Brushing my teeth in the downstairs bathroom I notice something odd in the mirror over the sink. At first I think it is a floater in my eye but since it is on the left side of the mirror near the wall I turn left out of curiosity. To my surprise and delight a jumping spider, black with two thin white stripes on its back, is hanging down on a silken thread from the door frame. I watch as the spider climbs back up the thread a few inches. I say “hello little one, thank you for joining me this morning”. I feel the something new its presence brings in the moment. I turn back to finish brushing my teeth. Looking back a moment later to check on the spider’s progress it has disappeared. A little voice in me asks “how could it move so fast?” I grab the towel off the rack on my left. As I start to dry the sink I see something black in the sink. I look closer, a spider leg. Damn. I lift the towel and there is the lifeless body of the spider. I begin to feel pain in my heart at my thoughtless unconscious act. An accident yes but my tiny inner voice had warned me. I wash the spider down the drain. “What are you doing now?” the inner voice says. My heart feels my mistakes. I hold my hands to my chest in prayer for this tiny being which didn’t need to die at my hands. Two days later I continue to feel sad and heartsick over what happened. Yes, over a spider.

I want the reader to know why this experience touches me so much. This particular spider had been attempting to make contact with me for over a week, hanging down on a thread from the wall over the small round table I work on with my computer, going up and down the thread in front of me, hovering at eye level, it couldn’t be missed. Sometimes it would jump around on the floor around my feet. I ignored its dance, smiling at its antics but not taking the movements seriously. Still it persisted. While this was going on at night I was dreaming new and different dreams, new patterns, water in many, I felt different somehow. I was also attempting to make deeper connection with an old man, a steward or green man of the earth, water and air who had been in my dreams. But I missed the connection between the two streams.

So I have turned to write about this death, the missed weaving of threads and how gathering them now brings me to something new.

Surfing the internet one comes across numerous videos of animals saving other animals, humans saving animals and animals saving or helping humans. Are these stories anomalous, a figment of my or our wishful imagination in a time of ecological degradation of the Earth, maybe something that makes one feel better about accelerating animal deaths. Yet we have video evidence and a lot anecdotal stories from friends and others of these kinds of events. Should I dismiss all of this as nonsense?

Rather it’s my sense we are witnessing, like my experiences with the spider and these videos, a change in how I and others filter information. Let me explain.

The information (sensory and intellectual) a human being allows as “real” is largely based on the prevailing belief system/story of the society one lives in. From ancient Greece and Rome, to Christian medievalism, the Renaissance and finally in our Enlightenment based scientific modernism, each of these civilizations had a set of beliefs with filters determining what information was acceptable and what wasn’t, what was fact and truth and what was “fake”, a lie or just not to be believed. It is also obvious from the historical record that we have changed our beliefs over time, but how? For the most part these beliefs and the associated filters are lived mainly unconsciously by the society’s participants allowing and promoting collective behavior. It is only when the problems faced by a society cannot be solved by the existing belief system that its biases and filters become visible. Because the belief system isn’t able to solve its problems faith in the truth of the story or stories underpinning the society’s beliefs starts to wane. This leads to a crisis of meaning as the accepted beliefs provided the narrative with which to live a meaningful life at least in a collective sense.

Our civilization is using more and more money, technology and planning in attempts to solve the growing number of issues our society faces.  And yet despite our efforts we have growing social inequality, the sixth great extinction of animals and plants, destruction of the Earth’s ecosystems and potentially catastrophic climate change.  Is it as some people say we simply haven’t had the right application of reason, money and technology to fix the problems? I would suggest it is becoming clearer day by day the “right” solutions make the problems worse and as faith is lost why we have soaring rates of depression, anxiety and suicide. Our own souls do get what is happening to us and the world even if many of those affected do not understand what is at the root of their despair.

As meaning is lost human beings struggle to find something else, something new to give them some sense of why they are alive, of how to live. This experience brings me back full circle to the animals, to the natural world and our relationship to it, to the filters we have had in place in our modern world. As they fall away or are discarded by loss an individual is more able to begin to experiencing new ways of seeing the world, internalize them and discover something previously rejected as real.

