Consciousness, Panpsychism & A Course in Miracles

June 7, 2019
by Michael
comments 6
Course Ideas / Reflections / Science

This week I listened to Sam Harris interview his wife Annaka on his podcast Making Sense. She has recently written a book entitled Conscious: A Brief Guide to the Fundamental Mystery of the Mind, which I should note I haven’t read. An interesting moment occurred when she said it was not altogether obvious why consciousness should exist from an evolutionary perspective, because there is very little, if anything, that we cannot imagine occurring just as well without a conscious witness to the proceedings. We can visualize a computerized intelligence, for instance, with the right programming, that could behave much like a human being without actually being aware of what it was doing, or how it felt to be doing those things.

This led Annaka to ponder the possibility that consciousness is not something that is the product of matter and energy, but is a fundamental part of nature, or fundamental to physical reality let’s say. It exists in the same way that matter and energy do, as a given. I’m a little unclear on exactly what to say about what she really means, because I haven’t read her book, and because its admittedly a challenging topic to review in detail. She and Sam were very careful at this point to note that this is a scientific conception of consciousness, wholly unrelated to New Age ideas of the topic. It always amuses me when people insist on these distinctions, because it’s sort of like saying we have a scientific theory of why things fall down to the ground, and just so you know, it’s completely unrelated to the layman’s delusional awareness that things fall down due to a mysterious force.

These false categories do nothing but sustain false lines of demarcation. We draw them because it makes us feel good to be on the right side of them, but they are of no real value to the process of inquiry.

Enough on that. What brought me to the page this evening was an interesting idea that struck me as Sam and Annaka were exploring this topic of panpsychism, which is the word for a range of ideas related to the idea that consciousness exists—in some form—at all levels of physical phenomena. I realized there is an insistence when approaching the topic scientifically to note that atoms have such a miniscule, dim, and protean form of consciousness that it would barely be considered consciousness at all. In other words, humans are at the apex of known forms of consciousness, and atoms have the awareness of comatose bricks in a wall. The idea that struck me is that we quite possibly have this backwards.

I’m going to get New Age now and refer to A Course in Miracles, which for me is as valid a source of information as any scientific experiment. It also is irrelevant, as core ideas in the Course can be found in essentially all spiritual teachings that aim at offering its practitioners the experience of non-duality. The Course is just one form of what I believe is a universal truth, and this particular form happened to appeal to me. At any rate, there is an idea presented early in the Course, and which only appears on a few occasions, but which made a big impact on me when I first encountered it. It goes like this, “…the mind is naturally abstract.” I would like to relate this to the notion that human consciousness is quite possibly a much more limited form of consciousness than that which obtains throughout the universe. It’s just a fun idea to ponder, so bear with me please.

Now, when the Course speaks about the mind, it is speaking about the One Mind, or the whole Mind, or the instantaneous totality of being of which all that exists partakes. It’s hard to describe in words. You can’t describe it in words. But you can give some inklings, just as you can give kindling some heat, and hope that at some point awareness catches fire… The basic point in the Course is that specificity, and the situational awareness so conducive to winning professional sports titles, is really secondary. It is illusory, and fundamentally related to what Annaka and Sam would both describe as delusional notions: one being the sense of a personal self, and the second being free will. These don’t exist as we think they do, according to Sam, and I agree. I’ll actually agree and disagree simultaneously on the notion of a personal self, because it’s paradoxical to a certain extent. But for the purpose of this discussion let’s equate a personal self with an egoic awareness—with the idea that there is an “I” that exists separately from all other “I’s.”

The Course says, “Everything the ego perceives is a separate whole, without the relationships that imply being. The ego is thus against communication, except insofar as it is utilized to establish separateness rather than to abolish it. The communication system of the ego is based on its own thought system, as is everything else it dictates. Its communication is controlled by its need to protect itself, and it will disrupt communication when it experiences threat. This disruption is a reaction to a specific person or persons. The specificity of the ego’s thinking, then, results in spurious generalization which is really not abstract at all. It merely responds in certain specific ways to everything it perceives as related.

“In contrast, spirit reacts in the same way to everything it knows is true, and does not respond at all to anything else. Nor does it make any attempt to establish what is true. It knows that what is true is everything that God created. It is in complete and direct communication with every aspect of creation, because it is in complete and direct communication with its Creator. This communication is the Will of God. Creation and communication are synonymous. God created every mind by communicating His Mind to it, thus establishing it forever as a channel for the reception of His Mind and Will. Since only beings of a like order can truly communicate, His creations naturally communicate with Him and like Him. This communication is perfectly abstract, since its quality is universal in application and not subject to any judgment, any exception or any alteration.” (emphasis added, quotes taken from the Text, Chapter 4, Section VII, Paragraphs 2-3)

What does it mean for the mind’s natural state to be a perfect abstraction? It sounds kind of ridiculous. But what it means is that the mind, in its natural state, might say, “I love,” and stop there, instead of saying “I love ice cream.” There need be no object—no specificity—to the mind’s natural extension of Love, since it extends love simultaneously to all that exists with it, and as it, and thus has no concept whatsoever of inventions or schemes (such as the ego’s concept of a separateness between beings) that do not ultimately obtain.

