Our Best is Needed

    "The question we need to ask ourselves is whether there is any place we can stand in ourselves where we can look at all that's happening around us without freaking out, where we can be quiet enough to really hear our predicament, and where we can begin to find ways of acting that are at least not contributing to further destabilization.” Ram Dass

    We can easily remember Ram Dass' words with the help of these two short phrases:

    In the wonderful TV series, "New Amsterdam," Dr. Max Goodwin's response to even the most challenging situations was to ask, "How can I help?"
    And if we can't help, then: "At least do harm."

 

    What do we value most in a human being? What are the best attributes of people we most admire? 

    Decency, honesty, trustworthiness, reliability, kindness, acceptance, humility, courage & nurturing stand out for me.

 

    Aren't these the very same characteristics that lie deep within us all? These attributes - sparks of the Divine - we all potentially or actually manifest under optimal conditions, when we feel sufficiently safe & brave enough to lower our hardened defenses, and be authentic - our true Self? 

    We can easily differentiate between feeling rigid with fear, guarded, aggressive, enraged, versus when we feel safe, relaxed, glowing with an open-heart & open mind. 

    BUT what's really valuable is learning to recognize how we habitually remain armored, at least somewhat tight & hyper-vigilant even when there's NO "clear and present danger" AND how this constantly corrodes all our perceptions, thinking, speech & behaviors. 

    ONLY by repeatedly recognizing & releasing this default survivalist, separate-self, adversarial illusion are we able to gradually stop sabotaging our own quality of life, and the quality of life of all those around us.

    What clues do we have, that we're lost in the default survivalist, separate-self, adversarial illusion? We feel physically tight, strained, anxious, impatient, 'time poverty,' 'empty' or 'lacking' something, desperate to 'keep busy,' competitive, aggressive. OR we may feel 'lack luster,' no energy, no interests, no plans, hopeless, down. OR we may feel constantly anxious, afraid & upset by a wide variety of things, and assume that it's these that are making us sick. But fear of living AND fear of dying are common. Meditation teacher Ezra Bayda calls it the "anxious quiver of being."

    Becoming clearly aware of what's really going on, here & now occurs only in stillness, not by "keeping busy" chasing after stuff, nor running away from other stuff. Perhaps that's why we fear to, and rarely stop & look carefully. Our compulsive activity - like furiously riding a rocking horse - gives the illusion of "getting somewhere." HOWEVER, intentionally being aware of what's really here & now gradually tames our fears, and intimately engages us with the awesome mystery of Reality.

    “When I change the level of my awareness, I start attracting a different reality.” Santon Saint Pierre, French philosopher

    Living in the default survivalist, separate self, adversarial illusion feels bad & harms myself & everyone around me. 

    I CAN learn to detect this default way of being, repeatedly let it go, relax, open my heart-mind, and ALLOW my true nature - decency, honesty, trustworthiness, reliability, kindness, acceptance, humility, courage & nurturing - to shine, which radically changes EVERYTHING - our perceptions, thinking, speech & behaviors. It's a lifelong adventure.

     

Passenger - "When We Were Young"

Ordinary Mysticism

    Many of us turn away from traditional organized religion, paradoxically, because we are more spiritual than most representatives of organized religion.  
    Organized religions are, in general, typical large corporations (group egos) that do 'whatever it takes' to survive & grow, and as a result have long ago lost understanding & interest in their founder's original intention. As self-interest (individual & group) increases, values & ideals proportionately diminish. 

    Those of us who are serious about healthy maturation / aging / spirituality travel, often alone, in the opposite direction:

“... as self decreases,
the Divine increases.”
Bernadette Roberts 

    Mystics have compassion for (all) religious traditions, but are spiritually independent. They hold specific religious affiliations (group egos) very lightly, and focus almost exclusively on their direct experiential connection with the Absolute. 

    "Thomas Merton once said, ‘The regrettable thing about the Christian missionary movement is that all too often the Christian missionaries failed to realize that people they were converting were as or more holy than they were.’"
    James Finley on Mysticism, Psychedelic Drugs, Transgenderism, Thomas Merton and Richard Rohr : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymSfaKy4CPI – EXCEPTIONAL

    It's confusing & sad when large corporate entities - be it food-supply multinationals, or major religions - that originally stood for something good & meaningful, progressively degenerate, 'sell out.'  
    Individuals who still pursue what's good & meaningful, must learn to do so independently.