Rather than seeing the natural world as a clockwork machine, soulless, and strictly instinctive as our present beliefs suggest one begins to find the natural world has a soul, is alive, vibrant and responds to our gestures. We start seeing videos, hear or read stories that express a different way of relating to the Earth and its abundant, beautiful and complex life.

However, some people perhaps more fearful than others harden their beliefs seeing the old belief system as the way through impending collapse. They have faith in old solutions like technology, war, and economic growth, even as collapse continues. My soul is not drawn to the old solutions but to life based on a deeper relationship to the natural world. How does one open to something new, to new ways of seeing, how do we remove or at least start to change the filters of our previous ways of seeing life? Here’s a short story of how this happened to me.

The day after I killed the spider in the sink I’m riding my bike on some trails in the river valley. I’m still feeling the resonance of my actions. After about 30 minutes I stop to drink water on a pedestrian walkway over an Edmonton freeway. Taking my water bottle out of the pannier I notice a reddish brown beetle resting on the lip of the pannier opening. My intuition says this little insect has been travelling with me for a while. A long time ago I would have blown or brushed the beetle off of my pannier. Remembering the spider experience I recognize this little beetle might have a desire to be where it is, being more conscious and aware of its own needs than I could ever be. As I look at the beetle I notice warm love in my heart, a valuing of its life, its being, then my heart says being with is enough. I drink my water and we cycle on. I don’t know when the beetle left me.

Having this experience left me open to other happenings around me. Riding towards home on the same trip I cycle out from under the Quesnel Bridge spanning the river here. I hear ravens calling in excited tones. Looking back over my right shoulder I see three ravens up on a steep grassy side hill beside the bridge on ramp. The wind is strong, side-by-side they are leaping up in the air gradually floating down to the ground. I slow down to watch. Over and over they leap up. I have seen crows do this very thing in strong wind near the river on a few occasions. My intuition and what I see (different filter) tells me they are having fun playing with the wind. I finish the ride home feeling different, more settled, excited too. Yes, more alive.

I killed a spider that wanted my attention, I let a beetle be, maybe to rest or take a ride, who knows for sure, and I see ravens playing in the wind. Is this anthropomorphism? Or by taking off my filters, maybe wrenched off by killing the spider, being observant, open hearted, seeing clearly, noticing and relating to inner resonances, I experience something new, find deeper meaning and soulful relationship with the natural world. New experiences of truth, beauty and love.  

 

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A few days ago Russell Lockhart (ral’s notebook.com) published a blog “Hacking Your Dreams”. Here are the last two paragraphs:

“As I noted in an earlier blog post, we are now deep into the robotic replacement of humans. One step along the way, will be the robotic replacement of dreams and as this unfolds dreams will be monetized. You will soon be able to buy the dreams you want. Or, as advertising becomes ever more successful, you will want to buy what others want you to dream.

Be ready.”

After pondering the meaning of the article for a few hours I began to note my reactions to what the blog portends. I felt a range of emotions- grief  for the what a loss of dreams would mean for humanity and the Earth, anger over allowing ourselves to be gradually turned in to machines and pain in my heart for the life lost as the machines sever us from our connection to nature. All of these feelings melded into a sense of sadness about the present and the future.

I wanted to do something about all of this, to make it go away so that I could function in my day. I didn’t like how vulnerable it made me feel. Pushing these feelings away away, trying to forget or deny them, led to dull anxiety gnawing away at me instead. I knew where this angst would lead- body symptoms, a headache or back pain- as my soul reacted to a deflection of life energy into a dark pit. What was this dark pit I asked myself? Was it despair from feeling unable to do anything about a future leading to a soul death of humanity and of the Earth? With the “powers” pushing us towards this eventuality and with the complexity of modern civilization was the angst about finding ways to be heard let alone create change. Was the pain of present losses compounded by the prospect of such a soulless future part of the darkness? Perhaps all of these fears added up to a fear of the unknown, a fear of the future.  I ended up feeling paralyzed as to what I could do or respond with.

Eventually I decided to write as I am doing to undertake a sorting process around these painful issues and engage negative capability as a different perhaps ludicrous response to the paralysis. So I sat still and opened myself to whatever voice wished to speak. This is what appeared.