What I’m proposing when I suggest that the scientific notions of panpsychism as presently framed are fundamentally backwards, or upside-down, is that the simplest forms of matter and energy are the least constrained. We like to think consciousness is all about having experiences, and for us that means having experiences as a human being. For the vast majority of us, that means having experiences as a particular human being. The forms of conscious awareness most readily available to us are those bound by this beautiful complexity we call a body. But a particle—whose behavior in quantum mechanics can be explained perfectly by presuming that it explores every possible state available in the entire universe simultaneously—is not bound at all by this complexity. It could, conceivably, possess a far more abstract form of awareness, which for us is indeed unfathomable. We could say it is so dim as to be nothing at all… or we could flip the coin and say it is so bright as to be everything at once. It really is not possible for us to distinguish between these two possibilities.

The long and short is that I find it very interesting to consider that complexity is, paradoxically, proportional to limitations when it comes to consciousness. That’s not to say there are not beautiful and holy spaces to explore through this lens. There are. But I suspect a valid theory of panpsychism will need to reframe the very idea of materialism, by considering that physical systems do indeed inform consciousness—not by building it up, but by focusing it down into very specific pathways, in order to yield very specific forms of experience. Materialism would then predict that the formation of complex systems is the product of collapsing the natural, unbounded and unified form of consciousness that ultimately exists within and as everything, into localized, ephemeral, illusory, but instructive vehicles for the creation of novel experiences.

The body in this view is not an exemplar of heightened consciousness, but an exemplar of specificity, giving rise to a very limited form of consciousness.

On Genius, Part 3: Lolita

April 28, 2019
by Michael
comments 12
Book Reviews / Reflections

I finished my first Nabokov yesterday. Lolita. I thought it was shockingly good—delicate, grimy and translucent all at once—though I’m acutely aware I will need to read it another time or two if I wish to speak intelligently about it. As I sit here and wonder how to take the seething swarm inside of me and capture it somehow on the page, I’m realizing it’s an interesting opportunity to continue the vein I began in my previous post—about our innate ability to recognize truth.

I was thinking more about science and religion last time than I was about art, but there’s myopia in such a view. To speak about science and religion without speaking about art seems an empty pursuit to me, for in any human endeavor, the fundamental activity—whether we wish to admit as much or not—is the expression of who we are: of who we know ourselves to be, and of who we are becoming.

I should say that I can appreciate why Lolita is a controversial work. It is, in its most parsimonious form, the story of a middle-aged man’s perverse subjugation of a twelve-year-old girl. For some readers, I know—as well as appreciate and respect—there is no degree of linguistic brilliance or artistic distillation that could be summoned to redeem such a foundation. For me, however, the work was sublime, and this is how we arrive once again at the seeming incongruity of our appreciation for exactly what it is that events, and moments, and encounters actually consist of.

While some see Lolita as a book written by a man, and narrated by a man, who self-indulgently recounts his barbaric relations with his stepdaughter, others confess to having been so taken in by the subtlety and effulgent beauty of Nabokov’s prose as to have missed the true depth of his protagonist’s evil. But for me, neither of these readings does more than scratch the surface, and what lies beneath is infinitely more difficult to wrestle wholly into view. It is precisely here, I think, that great art begins and ends.

We are ushered, before we’ve realized it has happened, into an enigmatic void, where both sweet and sour obtain, where we resonate with what we despise even as we find ourselves suddenly skeptical of all that we abide. The question is whether we can suffer such difficulties long enough to see where they lead, if anywhere, or instead find ourselves so breathless in the presence of this paramount candor that we must insist on wrapping its arm around our necks, so that we can tap out with our dignity intact.

What I think Nabokov has done, somehow, is lure those who will follow into the place where categories intermingle and mutually dissolve, where the trite cannot subsist, and the compass needle is rendered impotent. It is not a work to say that truth is in this or that; it is a work that points to the existence of a trap door in our awareness, and asks, have you seen this, too?

The foreground of this work is alarming, and it is given to us by Nabokov with such alluring, iridescent prose, that it is all too easy to be deceived. But when those two curtains part, for those still in their seats, what remains is an encounter with the abyss of stray connections, frayed ropes and discarded belongings that could lead to just about anywhere. What this vacant stage will not do, however, is field questions. The lights will not come on and reveal that all this time we’ve simply been in a theater surrounded by carefully parked cars and ice cream shops and cloudless skies. The lights have come on, in fact, and revealed the faceless potency over which all our fabrications have been laid.

And this is where the truth emerges for me, in all great art—in this whipping of our world suddenly from view, to expose the fathomless marrow of being in which we are all equally ensconced. The madness of art is that to bring such a primordial distillation of ourselves into view we must be profoundly faithful to the details of our mirage. We must illumine the fabric of what is right before us each and every day with a nearly-blinding light. We must tease and pluck apart the bolster, examine each and every thread until it, too, is found wanting—too friable to have carried the real weight of being—and we are left with nothing of which we began. Only now we’ve found what everything is.