     Below, two excerpts from Mirabai Starr - former professor of world religions, author of many books on spirituality, mostly about the great Christian mystics:

    “Your life is holy ground. And you are a mystic. 
     I know you are because all it means to be a mystic is to have a direct experience of the Sacred. You have had zillions of those. You may be having one right now. Some resonance in your bones that whispers, Yes, I belong. I am intertwined with all that is. A mystic is someone who skips over the intermediaries (ordained clergy, prescribed prayers, rigid belief systems) and goes straight to God. Meaning, someone who experiences the Divine as an intimate encounter, rather than an article of faith. A mystical experience may or may not be connected to established spiritual traditions, theological structures, or faith communities. Mysticism is not about concepts: it is about communion with Ultimate Reality. And Ultimate Reality is not some faraway prize we claim when we have proved ourselves worthy to perceive it. Ultimate Reality blooms at the heart of regular life. It shines through the cracks of our daily struggles and sings from the core of our deepest desires. 
     A mystic knows beyond ideas, feels deeper than emotions, is fundamentally changed by That which is Unchanging. Mysticism is a way of seeing – beyond the turmoil, the rights and wrongs, the good guys and villains – to the radiant Heart of things. The mystical gaze reveals the miracle in the summer thunderstorm and the bowl of ramen. It glimpses the face of the holy in the withered dahlias and blesses the sound of the siren in the middle of the night. It quickens the heart with yearning and soothes the soul with the felt presence of the sublime. A mystic gazes through the eyes of love, and love reveals itself as the only true thing. 
    For most of us, mystical seeing does not happen all the time, but for all of us, it happens some of the time. And for more and more of us, it is happening more and more of the time. In proportion to current challenges of systemic inequity and climate catastrophe, the flowering of grassroots activism and the uncovering of ancestral trauma in our own family systems, old filters are burning away and we are granted renewed access to the numinous nature of reality.  
    When you decide to walk the path of the mystic, the mundane shows up as miraculous, the boring becomes fascinating, and your own shortcomings turn out to be your greatest gifts. 

    My friend James Finley – a living mystic if ever there was one – puts it like this: ‘If we are absolutely grounded in the absolute love of God that protects us from nothing even as it sustains us in all things, then we can face all things with courage & tenderness and touch the hurting places in others and in ourselves with love.’ ” 
    Mirabai Starr. “Ordinary Mysticism. Your Life as Sacred Ground.” HarperOne, 2024.

 

     “The classical scholarly definition of a mystical experience is a direct experience of the Sacred, or of the Divine, or of God, depending on your tradition, and what language works for you. It’s unmediated through prescribed prayers, ordained clergy, or belief systems. It’s an experience of the sacred that is direct and transformational, even if subtly. 
    So what I’m talking about here is not past life regression, or sound healing, or anything like that. Those are beautiful, wonderful things, but that’s not what I mean by mystical. 
    I mean an experience of Union. It’s a unitive experience with the loving truth of reality. I say loving because to me Ultimate Reality – what you might call God or the Divine or the Sacred – is characterized by love. And so it’s a direct experience of that vast, loving reality. 
    (Quoting her 90yo agnostic mother), 'A mystical experience is when you have an encounter with something that is deeply moving, and you don’t skip over it, you stay with it, you make yourself available for the fullness of that experience.'

    So whether it’s watching an osprey landing on the mangrove outside our window, and look into your eyes, or if it’s about receiving a phone call that the lump in your friend’s breast is malignant. 
    A whole range of moments can be portals to deep presence - IF we don’t run away, IF we stay with it and cultivate a kind of curiosity and willingness to be transformed by the encounter, whatever it may be, willingness to be changed by it." 
    Insights at the Edge: “Your Life Is Holy Ground” with Mirabai Starr https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4lBH4A0zxU

Our Present Society is in the "Kindergarten of Consciousness"

Remaining Open and Curious

    "One of the painful things about our time is that those who feel certainty are stupid, and those with any imagination & understanding are filled with doubt & indecision." Bertrand Russell

    A simplistic, superficial, literal 'understanding' of even the most complex of mysteries is common. We dread uncertainty, rush to conclusions & hide in group-think for (false) security. Respected monk Thomas Merton said that even in monasteries, people of spiritual depth are very rare:
    “Once in a while you will find someone with whom you can talk about (spiritual experiences). But they are hard to find. And when you are fortunate enough to find such a person it will be a temporary arrangement. For you will spend most of your life without such a person, which will be your solitude in which you will learn from God how to depend on God to guide you into ever deeper communion with God.”
    James Finley. “The Healing Path. A Memoir and an Invitation.” Orbis, 2023.