The imagery of Cypher, a character in the first Matrix movie, first came to mind in what is called “The Matrix Steak Scene”. Cypher is sitting in a fancy restaurant at a small round table with Mr. Smith. Cypher decides to sell out his companions to Mr. Smith because he is tired of the battle against the machines and desires to remain in the world of the Matrix instead. As part of the agreement Cypher asks Mr. Smith to make sure he, Cypher, doesn’t remember what he has done, he wants to be rich in his new Matrix life and someone important, he pauses thinking, “an actor” he says after a few seconds.  We see a wee bit of irony in the script writer’s choice of “vocation” in that moment. In a later scene where he “pulls the plug” killing some of his companions in the Matrix Cypher speaks about being tired of always having to follow orders, of being a minion rather than a boss. In this moment is he experiencing a sense of being powerful even though his power comes through betrayal and cowardice? Does knowing he won’t remember what he has done assisted by the Matrix virtual reality allow him to excuse, compartmentalize, or repress his guilt? What human behavior is like this?

Here we can see the malignant narcissism of the ego in full flower. Reality is too difficult for this man’s weak ego; his ego wants power and control at any cost as compensation; he would rather live in unconscious denial in a machine made image filled oblivion or virtual reality illusion where he has absolutely no responsibility for his previous actions, nor remember them, all characteristics of a sociopath.

Then I asked myself is there much of a difference between what he is doing and our civilization’s denial of climate change, ecosystem destruction and species extinction? Are we not betraying each other and the natural world in particular so that we can live in an illusion of human progress, a kind of virtual reality through unconscious repression? If Russell Lockhart’s suggestions are accurate in the near future we will be able to more thoroughly escape our betrayal by increasing immersion and distraction in technology, VR, and eventually even in our dreams. How convenient it would be to avoid the pain of our souls and our hearts caused by this betrayal.  Stress induced body symptoms from this betrayal will be “medicated” away (alcohol, marijuana, opioids, anti-depressants); the destruction wrought by our betrayal and reflected in our dreams will be soothed with VR. In fact we could be sold a whole new reality to avoid the guilt and pain of our complicity in creating a world in extremity; and like Cypher choose to believe the “steak” or the new story implanted in us is real. The malignant narcissistic ego is capable of that level of self and soul deception. To me this is a form of evil.

Despite our attempts to rid ourselves of religion and God through our belief in reason, the religious or spiritual impulse remains alive in us and finds places to be expressed. We are simply ignorant and unconscious of this process going on underground as it is projected on material things in our secular civilization. Since the Enlightenment this impulse has been projected incrementally on science, technology and the “stuff” of consumerism. More recently and to greater and greater degrees it is projected on money as money is the common thread that binds them. Sounds like the “One Ring” doesn’t it?

“One Ring to rule them all, One ring to find them; One ring to bring them all. and in the darkness [unconsciousness] bind them.”

The commodification or monetization of everything, including dreams is the ritual enactment of the etymological meaning of religion, to “bind to” as is expressed so well by the inscription on the One Ring, the Ring of Power, above. We are binding ourselves ever more tightly to our projected symbol of God as our anxiety and underlying fears about life and the world grow. Binding ourselves to money for its God like or spiritual powers, power over something, more control, security and comfort, enabling the buying of things to calm anxiety and in vain attempts to sooth our tortured souls.  One can see this binding in the financialization of the world economy; coin and paper money becoming mere digits or light in a computer is a form of spiritualization, the complex mystical algorithms finance uses to function, its arcane language interpreted by money priests of all sorts and the outright worship of money by a range of people not just the 1% are all aspects of being bound to something as a form of belief. It is a religion of money, where faith in money’s power gives one seemingly God-like freedom and control over life and a means to defy death especially the death of the planet and the human species.

Now as the crises we are facing deepen technology is likely the next God waiting in the wings for our spiritual projection of the all-powerful one. Why do I say this? Often times when I discuss the crises facing us and the finite nature of the planet the answer I get back is a professed faith in technology. Technology will save us I am told or read in a variety of media. It seems to me individuals and society says this  in order to avoid  truly feeling and thinking about the consequences of the way we live in our civilization. Technology will save us from our sins. Believing this we don’t have to go any further. If we did acknowledge our responsibility then much of the meaning of western civilization, its greatness, our grand visions of progress and of attaining a final utopia would crumble into dust. How could we live with that? I suspect most people couldn’t.  It is a belief that flies in the face of what is actually happening to the planet and to humanity. How then does one come to terms with losing so much that we love?