The fragmentation of our hearts and minds that I spoke about last time can be viewed as a means of retreating from this uncanny position. This retreat is what Reich described as armoring, when I quoted him saying, “There is much good reason to assume that in such experiences of the self man somehow became frightened and for the first time in the history of his species began to armor against inner fright and amazement.”

This seemingly gaping core that we witness can be staggering, but it is only so for an instant—that instant being whatever duration of time is required for us to release our grip upon the fabricated notions of self and world to which we cling. The other side of that instant is the fullness of all that we are, rampant and unbroken. It is all that we have inadvertently deprived ourselves of coming to know, and join with, because of our fractured rigidity and our self-deceptions.

Great art—genius art—pierces the veil of conceptuality, and invites us to breathe deeply the luminous air that lives within us all.

On Genius, Part 2

April 11, 2019
by Michael
comments 14
Course Ideas / Reflections / Science

In this second article on the topic of genius, I found myself drifting towards our ability to recognize beauty and truth. I thought it was an interesting topic, because it relates to how we process information and perception as individuals, and part of what is so beautiful about genius is that it breaks apart our clotted mentalities.

The reorientation of perception that comes with encountering genius can be startling, but also I’ve found it can be delightful, because with the recognition of what is true, there is joy. There is release from what binds us. Over the years I’ve come to trust in this experience, and to recognize that we possess an innate faculty that recognizes truth and responds to it with feeling. This is not a logical computation, but a sensation. Feelings of joy, or peace, or even a regenerative sadness emerge, and as we follow these feelings, we are able to sift insight from the dross ground of experience, and this too, is genius. Eventually we recognize the universality of what we are discovering: it is not for us alone.

But is the truth “true” for all of us? Or are we each merely mining a tableau of personal fancy? Is there, in other words, an ability within us to recognize genuine insight—to discover, while bypassing the convolutions of logic, a deep and genuine understanding of the nature of reality? My answer to this question is yes…

But some would argue no. Just look around, they might say. If we all possessed this faculty we obviously wouldn’t disagree so vehemently about so much. It’s a powerful argument, but I don’t agree with its premise, or its conclusion, and here I turn to some of the genius writers and thinkers I’ve enjoyed exploring over the years for an alternate explanation: although we all possess such a faculty, we do not all access it equally.

A hallmark of genius, I’ve found, is the ability to not only see the big picture, but to think in terms of wholeness. To see the invisible relationships upon which the visible “facts” depend. I mentioned at the start of this series that I had recently read my first Wilhelm Reich book, Ether, God and Devil. One of the points Reich made in that book that I resonated with was the notion, from his research, that we are each “armored” to varying degrees, and that this armoring directly affects our sensations, perceptions, and feelings. He even goes on to say, “the organism can perceive only what it itself expresses.” We are thus all in the business of defining the parameters of our experience.

Without going into extreme detail, it is sufficient here to note that the armoring Reich describes is a protective mechanism that conditions our experience of ourselves and the world, and is marked by a constriction of normal, life-enhancing functions. It is an imposition of constraints on what we might otherwise think and feel—a rigidity of thought and feeling akin to an authoritarian type of control on the flow of life within and through us. We do this instinctively to protect ourselves, just as a tree becomes hardened in the area of a wound.

I believe in Reich’s mind this was a rather ancient development in humankind. In the book Cosmic Superimposition, which was printed together with Ether, God and Devil, Reich tries to imagine how this armoring could have come about, and says of humankind’s dawning ability to reason and examine it’s own self, “There is much good reason to assume that in such experiences of the self man somehow became frightened and for the first time in the history of his species began to armor against inner fright and amazement.” He goes on to say that, “it is quite possible that the turning of reasoning toward itself induced the first emotional blocking in man.” And later he concludes, “in attempting to understand himself and the streaming of his own energy, man interfered with it, and in doing so, began to armor, and thus to deviate from nature. The first split into a mystical alienation from himself, his core, and a mechanical order of existence instead of the organic, involuntary, bio-energetic self-regulation, followed with compulsive force.” (Cosmic Superimposition, pg 293-294)

What resonated with me strongly here was the notion that both mechanistic/materialist viewpoints and fundamentalist/religious viewpoints are in point of fact mirror images of the identical inner dysfunction. This is the ability of genius to see wholeness in what we take at face value to be completely different, and seemingly antagonistic, responses.

The answer to this problem, in language other than Reich used, is the integration of the heart and mind into a functional whole. In the perceptual modalities most important to me, the heart is not marginalized, but integrated with the logic of the mind. It is the heart, I believe, that is the compass I mentioned at the outset of this article—the heart that recognizes truth and chimes in with visceral acclamation. And what is missing for me in both a mechanistic and a fundamentalist religious view of the world is the awareness and wisdom of this most important faculty. Both perspectives are rooted in a certain rigidity of thought that seeks to impose a particular set of limits on the world’s magnitude, and make it more readily apprehended, judged, and subdued.