    ‘Most human institutions, by the purely technical and professional manner in which they come to be administered, end by being obstacles to the very purposes which their founders had in view.’ William James 

    “Don’t carry away a conclusion unless it has been arrived at through your own experience. Rather, if there hasn’t been direct experience, carry away the question.”
    Toni Packer. “The Silent Question. Meditating in the Stillness of Not-Knowing.” Shambhala, 2007.

    “Throughout much of Western history, until the fourth century AD when early, ‘primitive’ Christianity began to be systematically stamped out beneath the jackboots of the Roman Catholic Church, ‘beatific visions’ were the primary recruitment tool of the enormously ancient and influential ‘religion with no name’ that is the subject of The Immortality Key. This religion could shift and morph into multiple forms – The Eleusinian and Dionysian Mysteries are among the examples … and to these I would add the much older religion of the painted caves explored in Supernatural – but the common factor in every case was a psychedelic sacrament (sometimes food, sometimes drink, sometimes both) consumed by all participants.
    ‘Primitive’ Christianity started out around two thousand years ago as merely the latest form or incarnation of this archaic religion, and – at least in some cases – seems to have made use of bread & wine infused with psychedelic plants & fungi as its sacrament. At that time, because Christianity was persecuted under the Roman Empire until the reign of Constantine (AD 306-337) it was normal practice for its adherents to meet secretly in small groups to eat the bread and drink the wine of Holy Communion, and afterward experience powerful & deeply meaningful beatific visions. And more often than not, these secret ceremonies of direct experiential communion with the divine were led by women with men playing a secondary role.

    Then, from the second half of the fourth century AD onward, came the rise of Roman Catholicism, dominated by men who took decisive steps to marginalize the role of women in the Church and to remove the psychedelic elements from the sacrament, reducing Holy Communion to the empty symbolic act, devoid of powerful experiential content, that hundreds of millions of Christians continue to perform.
    My friend, the visionary artist Alex Grey, whose work has been much influenced by Ayahuasca, describes the Old Testament story of the serpent, the forbidden fruit, and God’s expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden as ‘the first psychedelic slapdown.’
    Pursuing that thought, Roman Catholicism’s persecution of ‘primitive’ Christians and the extirpation of their visionary Communion wine might be described as the second psychedelic slapdown.
    And then, in the twentieth century, just as we seemed to be freeing ourselves from the loveless iron grip of the Church and opening up to new spiritual possibilities, governments around the world waded in with the so-called ‘war on drugs’ – the third psychedelic slapdown.
    Over the centuries, therefore, enormous often deadly forces (with the power, for example, to burn people at the stake or imprison them for decades) have repeatedly been unleashed to prevent people from experiencing direct contact with realms & realities other than the mundane. At the same time, however, even when it must have seemed that the ‘religion with no name’ had been deleted completely from the human record, there were always – if I may extend the metaphor – multiple ‘backup disks’ in the form of psychedelic plants & fungi growing all over the planet. There might be long gaps, lacunae of centuries even, but the moment would always come when certain curious individuals, either by accident or by design, would sample the plants and mushrooms that serve as the permanent Hall of Records of the religion with no name, thus setting in motion the experiences & subsequent processes of social organization that would ultimately allow it to be rescued in full force.
    It is not an accident that the Mazatec shamans of southern Mexico refer to the psilocybe mushrooms used in their ceremonies as ‘little teachers,’ and, in a sense, that is what all psychedelic plants & fungi are – literally the ancient teachers of mankind. Whether we engage with Ayahuasca, or with Psilocybe Mexicana, or with peyote, or with LSD (which is itself derived from the fungus ergot) we are dealing with the biological agents of the religion with no name and with their numinous capacity to reawaken our spiritual appetites and potential.”
    Graham Hancock's Foreword to: Brian C. Muraresku “The Immortality Key. The Secret History of the Religion with No Name.” St. Martin’s Press, 2020.