As life becomes more extreme it is quite possible that technology will become the last great hope for salvation and idolized, seen as magical, even fetished and will be used as a form of control to reduce anxiety and increase security. Many human beings may willingly accept this authoritarian and powerful God if it brings relief however temporary or illusional from the anxiety and underlying fear of collapse. By collapse I mean the collapse of our beliefs and faith in the stories underpinning modernity, and the disintegration of the physical structures and functions of our powerful and “progressive” modern civilization.

We already bow down to the God of money. Will humanity also make technology omniscient and its technologists and owners our masters?

We can become more consciousness of where our religious impulse is going and develop new stories about our relationship to money and technology. Then new roles for money or technology in human life are possible but we are not doing that much at all.

The invisible wires of control developed by Edward Bernays are expanding. Could humanity someday become as in the Matrix, serfs used to provide energy and raw material for a machine or robotic civilization? Will our “bosses” be machines, or AI symbiants, part human, part machine? If we allow ourselves to live in an illusion but accept it as reality there is no telling how far this could go. We are already doing this by denying what is happening to the Earth and to humanity to avoid our fears and the vulnerability that comes from the loss of what we love, of Home.

Some human beings back in the late 1990’s could imagine a future such as portrayed in the Matrix and created it in a movie. The natural world of which we are a part is replaced by machines and technology. Our connection to the root of life is being severed.

We become what we do, we become what we think, the natural world endures all of this. I desire a different path, a life that is led by a relationship to Mystery, my own soul and with the soul of the world. In this kind of life one attempts to be at home with uncertainty and vulnerability, to feel our fears and not deny them. We learn how to find the courage and strength to look at what is truly happening inside ourselves and out there, to see they are related and connected, and then finally act from our hearts.

Cypher holds up a piece of steak on his fork as he sits with Mr. Smith. Looking at it Cypher says he knows the steak doesn’t exist, when he puts it in his mouth, the Matrix will tell him it is juicy and delicious. Then he says “after 9 years [of fighting the machines] you know what I realize?” putting the steak in his mouth, “ignorance is bliss”, chewing his face expresses pleasure.

Is ignorance or unconsciousness of doing something harmful, bliss? The human ego malignant or otherwise, unwilling to experience psychological pain, to suffer and bear the guilt and consequences of its choices, remains deeply narcissistic. Money and technology are used to remain safe and comfortable, our materialist society’s version of bliss. The Other, nature and our fellow human beings, bear the burden of this narcissism.

In the next blog I will write about how one might approach being at home with our fears.

 

 

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Slocan Lake Experience April 2014

On Saturday I ride my bike north on the highway a half kilometer uphill out of New Denver turning west off of the highway to rejoin the Galena Trail (an old narrow gauge railway line) descending downhill along the east side of Slocan Lake. About three quarters of the way to Roseberry which is the small town 8 km north of New Denver the trail is flat and 40 meters from the side of the lake. Something about the beach and the shallow water off the beach attracts my attention. There is a feeling here of quiet, calm and restfulness about the place and an immense strength of some sort. Riding on to Roseberry  I take pictures of a rusted antique truck in the woods and sit listening quietly by the lake. I ride through town to a campground on the side of Wilson Creek which runs through Roseberry and in to Slocan Lake. After riding around the campground for a bit I head back up the Galena Trail towards New Denver and home. Reaching the place where my attention was drawn earlier I stop. I see a small trail off to the right which winds down to the lake. Walking my bike down I see a former wooden address sign with a name and number on it attached to a tree like an invitation. Leaning my bike against a dead birch tree  I walk the rest of the way down to the beach perhaps 20 meters. Sitting on a log I pull Daniel Deardorff’s book “The Other Within” out of my pannier and I lay down on my back on the rocky beach with my bike helmet over my face to relax. The day is warmish and I go into a kind of reverie gradually relaxing in my body. I feel teary-eyed with weariness from the tension I’ve been carrying in myself for quite some time. I feel like this place could support me without asking anything of me, sort of like being on both our parts. I doze for about half an hour and then waking up I see a storm front coming in from the south. I decide to pack up and ride back uphill to the highway and down into New Denver.