I first encountered this idea reading another genius—(to me)—Jose Arguelles. I read his book The Transformative Vision while in college, and I recall it being a beautiful exploration of the idea that the “true human being” was a seamless merging of what we call science, and what we call art. I recall Arguelles suggesting that it is only in the joining of these two fundamental aspects of our being that our authenticity and power as beings emerges. This is a theme I find echoed in Reich’s exposition of armoring, in Viktor Schauberger’s lamentation of our “techno-academic” systems, which he found as life-negating, exclusively male-oriented, and damaging to the planetary ecology, and in what A Course of Love refers to as the joining of heart and mind into wholeheartedness. (These are but a few of the places in which I’ve found such a view expressed.)

I think the reason a given individual’s recognition of truth is so often perceived as a matter of individual fancy is that we are coming at this problem primarily as “split” individuals. As split individuals we function with limited access to one or the other faculty, and are thus inaccurate perceivers. Our ability to access the inheritance of genuine knowing within us is stunted. It is a well-known fact that just about any argument can be justified with reasoning, for instance. Recognizing innately this profound difficulty, science relies upon externalized experimentation, and religion upon sacred books. But neither provides an accurate accounting of what we call life.

In my opinion when we are in our hearts, which I do not personally take to mean a marginalization of the mind, it is possible to reach the type of alignment that simply doesn’t exist when we are arguing in favor of our individual perceptions. And when we are in our hearts, I find we agree–not on facts, but on the truth expressed between us, and as us. All too often I have fallen victim to reacting to a particular idea that rankles me, but the truth is that there are no winners in the debate of ideas. The path forward is not in being right, but in being true—and ultimately this means being true to ourselves, and the entire spectrum of who we are. Geniuses throughout time have seen this, and understood that what hinders us is the profound difficulty we each have in transcending our fractured pscyhes.

On Genius, Part 1

March 24, 2019
by Michael
comments 25
Reflections

The first task with a subject like genius might be to define it, but I’m going to resist that temptation. I’d rather develop the ideas as we go, so that just about the time we think we’ve put our finger on it, we’ll understand why we can’t. What I’ll say is that while genius may seem to be a rare bird in our present society, it is not because any one of us lack access to it. What is suggested by this word is the fundamental nature of who we are, and if that sounds like a boring or inaccurate beginning it is only because of our lack of imagination about ourselves.

We’ve been led in our culture to believe that genius is evidenced by superiority of achievement in a field, which is not to say that it is not found in the masters we look upon with awe, but such an emphasis can be misleading. In any field there are those who possess a particular talent for it, which, if combined with years and years of practice and the type of ambition that shapes matter to its aim, may lead to the emergence of a sophistication. But technique alone is insufficient for genius. We are all familiar with those who possess astounding technique, but lack, for whatever reason, that little something extra that truly captivates and inspires us—that speaks to the very heart of who we are. Skill alone can be tedious.

On the other hand, we are also each familiar with those who lack the particular physical talent or practiced complexity that mark the most technically accomplished of a given field, but who, by the force of their passion and the manner in which they reveal the mystery of who we are, touch us deeply. We are wounded by such offerings, ushered to the brink of the roaring intensity alive within us, even as we are transported to the star-swept womb of a lowing silence. Genius inspires us to identify with what lies beyond necessity, beyond convention, and without which we would be but empty shells.

We might say that genius is the character of life itself, but this too is inaccurate, for what is meant by life? For too many of us yet, the experience of this world is a treadmill of survival. Genius may reveal itself in the face of life’s trials, but it is not the trial itself. There is no genius in suffering. There is no genius in earthly power, for that matter—in persecuting or enslaving others, in whatever form—just as there is no genius in deriving power from fealty. The power of genius is that it entitles everyone to a share, and where there is real genius, this is instantly recognized. Where there is genius, everyone is rewarded.

This niggling something extra we call genius cannot be captured or taught. It cannot be codified, reduced or pinned down, and no structured program can synthesize what is in truth the very content of our being. We cannot make ourselves any more or any less who we are, but we can desire to know who we are, and in our explorations is genius revealed. We can proceed only by remembering, and discover only by sharing.

The hallmark of genius is that it reveals us. Genius eclipses the norm, to be sure, but the norm is an arbitrary convention that nowhere exists, and uniqueness itself is not genius. We’ve all seen the sort of turning-away that is prideful and affected. Genius involves an authenticity that transforms all who partake of it, by releasing us from the bonds of our mistaken conclusions. It doesn’t rancor against what has been, but eclipses it with a beautiful certitude that renders our previous muddling moot. Though genius is not out to claim victory, it is our way out of loss, because genius makes us whole.

The problem with genius is that it is not a respecter of qualifications. It requires no resume or previous training, and our systems tend to be built on the convention of paying dues—on entitlement, seniority and lineage. Some of this is as it should be. And some of it is not. If you want to go farther in a field than those who previously set the markers, then you may have to retrace some of their steps. Genius is not about a willy-nilly hunch—it’s not about strapping wings made of wax onto your back and diving off a cliff. Too often we equate genius with derring-do. The genius is not in any particular feat, but in the attentiveness we give to our dreams, in the knowing that we work with—which no other can give us—and in our scraping away the barnacles of doubt we’ve picked up from the tidepools of history into which we were born.