    “… in 2006, the (Johns) Hopkins team completed the first psilocybin (research) project since the 1970s, when research into the forbidden substance became largely impossible during the War on Drugs. Under tightly controlled conditions the psilocybin unleashed a profound, mystical experience that seemed to anchor the lasting emotional & psychological benefits recorded by the thirty-six volunteers. They had no life-threatening illness, and were otherwise free of the debilitating angst (morbid fear of death) that consumed (some previous research subjects with advanced cancer). But these early results were shockingly similar to the 2016 collaboration with NYU: one-third of the participants rated their experience ‘as the most spiritually significant of their lives,’ comparing it to the birth of a child or the death of a parent. Two-thirds placed it among the top five. When friends, family, & coworkers were interviewed, they confirmed the remarkable transformations in the volunteers’ mood & behavior for months, even years, following their single dose.
    From that moment on, Dr. Roland Griffiths upended his career to focus almost exclusively on psilocybin, creating what is now called the Johns Hopkins Psychedelic Research Unit. More than 360 volunteers and fifty peer-reviewed publications later, he’s ready to call a spade a spade. In his 2016 TED Talk, Griffiths said the drug-induced ecstasy he routinely witnesses in the laboratory is ‘virtually identical’ to that reported by natural-born prophets & visionaries throughout human history. The underlying experience itself, whether activated by psilocybin or some spontaneous internal flood of neurotransmitters**, must be ‘biologically normal.’ If we are essentially wired for mystical experience, it raises the intriguing prospect that, under the right mind-set & environment, any curious soul can be instantly converted into a religious savant.
    Griffith’s colleague, Dr. William Richards, has been testing that hypothesis since the 1960s, when he codeveloped the very scale to measure these peak states of consciousness, the Mystical Experience Questionnaire. … In his 2015 book, Sacred Knowledge: Psychedelics and Religious Experiences, Richards maps out the essential features of the perfect psilocybin journey: transcending time & space, accessing knowledge that is normally not available. Oftentimes there is a merging of the everyday personality with a larger, more fundamental whole. Words fail to capture the unsinkable conviction that the experiencer has somehow glimpsed the ultimate nature of reality, an insight that seems ‘blatantly obvious’ at the time, and is usually accompanied by intense feelings of joy, tranquility, exaltation, & awe.”
    Brian C. Muraresku “The Immortality Key. The Secret History of the Religion with No Name.” St. Martin’s Press, 2020.

    ** NOTE: Neurotransmitters mediate but are NOT the "ultimate cause" of mystical experiences any more than a TV set actually causes the Olympic Games, or anything else we watch on it.
    ALSO, shamans who for thousands of years have, & continue to facilitate such numinous experiences, actually do so far more often & widely with drumming & other non-pharmaceutical rituals than with plant medicines.
    AND, with the appropriate "set & setting" people for millennia have also achieved profound mystical experiences & insights by themselves through meditation & other spiritual practices and less often, even spontaneously. This strongly suggests that we are not only "wired for mystical experiences," but that "we are spiritual beings, having a physical experience."

    “When we are in contact with the ineffable, divine reality that is our source, we also know what state we shall return to. Without this knowledge we are indeed dead, even though we may show signs of physical life.”
    Stephan A. Hoeller. “Gnosticism. New Light on the Ancient Tradition of Inner Knowing.” Quest, 2002.

    In summary, direct mystical experiences may be essential prerequisites for us to open to deeper realities, which our 'usual' way of perceiving & thinking these days, can rarely access or comprehend.
    A wide variety of spiritual practices - from yogic breathing techniques, various meditation techniques, chanting, drumming, dancing, tai chi / qi gong, yoga, sweat lodge ceremonies, and plant medicines in appropriate set & settings, with appropriately-trained traditional shamans or health-care professionals - pave the way to profoundly life-altering, life-affirming direct mystical experiences and insights.

Infinitely Greater

“Take away the fear,
only love remains.”

John McKay, Whole Foods CEO


“... as self decreases,
the Divine increases.”

Bernadette Roberts

     Our survival instincts - a conglomerate of life lessons (conditioning), reflexes & genetics - is our 'self-centered survivalist' operating system that runs our mostly autopilot existence. Rarely do we stop to consider, 'Wait a minute, I always respond to situations like this - why? What if I consciously decide on the most appropriate tailor-made response to each new situation to optimize results for myself & others affected?'
    Now, each situation is new, as it can't ever be exactly the same, and we change from one moment to the next, so each moment is always a brand new ballgame. Intentionally considering how others are affected requires our fear-based survival instinct to abate temporarily, so our wiser, more spacious love-based 'tend & befriend' operating system can come online. 

