embodiment

Built Ins

The ‘hard problem of consciousness’ in Western science (I.e. Where does awareness come from?) is only a ‘problem’ because we’ve had the whole thing upside down. We’ve thought that there is matter/brain first, and awareness/consciousness arises out of the brain. But it’s the other way around—awareness comes first, and the material world arises out of it. 

Awareness is this primary thing—this essential nature—behind everything (including rocks and lizards and plants and computers…everything), and it has all of this inherent support—these built-in tools—for the body, the human being.

We just haven’t noticed. We’ve overlooked awareness like we overlook the space in the room or the ground under our feet—those utterly supportive, essential elements of life.

Spiritual Treats

Divination tools, astrology and tarot tend to be my favorites in the ‘spiritual’ category. I’m a big fan. I follow several spiritual people on Instagram. Tarot card readers on YouTube. I’ve got four oracle decks and Dolores Cannon books and Reiki runes and votive candles and archangel cards and spirit animals and tarot symbols tattooed on my arm(!) I burn sage and palo santo and I clear my energy regularly.

I am a FAN.

But I want people to know there is much more at the ‘spiritual’ table.

I looked up a few definitions of spirituality. Most of them include a ‘belief of something larger than one’s self.' The spiritual books I found were wide ranging—from Buddhist and Taoist classics to ‘The Secret’ and Gabrielle Bernstein. They included books on topics from my list above, as well as energy healing and ancient/indigenous nature religions, past lives, crystals, yoga, tantra, modern Christianity, astrology, re-wilding and magic.

Spiritual stuff is, in my experience, a bit like candy. Or at least, not the whole meal. Spiritual experiences are the amuse bouches, snacks, dessert plates and palate cleansers of a meal. They greatly add to the experience, but they are not the main dish.

The Great Hack

So much of our current self help & wellness tools, medical & psychological interventions, spiritual practices, dating advice, business/financial coaching etc are, in their essence, big old system hacks. They are attempting to hack our programming—to tweak our physical, psychological, or financial systems to work better, to get us more.

And that’s cool.

Tweaks and hacks and new angles are great. Essential, even. Hackers are brilliant—they shake things up and help us see things differently. And we need that. Perhaps we especially need that now, in this topsy turvy world.

But hacks aren’t always sustainable; they don’t necessarily garner long term gains in and of themselves. Moreover, the tweaks aren’t necessarily in our favor—they are sometimes tricks, for another’s gain. Plus, a hack might not take you out of a corrupted system—many are the equivalent of rearranging deck furniture on a sinking ship.

The Party Line

So often, society’s ‘party line’ is completely backward, isn’t it? And we kinda know it.

We sense the Orwellian quality of, let’s say, our food system. Or our money system. Or our military-industrial-complex-mess-of-a-system. Here’s a few examples of recent party lines we’ve lived by, vs the realities we’ve later discovered (buried under the advertising for the party line).

Party line: GMOs are good; we can feed more people.

Truth: GMOs (& the pesticides used with them) increase soil toxicity and depletion, yielding less food & much more disease.

Party Line (a silly personal one here): Acne is caused by too much oil on the skin, so we should dry the skin out.

The Flywheel

There is a flywheel underfoot. It is nature’s rhythm and pulse. It is God’s divine orchestra.

And you are less than a hair’s breadth away from it.

You just have to scooch …every so slightly …out of those old, rusty rhythms of your life. Move just to the left of those grooves—those ideas about what keeps your life in order. Maybe it’s a pattern in a relationship or at work, a meditation or workout regimen, a particular coffee in the morning (like me!). These are the controlled, mechanized aspects of your life.

For the Sake of Itself

We go for what is meaningful, versus what is true in our bodies, what is deep in our bones.

Meaning is in the land of the separate self. It exists in a mental landscape, in the story of me. But we are not this mental self. We are not a concept.

Meaning is conceptual, not actual. It isn’t here, on planet earth.

I do a lot of inquiry with clients—we question thoughts or drop words out of our vocabulary. I often ask this question, with regard to meaning (a variation of Byron Katie’s ‘The Work’):

‘If nothing that ever happened—nothing you did or didn’t do, nothing you’ve ever thought, felt or experienced—had any meaning whatsoever, what remains?’

I usually get a smile or a surprised look. Maybe a moment of panic. But then the client tastes a bit of freedom and says something like, “God, I don’t know!” And we just hang out in ‘I don’t know.’ We sit and feel. We see what arises. Invariably, something true (and utterly practical) comes up…

The Road to Hell

I’ve never much liked the word ‘intention.’ 

Like…

‘What are your intentions for this week/month/year?’  ‘Let’s set our intention for this meeting.’  ‘My intention is to be loving to my family this holiday.’ 

Blech.

But I’ve felt like an asshole for not liking the word, because it is such a part of psychology, spirituality and self help.

I’ve been reflecting on my dislike. Here is the crux of why I think we should toss this word out:  The word ‘intention’ is mental. It’s not embodied. 

And therefore it is a movement of fear.

The Strangest Pleasure

Pain’s got a bad reputation, no?

The worst, maybe.

No one wants this dude at the party; he’s the thief of pleasure, joy, & peace—not welcome to hang out, even for a little while.

But let’s—just for the length of this blog post—let’s consider that this bad reputation may be unfair. And let’s notice that we haven’t really found out for ourselves. We’ve just assumed pain was no good.

I & She (not Me)

I & She (not Me)

A definition of terms:

“I”: The vast, formless, conscious awareness that looks out of our eyes and permeates all forms. The ‘ground of being,’ ‘fundamental consciousness,’ ‘what’s looking’ or your ‘true nature.’

“She” (and “He”) : The body, including the energy body. The form—the unique shape that awareness sees and feels through. The hands and organs and heart and guts and blood and  brain, etc.

“Me”: The separate self. The self concept. The illusory ‘me’ that lives in the body and has a story. The Doer. The Thinker. The apparently separate subject that’s having the experience. The one who is seemingly operating things.