Where there is genius, there is magic. The unknown is made real. There is conception, and birth, and new life. What existed for no one, comes into existence for everyone. There are stocks of this little something more within all of us, and I think the challenges we face on this planet arise principally from our efforts to come up with systems that work without resort to this most fundamental resource. It’s like trying to grow food without resorting to the use of sunlight, like trying to breathe only the air we’ve first squeezed into tanks.

If we had this stuff we’d use it! we say. But this is not so. The truth is we spurn genius, and we are frightened by those who can enter the sanctity of their own being and emerge with something we think we could not have. We think fairness is when long-suffering is the only resource at our disposal. Insights are too unpredictable; there is no obvious proportionality between the work that is input and the revelation received, and so they upset our tiered systems of privilege. But so long as we sustain a world in which the inventor reaps a reward that no caregiver can hope to receive, a world in which only what is provably earned may be received, genius will be thwarted.

We’ve created a world where power trumps authenticity, and this world requires only such genius as may be trademarked, copyrighted, or patented. In this world we cannot compute the possibility that what is real is only that which is shared by everyone. It is ironic, is it not, that the victors in our systems lay claim to the spoils? What we call power in this world exists in equal measure to all the unused stocks of genius that have gone rancid. It is the product of our dismay with all those who refuse to know so little as we ourselves do.

But worry not, for genius is the power of who we are, and it is the only power that will remain. If that seems like a definition, then perhaps you know something about us that I do not, for I have yet to even glimpse the horizon.

Rebooting the Blog

March 10, 2019
by Michael
comments 38
Course Ideas

I’ve not posted here in a while, but look forward to getting back into a rhythm in the near future. I’ve been working on a few short stories, and making very slow progress on a novel that will eventually be drafted, and also have been contributing some writing to a booklet that will provide some Q&A on the connections between A Course in Miracles and A Course of Love.

The most exciting personal news of recent months is that my short story “Candelaria” was picked up in February by the New Limestone Review–the University of Kentucky’s literary journal. This was a very welcome development, to say the least.

I read my first Wilhelm Reich book this winter, a combined volume that contained two short works entitled Ether, God and Devil and Cosmic Superimposition. Reich’s writing was thoughtful and I much enjoyed encountering his novel perspective on things. The experience left me thinking it would be fun to write a series of posts on the subject of genius. There are many thinkers and creators who have worked outside of established conventions, some of whom have enjoyed some popular success and many of whom have not, and I suspect there are countless inspired people we know precious little about. The ability to cultivate a penetrating insight, and also to possess the skill, talent and perseverance to introduce it to a world that doesn’t always know how to handle it, is exceedingly rare it seems.

Anyway, more to follow…

A Course of Love Virtual Conference

November 27, 2018
by Michael
comments 28
Course Ideas

It can be hard to explain just how or why a particular source of wisdom moves us as it does. Challenges with anxiety and self-doubt earlier in my life, coupled with a deep-seated desire to make contact with what—at least in glimpses—was a loving universal reality, led me to A Course in Miracles (ACIM). This book was extremely helpful to me because it clarified sources of confusion I hadn’t previously been able to understand. I studied it on my own for something like fifteen years—off and on. While the philosophy was never far from my attention, I drew closer to it in some times than others, like an orbiting moon.

The basic idea of ACIM is that we don’t properly understand or interpret our experience, principally because we misunderstand who we are. It’s a common idea in many spiritual teachings. A fundamental idea contained in ACIM is that we are not purely physical beings, and that reality is not purely material, and that just about every value judgment we form is erroneous because of how we assign value, where we place our attention, and how we structure our thought given our misunderstanding. There’s the idea that we’re almost looking at things upside-down, or inside-out. Where we were intended to deeply know, express and rely upon the invulnerability of our being, instead we only seem to know ourselves as vulnerable, isolated, and alone. We’ve been bereft instead of heartened.

A key practice in ACIM is shifting our perception so that we learn to be at peace, with the idea being that as we withdraw our investment in falsehood, the truth will naturally be restored in our sight. One thing that can happen is that we can oversimplify this process—we learn to carve out this quiet niche of peace to which we remove ourselves when difficulty arises, but we don’t ever quite merge this bubble of genuine knowing with the entirety of our daily experience. It’s like we’re split in two almost. There is the world that nags and tugs at us, and then there is the peace to which we navigate, and we bounce back and forth as times demand.

I was recognizing this—that I could easily find my way back to peace, but also that I kept misplacing it—when I did a web search to see if there were any other modern spiritual teachings from Jesus that might be out there. If there was one, why not another? I knew, of course, that there was more than one. I’d also read A Way of Mastery, and a book I’ve long enjoyed is Dialogue on Awakening by Tom Carpenter. But I was curious. And that’s when I found A Course of Love (ACOL). It was sometime in 2012 I believe.