    When an individual or group is criticized, especially if the criticism is valid, instead of using the criticism constructively & making necessary corrections, the usual tendency is to automatically double-down in 'self-centered survivalist' mode, and rationalize past behaviors - 'intellectual bypassing' - like lawyers using legal loopholes to keep guilty clients out of prison.
    Such self-centered blindness to values is how a small friendly business that starts by selling nutritious whole foods, degenerates into a multinational corporation, pushing addictive salt, fat & sugar-laden snacks, and viciously defending its market share. Anything tends to similarly degenerate, even our great mystics' direct experience of the Divine.

    “Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.” Rainer Maria Rilke

     There are many reasons why the above will sound counter-intuitive, counter-cultural, even nonsensical to our usual way of thinking & being. Of course this "usual way" - the separate self or left-hemisphere-dominant operating system - is narrowly specialized to control the external environment to optimize survival & procreation. Deeper values, wisdom, spirituality & meaning, and ideas like beauty, truth & goodness are foreign, irritatingly irrelevant, abstract, impractical concepts to this pragmatic level of thinking & being, and indeed to many in our current society.

     Unlike the troubled characters we see daily in the news, we actually do have some wisdom-keeper elders actually worth listening to. But they're rather modest & quiet, and so we must take time out to search them out, listen deeply to what they say, and read slowly & carefully the things they write.
    Among the wisest of these imho is James Hollis PhD, an 84 year-old psychologist & Jungian analyst, who's written 20 wonderful books, all while working full time and doing many excellent interviews:

    “In an age of great material excess, we suffer dislocations from energies of our deepest being and, in return, suffer emptiness, anomie, aimlessness – all sicknesses of the soul.

    On a collective level, our culture’s treatment plans for the absence of a personal, intimate relationship with the (Divine) are materialism, hedonism, narcissism & nationalism, as well as a coursing nostalgia for a world that never really existed.”
    James Hollis. “Living Between Worlds. Finding Personal Resilience in Changing Times.” Sounds True, 2020.

 The Highwaymen "The Highwayman"

 

Spiritual Evolution

Reality is more complex than we would like.
If we insist upon it making sense,
we will find ourselves despairing.
Reality cannot be neatly packaged ...
Reality is all that is, and this is often at odds
with what we imagine it should be.
Rabbi Yannai, an early Jewish sage 

 

 

    “Always keep an open mind about whatever you experience. Try not to jump to conclusions. Simply keep observing & investigating your experience thoroughly & continuously. Jumping to conclusions will prevent your understanding from deepening.”
    Ashin Tejaniya “Don’t Look Down on the Defilements – They Will Laugh at You." http://sayadawutejaniya.org/teachings/

      In medicine, a well-recognized source of diagnostic error is "premature closure" - when physicians fail to listen to patients long enough to hear the full history, wrongly assuming they already "know" because they've "heard it all before." 

    It takes effort & humility to patiently, intentionally retain an open, beginner's mind, especially for 'experts' burdened by dogma.

     One definition of an expert is one who's incapable of further learning. This patronizing, colonializing hubris keeps governments, religions, professions & other large institutions fossilized decades, if not centuries behind progressive ideas.

      “While religion at its best calls us to a community of the curious and a unity beyond dogma & tribalism; religion at its worst calls us to worship the very things that divide us and to pit people against one another in the name of one fantasy or other.”
       Rami Shapiro. “Holy Rascals. Advice for Spiritual Revolutionaries.” Sounds True, 2017.  

    Dogmatic secular scientism & dogmatic religions are equally captivating, both promising certainty. For both, it's an open & shut case, all other worldviews are fiercely denounced, now adherents can get back to being busy doing stuff, end of discussion, thank you & good night!

      Reality is far too complex, paradoxical, and takes way too much effort for the vast majority to spend a lifetime exploring with an open mind / heart!  

    “The old gods are dead or dying and people everywhere are searching…” Joseph Campbell 

    Increasingly, people are becoming "spiritual revolutionaries, spiritually independent" or "mystics" - no longer followers, and find marching lock-step with any crowd spiritually confining, even suffocating. Their individual ego (small self) is sufficiently secure, so they do not depend on a group ego, a charismatic guru, or an all-powerful separate "other." Nor do they "other" the Divine, but instead experience Oneness with Source. This felt sense is often referred to as "Self" by mystics, Jung, Internal Family Systems, etc. Some of them resonate with the mystical level of some spiritual traditions, which may or may not be one in which we were raised.