The following day I repeat the route towards Roseberry stopping at the beach again. This time after I sit down on the beach and start reading Daniel Deardorff’s book things start to happen. First I notice that the lake is absolutely calm. I feel a responding sense of serenity and quiet rising up in myself leading to an opening feeling in my body and mind. Now I hear noise on the lake. Thirty meters offshore three little brown ducks swim slowly in the calm water. I notice with delight the moving, rippling and shimmering water around the swimming ducks. Suddenly one duck, the next and then the last one dive underwater with a schlooping sound hunting fish. About a half minute later each one comes back up with a schliping sound. I watch the ducks move around for about 10 minutes. Gradually the sound of splashing and many bird calls in the middle of the lake comes in to my consciousness. Looking out on the lake I see hundreds of birds, maybe Terns, splashing and moving about on the water. They have a feeling of life, vibrant life, a sense of continuity and instinct which touches and activates something primordially similar in me. I notice my breathe deepening  Another sound off to my right at about 2 o’clock. Turning I see silvery white movements and splashing of water. At first I can’t make out what is going on especially as it increases in intensity over five minutes. Slowly I realize the silver shapes are large trout spawning, mating or just playing in the water near the surface. I feel the connection, the erotic feeling of it all as my instinctive imagination responds to the action. A ladybug flies by me and comes back landing on the meaty part of my left thumb. Looking down I see a red carapace with no black dots. The red color has a faint purple undertone. The beetle seems be staying so I decide not to disturb its repose and I sit reading and watching all the goings-on in the lake. I feel softness come in to my heart and body around her trust in me. A few minutes later me I hear a snap and a crash behind me. Twisting around to the right I see something dark move in the trees at the edge of the beach. At first it looks like something lept from a dead birch tree into a cedar tree so I search the trees for a minute or two looking for a cougar.  When nothing ferocious appears I relax. I realize a branch has fallen from the dead birch by the trail down to the beach. A large gray branch is lying down on the trail. I leaned my bike against that tree yesterday. Something suggested to me today that I bring my bike all the way down to the beach. If I had left it by the birch it would have been damaged. Hmmm? I feel a sense of compensation, a sense of something balancing out, from this experience.  The image of the dark, alive wooden wagon in a recent dream comes up in me. The dream seems to be speaking about balance from one scene to the next. Now I notice that the ladybug has flown away from my thumb. Maybe from my movements. Looking down to read I see that it has landed on page (XXI) on the word “the”. The full sentence containing the ‘’the’’ is ‘’Blake says Improvement makes strait roads, but (the) crooked roads without Improvement are roads of Genius.” Inside I say well this speaks to me because I have been so busy Improving myself at times that I neglect and don’t fully value the crooked roads. Today was certainly being on one of those crooked roads. She flies away and I say good bye to her, thanking her for her trust and love.

I look out at the lake and I notice FOUR little brown ducks all schlooping and schliping in and out of the water. Something joyful leaps up from my heart. And then the negating rational voice comes. Was I being too irrational  in my seeing and responses to all that I have experienced today? Nature couldn’t be speaking to me so directly could it? Or is it that nature simply speaks holy/wholly as its own being which has nothing to do with me? So then the voice says all of this was coincidence and instinct on the part of the creatures I was with. I pause and take a deep breath in. I listen inside. Deep in my heart and from previous experience I do know that “something” was happening. Putting the negative voice aside I feel deeply blessed and honored to be able to be witness to sacredness of Being all the while being in the container of the Slocan Valley and the mountains. Looking up at the sky I notice the weather is shifting towards rain again so I read a bit more from my book,  pack up and pedal back to New Denver ruminating and mulling over my experience.

In Golden on my way back home I’m lying in bed before going to sleep. I start gently weeping in gratitude for the gift of those moments on Slocan Lake. I keep saying thank you, thank you in deep gratitude. Later, before I fall asleep a sense of service towards this experience begins to take hold in my heart. I pray to Mystery to guide me further. Sleep.

In the next blog I will write about imagination and how I walked further along the crooked path out of this experience.

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