For me ACOL was just perfect. There was a fullness there, an emphasis on the importance of expressing who we are to become who we are—and not just in terms of speaking intellectually about the “idea” we have of ourselves, but of actually leaving behind the self-concepts to which we so often compare ourselves. The book touched me in a way that few have, and I’ve enjoyed returning to it on multiple occasions. Just like with ACIM, my orbit of ACOL seems to be elliptical—I approach and I retreat. But the retreat isn’t really a retreat as much as a deeper level of trust I think. A foray into genuine unity, without the training wheels. A digression into deeper meaning.

This is a long-winded preface for sharing with anyone who may be interested that this weekend there will be an on-line conference about A Course of Love. I’ve included a link below. This weekend marks the 20th Anniversary of Mari Perron’s receipt of the Course. I don’t feel there’s any substitute for encountering a teaching like this directly, but I also think if you’re drawn to participate in some fashion that this conference will be a direct encounter of its own. The power of ACOL is, for me, at least in part, the encouragement to live who we are. It’s a tall order, but the truth is we only do it together. We can’t sit in our rooms and polish ourselves up, then reach the proper state and go into town. There’s really no polishing required; rather, we need a certain vulnerability, a certain acceptance of who we are. An understanding of ourselves that is genuine, and can only come from discovering who we are through the sharing of who we are.

I’m a panelist in one or two of these videos, and had fun getting on these video calls to share in some creative encounters. If you’re interested, I hope you will check it out. Regardless, and as always, I hope just touching on these ideas for a moment or two here brings some peace to your day.

The Mission is Everything

November 10, 2018
by Michael
comments 22
Reflections

A number of elements drew me to Linda’s Mission-Possible Blog Challenge this year, but the first was the Louise Hayes desk calendar image she posted that read, “I chose to come to this planet, and I am delighted to be here.” The image included the eyes of a fox peering playfully over the top of a log. Something about that just cracked me up. It’s certainly not what we’ve been feeling of late—it’s not the most obvious emotion at play in the world, at any rate—and yet it sort of begs the question, what else would I be doing? And where would I rather be?

Linda’s blog challenge is about having a purpose to fulfill in this earthly life. A soul mission. I’m at the point where showing up seems like maybe it was the mission, and this doesn’t seem inconsistent with the image of a fox peering over the top of a log, readying itself to pounce. I think it is the playfulness of that picture that I loved when I saw it, and it is playfulness that seems important to me somehow. To play is not necessarily to have a serious mission, but it’s not wasted time either. Play gladdens the heart, communicates equality and innocence, requires vulnerability. And it transmutes all that time I spend being serious into something useful.

You may have an image of what it is to be a playful person, and I probably don’t fit it. I’m not Will Farrell. And for swaths of my day I’m quite serious about things. But there’s always this fox peering over the log of my own seriousness, waiting to catch me in my own forgetting, and when the time presents itself, he dives into the fray. I can only hold my breath in serious waters for so long. I’m definitely not built to reside there indefinitely, which is kind of interesting given what’s going on right now in the world at large. It’s a pretty serious time, with some form of fear and destruction in the ascension on every front.

There’s a sense for me that weathering the storm of this age may be the mission. Living right through the middle of it. Maybe just knowing that what’s important is our being for one another—being sideless in a way. And I think play can be like that. It doesn’t require a declaration of identity and ideology. It doesn’t require qualifications or expertise. This play to which I’m drawn isn’t what you do when you’re bored, or escaping—it’s the kind of play you do when you’re building something new. It’s a whistling-while-you-work play.

There is a challenge I have sometimes with the specificity of the mission idea, like there’s this one thing in which our lives culminate and which our “success” hinges upon. Maybe that was true of Tesla, or Churchill, or those who have made specific contributions with their genius or strength of character. Maybe it’s true of those who seek to escape the wheel of reincarnation—maybe there is a particular experience to be lived, absorbed, and forgiven that will provide the desired release. I don’t know. But my sense is that in all of these cases there is something even more expansive, more common, even more immediate that underwrites these other notions—the experience of sharing of a meal, of traveling from one place to another, of the wind whisking over the grass, the color of flowers in spring and the scent of snow in winter. There’s a way in which we’re almost always placeless, even when we’re right here.

The idea of a mission breaks down for me when it posits a goal related to being somewhere else. So for me, the mission is to be right here, and to continue being right here, now, free in the creative balance of this moment. I think this brings me back to playfulness, which is always so immediate and so enlivening. If we can discover how to be at peace with one another in these times, it seems a tremendous accomplishment, far greater than any technology or political coup one may have achieved. And so this mission isn’t mine alone. It isn’t personal, in the sense that this sort of goal is not achieved in isolation, or in spite of what else may be occurring.

If I do have a mission, I think it must be the type that unfolds day by day, little by little, under the cover darkness perhaps, whether I am conscious of it or not. The mission is the energy that moves me. It’s the wind that sets my life into motion, and nowhere it takes me will be removed from its aim. I am most content in the knowing that my mission is here and now. When I can settle into the calamity of being with greater ease, I feel the most purposeful, the most powerful, and the most fulfilled.

A Selection of True Awakening Experiences Part III

October 24, 2018
by Michael
comments 30
Reflections

My days are no longer numbered. That’s one thing I’ve noticed.

