more about chakras. Its costing me 10kg of rice and I am bringing fruit and vegies as a gift. I will either end up going completley mad from the lifestyle or love it and learn from it, and hopefully learn how to harness satori:)