reflections from Indra’s Net, etc.

in habits I trust

With my room in a flu(mmo)x of books, towers of dishevelled documents, magazines, unhung decorations and an underwear drawer down to its last pair of trunks … I would have said previously that things are in disarray, but now I see that things are in a formative state ~ and that things, all things always, are in a formative state, as in always forming and reforming, never settling into one state or another, and as I type this I feel the relief that comes with beginning to know this at a deeper and deeper experiential level.¹

I am still settling in at home, and I feel I have the time to be patient because there is a relatively secure future here. (I say “relative” because who knows what might happen.) Also I trust myself and the universe and I feel the universe trusts me because it senses that I am sensing that I am it.

I am of the universe in the same way a wave is of the ocean, not separate.

I deepen into becoming an instrument of this divine oceanic reality, and I am equipped to accommodate anything that happens, whether I like what happens or not.

I realised recently that I am not the boss of reality and I have been saying this jokingly to friends, but I mean it. [5.55]

Reality is the boss, and there is very little I can do to influence the untold number of events that unfold on its watch. But I watch what I can, and what I can influence is how I respond to events. By training myself to respond constructively to everything I observe, I form new mental, emotional and behavioural habits that are more and more wholesome every day.

In habits I trust.

I am piecing together some ideas that interest me very much about the (w)holistic importance of being responsible for my (and only my) mental, emotional and behavioural habits.

These ideas are grounded in the #dharma, sustained by near-constant mindfulness and #meditation in all action, and increasingly backed by #neuroscience, which makes me feel all boisterous and joyful because these ideas (when and only when applied) lead inexorably to the experience of something called sukkha (in Buddhism, and probably many other things in the world’s many spiritual traditions), which means “genuine happiness”.

Not fleeting happiness, not pleasure conflated with happiness.

Genuine, abiding contentment with all that is, without the overlay of judgement saying, “This is good, now I am happy,” or “This is bad, now I am unhappy.”

These (w)holistic ideas about personal responsibility have profound implications for collective wellbeing and long-term sustainability (a healthy world arises out of healthy minds) but their application does start with the individual. If the individual is lucky (as I am) to meet with what we all deserve, they will have the support of a community that understands these implications at least on some level,

and this collective support is what turns individual awareness and responsibility into a bonafide superpower. #sangha

These ideas have some very cool names … Indra’s Net (thanks Marc) … the morphogenetic field or morphic resonance (thanks Rupert Not Murdoch) … the holographic universe (thanks Einstein, Michael Talbot, et. al.), the #dharma … and are exemplified by the saying, “A rising tide lifts all boats” (thanks Pierce ~ may we discover together that JFK did indeed lift this from the Bible, and that maybe the Flood is actually a metaphor about a time in Biblical history when a flood of awakening wiped out swathes of ignorance in the psyche of humankind, because we know … or at least, strongly suspect … these episodes of collective awakening come in waves through history and can never really be talked about directly, so: metaphor to the rescue).

I don’t have the time or the desire to elaborate further on these ideas at the moment, because I have a group meditation to attend in 9 … 8 minutes. For now it will be enough to share the Serenity Prayer.

May I ask you to leave your notes below ~ as always, my intention for sharing these thoughts is to stimulate dialogue. If public dialogue is not your jam, get in touch directly here. If commenting on WordPress is a laborious chore because you don’t already have an account, please share this post with your comments on the socials, because it’s a dialogue we sorely need to help us transition from the doldrums of modern civilisation into whatever form is next.

I say “flu(mmo)x” because the confusion comes from within me (who is flux), not from within the state of my room, which is also in flux, but not necessarily confusing. ↩︎

psychedelics in history

Our friend Cliff gave me the name of a book today, something he said a while back was blowing his mind: The Immortality Key, which sounds a bit naff at first (like a Dan Brown novel), before I read the subtitle The secret history of the religion with no name. This sounds right up my alley. And I’m fond of Graham Hancock, who wrote the Foreword and whose TED talk was a game-changer for me, pointing out the hypocrisy and injustice of governments prohibiting mind-expanding drugs while capitalising on all the drugs that numb us and bring us down.

I’ll share that video below because it seems to illustrate the theme of The Immortality Key.

The blurbs and praise I’ve read suggest that The Immortality Key goes much deeper than the modern prohibition of consciousness-altering substances, arguing that psychedelic experience was central to the practice and spirituality of ancient Western religions.

One reviewer described it as “a spiritual adventure page-turner”, and others have said the author spins humour and travelogue into the argument, which ranges among a laundry list of disciplines and subjects:

history
comparative religion
linguistics
pharmacology
chemistry
biology
democracy
the unity of mankind
the religious war on women

No doubt there’s a bit of ethnobotany in there and some mythology — sounds fucking great! So I’m going to check it out and will let you know what I find. I feel confident it’s going to find it’s way onto my Goodreads shelf of books that have revolutionised my worldview.

The last book I added to that shelf was a book of trialogues between Rupert Sheldrake, Terence McKenna and Ralph Abraham, Chaos, Creativity and Cosmic Consciousness, which I highly recommend as a wild exploration of many things, but in particular the connections between million-year-old psychedelic sacraments and the origins/evolution of consciousness.

I can vouch for this one, because I’ve actually read it instead of just hearing about it, so that’s an affiliate link above — if you buy the book through there I’ll get some money for a coffee.

If you’ve read either of these books or others like them, I’d love to read your thoughts in the comments below.

nooculture

I am enjoying the term “overculture” at the moment, in the sense I enjoy gaining new insight into ways we can describe and de-participate from the mechanics of our oppression.

I value the opposing force of “counter-culture” but am wary of dichotomies like antagonist–protagonist, especially in the sense of individuals or even small communities opposing the amorphous and anonymous force of culture, the us/them approach where we get angry because They are fucking everything up with Their greed … who is They in our counter-cultural tirades?

There is conflict inherent in the dominant connotations of counter-culture.

So I’m playing with the idea of nooculture, after Teilhard de Chardin’s idea of the noosphere.

Dig it?

perspective

nothing I do or fail to do matters much at all – a realisation with its roots in Stoic philosophy, and other wisdom traditions, but that I have officially trademarked (I haven’t officially trademarked it) as cosmic insignificance therapy
Oliver Burkeman

This is brilliant, Cosmic Insignificance Therapy. As much as I really would like to realise my potential, the narcissistic pressure to do so at the expense of my sense of contentment has become increasingly neurotic lately. So I really appreciate the perspective this brings. And it ties in nicely with the idea I’ve been embracing lately that Gaian and cosmic consciousness has a lot more order and agency behind it than human ambition could ever have.