And I feel okay about being up this creek without a paddle. I’m even starting to think whatever it is I don’t know is probably the best part, and always will be.

Today, I must confess, the full moon cracked me like a nut, and I wasn’t the only one. For a while we were floundering. All of us. Working up a righteous indignation there in the conference room. Awakening is realizing Hafiz is there the whole time, standing just outside the frame with his stopwatch and kazoo, counting down until real forgiveness strikes–that breath that says, what’s all this about?

I admit, I inhaled. The wounds we receive are never what they seem. Those are where the sweetness resides. We tunnel through them into glory. Most of the time I’m ignorant of what’s happening and I have to look back to see what it really meant. I have to dig down until I strike the nectar of who we are. Then I understand. I was thinking the whole episode meant something pretty good while I was driving home, realizing I wouldn’t have it any other way, while overhead the sky was splitting open into colors.

You realize at some point you have a secret inside you that you’ll probably never finish telling. But it’s sure fun to try. I listened to a podcast last week by some philosophers who were saying living forever wouldn’t actually be good, because we’d run out of new experiences to try, and then we’d get bored. It would be best if we could control when and how we died. Then we could maximize. I think that’s how I felt before I read Rumi, before I cried alone in the forest, before I realized everyone has the same secret inside of them and no clue how to tell it. Somewhere along the way you realize we’re already endless, and that all these different faces we’re bumping into are the Answer to the problem of eternity.

So can you really be awakened and have a day job?

Yes, of course.

In fact, that’s pretty much how it works. The ocean works all the time. The plants. The microbes. The stars. We need breaks, of course. During one of them you swat a fly and suddenly you realize: it’s all just being the thing you don’t know how to be. Now you have perspective. It does get easier.

Underneath the continuous rant of dissatisfaction we call a world, there is always light gathering. The world is a tree laden with ever-ripening fruit. It’s easy to say it’s something else. Something stifling and hot. Something to be wary of, at least.

Get as wary as you’d like. It’s okay, the moon will come along and crack you open. That’s what I learned…

Many thanks to Barbara for inviting me to participate in the next leg of this collective journey of discovery…

Concerning the Heart

October 8, 2018
by Michael
comments 26
Christ / Course Ideas / Reflections

Beauty is witnessed in the heart.

In the midst of calamity, when the towers are crumbling, and the temples are crumbling, and the skies are crumbling, still the heart is free. It is quiet amidst the waves. Gratitude may enter us then. Beauty may be recognized.

For it is the heart that recognizes its own.

Avowed of neither persecution nor vengeance, the heart has a talent for blessing, for insight, and for gentleness. In the midst of calamity, when something must be done, when the mob is gathering, and one must diminish another in the service of greater good—when deceit and distortion are blackening the skies, and a voice must be raised to be heard—still the heart sees innocence. How can this be?

Is not our anger righteous? Must something not be done?

What say you, my heart?

And still the heart is quiet.

When viewed from afar, the heart is but a stone. Wake up! we shout. The towers are crumbling!  The heavens rending! Now is the time!

And yet, it is true, even here the heart knows the way. For what must be saved has already been saved. This the heart knows. Here is the beginning of reason. Here is permission to recognize the innocent, and behold the beautiful.

What is there to do when what must be done has already been done?

Alert the others. Gather them close. Break the heart open and pass it around, like bread, that there may be nourishment. Offer the heart, that those who know it not might see it and remember. Don’t look for it, but let it come. You will know it has arrived.

For it is the heart that recognizes its own.

On the Possibility of Unity

September 9, 2018
by Michael
comments 36
Christ / Course Ideas / Science

There are periods in our lives when we make decisions with far-reaching implications. Doing nothing is hardly an option, and a few fundamental choices must be made that establish a line of action for the years to come. Deciding what you would like to study, do for work, or explore in life are examples of these decisions, but an even more important one is deciding what sources of information you will trust, or at least consider, in learning about yourself and the world.

Early in my exploratory journey I came to the conclusion that everyone was at least a little bit correct in their assessment of the human condition, and I chose to value traditional forms of knowledge with roughly equal weighting to modern forms of exploration. These terms are a bit misleading and require some clarification to be meaningful. Another way to say it is that I chose to give roughly equal weighting to the findings of cyclotrons, microscopes and laser beams as to our ancestral or ancient forms of wisdom, including the modern variants of long-standing traditions that are embodied in present day spiritual teachers, as well as receivers of so-called channeled material. I didn’t decide any one thing was correct above all else, I decided to investigate them all and look for distillations of knowledge when dogma, convention, and cultural particulars were set aside.

My reasoning, though not consciously clear to me at the time, was rooted in my intuitions about the nature of our reality, as well as the sense that reason is only as good as its foundation, and the choice of foundation is not easily made based upon evidence. In fact, no evidence has any meaning until the choice of a foundation has been made. I think this was one of the most powerful and fortunate insights of my youth, and it led to one of the most important decisions of my adult life, which I will get to in a moment. First it is important that this assertion of mine be understood.

When something happens, and we take note of it, the next step in our conscious appraisal of things is to deduce what it was that actually happened. This may sound foolish, but let’s say our attention was drawn to the flash of a colored light. It’s simply not enough to say that a light flashed. We want to know why it flashed, what caused it to flash, and what it represents in relationship to our own well-being. If we’re driving in a car and the light is on the dashboard, then we can explain this intrusion of light into our world pretty easily with a high degree of certainty, but if we didn’t know what a car was—if we were transplanted from 100,000 B.C into an Aston Martin with a coolant temperature alarm—the way in which we would interpret that experience might be quite different. Or so I conjecture.

Taking this sort of issue to its extreme, then it is possible to see that an entire structure of logic and reason, such as the traditional shamanic practices of a South American tribe, or the body of art and practice we call physics, are simply not possible without axiomatic beginnings. Those axioms are not disprovable, and thus, in a sense, are arbitrary. Of course they are never really arbitrary; I would argue the axiomatic beginnings of a thought system are the most fundamental expression of who the operands of the thought system (us) believe themselves to be. We could also say that the axiomatic beginnings are ultimately statements of what the universe is, leaving us (seemingly) out of it for the moment, but this is for my purpose here completely equivalent. The most important point is that once this point of origin is established, a complete thought system with self-supporting chains of experience, evidence, and logic will follow.

The major decision of my adult life was to declare that the point of origin for my own thinking would leave in tact the possibility that the universe has an interior dimension—that knowledge itself was possibly fundamental to its own becoming. In doing so I admitted of the possibility that the wisdom contained in ancestral or traditional philosophies arose from genuine contact with this dimension, but I did not feel this required that the light on the dashboard of a car need be explained as anything but what it was. To be fair, what I ultimately declared was that the universe was more than a material system, at least in terms of what we understand material systems to be. I, too, was forced to assert a point of beginning. (In point of fact, there are no neutral points of beginning, which I think is significant…)

Now once you have a beginning, you must run some experiments to develop the thought system that arises from that beginning, and my early experiments led to fairly intense (for me) psychological difficulties. But in time I came to understand the sources of my confusion and one text that was most helpful in this regard was called A Course in Miracles—though of course it was not this stand-alone document that was helpful, but an entire dynamic of history, memory, thought, insight, conversation, meditation, grace and engagement with the ideas that it contained. I think the metaphysics described therein echoes the metaphysics of countless traditions, although the language is quite unique, and this weekend I came to an interesting conclusion.

What I realized is that the point of origin for what I would call the modern rational worldview, whose philosophical labels I’m not well-equipped to offer, but which would certainly include materialism, necessarily describes the condition from which many wisdom traditions suggest we must recover. To unpack that statement, I would say that the foundation of a materialist, rational worldview would be the idea that the universe is a self-contained causal structure consisting exclusively of localized energetic transformations. To make that even simpler: what we see is the product of what preceded it, and the causes of what we see are local. This means that what happens cannot be impacted by any cause that is physically distant from the event. (I cannot flip a switch in another galaxy in the same instant that something happens in this one, because the two points are too far away to be physically related.)

Let me turn to the other portion of my assertion. The condition from which many wisdom traditions suggest we must recover is the perception of separation—the view that we exist as fundamentally distinct beings, or to say it another way, as beings without any ultimate unification. Who and what I ultimately am is independent of who and what you ultimate are. To make this as clear as possible, we are separate bouncing balls on the gymnasium floor, not two fingers on a common hand. What the wisdom traditions would suggest is that this notion of separation is illusory, and that there truly is a universal now—a non-dimensional locus inclusive of all time and all space, of which we actively participate.

So, back to my claim, which is this: the assertion of local causality in modern physics, as powerful as it is, is not only a restatement of the axiomatic foundation on which the entire intellectual exercise of modern physics rests; it is also axiomatically equivalent to the premise that the universe is a collection of fundamentally separate entities—the very premise which traditional wisdom cultures argue is the root cause of suffering as manifest in our experience.

Why is this important? Well, I think it is important because a necessary outcome of the axiomatic assertion of separateness is that we live in a zero sum game. The two notions are concomitant. This is the bounding feature of our interactions, our policy debates, our relationships, our institutions and the fundamental manner in which we attempt to organize our world. I would even hypothesize that the world so many well-intentioned persons wish to participate in creating—a world that not only works for everyone, but doesn’t require unacceptable levels of sacrifice—is simply not possible in this environment.

This hypothesis of fundamental unity is tough to test, of course, because it cannot be evaluated in the context of the current paradigm, in which it can only be judged as insane. Yet what is sane or insane is deemed such, in any thought system, by comparing an idea’s accord with the very axioms on which the thought system is founded. Also, if the possibility exists, however slight it may seem, that even our best efforts are founded upon untenable foundations, and will not be capable of succeeding in the manner that we sincerely hope, it is worth a moment of sincere reflection.

At minimum, perhaps, the mere acknowledgment of such a possibility might temper the swiftness with which we judge who and what is “right” in our world. A healthy dose of uncertainty would do all of us some good, I think, and create the space for choosing compassion before we reach for the rhetorical guns.