    We ALL have firm opinions about people & things, based on minimal or wrong information.
    AND, we ALL consider others with such baseless opinions, to be bigots, red necks, etc.
    So, in the spirit of open-mindedness, I invite you to watch this 68 minute documentary about a couple who spent a very productive lifetime actually being open-minded enough to learn a great deal of valuable, worthwhile information about shamanism - about which our materialist culture only has disparaging innuendo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNloOTQoRzA

    “There is widespread agreement that seven kinds of practices are central & essential for anyone who would live a life to the fullest. These seven practices are:
        1) Living ethically,
        2) Transforming emotions,
        3) Redirecting motivation,
        4) Training attention,
        5) Refining awareness,
        6) Cultivating wisdom,
        7) Serving others.
    These are the seven practices that sages the world over emphasize as central & essential for a full spiritual life. Together they constitute a ‘technology of transcendence’ for awakening our potentials and living life to the fullest. Shamans were the first to develop this art …

    Shamanism can be defined as a family of traditions whose practitioners focus on voluntarily entering altered states of consciousness in which they experience themselves or their spirit(s) interacting with other entities, often by traveling to other realms, in order to serve their community.”
    Roger Walsh MD, PhD. “The World of Shamanism. New Views of an Ancient Tradition.” Llewellyn Publications, 2007.

“The breezes at dawn have secrets to tell,
don’t go back to sleep!
You have to ask for what you really want,
don’t go back to sleep!
You know, there are those who go back and forth
over the threshold where the two worlds meet,
and the door, it’s always open, and it’s round,
don’t go back to sleep!”

Jalal al-Din Rumi

 

      “Spiritual practices are methods that can begin to soften our stance toward our self, toward life in general, and to open us to what transcends the habitual. They are invitations to become intimate with the wisdom of silence & stillness.”
      Dorothy Hunt. “Ending the Search. From Spiritual Ambition to the Heart of Awareness.” Sounds True, 2018. 

      “Silence is the basis and the background of everything. We are an expression of this primordial silence & stillness. But the habits of our mind overlay this simple truth & keep us from experiencing ourselves as a full-spectrum human being."          Sharon Landrith

 

 

SO Much to Learn, So Little Time

     Even if we've been on a serious spiritual journey for decades, we may still periodically realize that we still harbor outrage against, what our "ordinary mind" (survivalist brain, small self, separate self, ego, left hemisphere) perceives as, cruel injustices to ourselves, loved ones, the world in general. Others will recognize our outrage (even when we ourselves rationalize it), when we have violently angry reactions to any contradiction of our cruel, unjust universe belief (or any other dogma).
    Most of us know, intellectually, that arguing, resisting & trying to change things that cannot be changed is not only a useless waste of time & energy, but creates unnecessary suffering. AND roughly 95% of all suffering is this self-created unnecessary suffering.
    Intentionally practicing "radical acceptance" of even the harshest unchangable things we encounter CAN spectacularly prevent & alleviate MOST of our suffering, anxiety, cynicism, meaninglessness & depression!

    Unfortunately, though we all consider ourselves "open minded," as soon as we face one of our taboos, most of us are instantly triggered to shut down & run the other way. This reflexive avoidance prevents us from being curious & learning, and keeps us in the prison of our own (or tribal) echo-chamber. "Radical acceptance" has to INCLUDE EVERYTHING including topics which our secular taboos consider "impossible, can't happen," and our religious taboos consider "heretical, off-limits." But most basic of all, is the Homer Simpson taboo by which we're triggered when encountering anyone or anything "different," and instantly we "don't like" him/her/it! This cartoon is funny because this tendency is so common & obvious in others. Self-reflection (very slowly) deflates egos.

    It's helpful to remember how common it is to hear young children conclusively declare, "I'll never be able to: ride a bike, swim, read, tolerate a root canal, etc, etc!" As long as rigid, constricting mindsets rule, the simplest tasks remain impossible.

    You can easily practice shifting your perspective to a FAR WISER, more JOYFUL one, the next time you see your dentist or dental hygienist: http://www.johnlovas.com/2022/05/just-shift-of-perception-away.html

    BELOW is a POWERFUL lesson in how "radical acceptance" can be practiced, as told by Claude Poncelet PhD, a physicist and shaman, beautifully modeling grace under great pressure.
    Instead of shutting down & running at the sight of "shaman," IF you can smile at your inner Homer, & don't take him seriously, you may just learn the LESSON of a LIFETIME:

     “What has become clear to me is that one’s attitude, one’s behavior, are essential crucial elements of self-healing.
    What I will offer in terms of shamanism and self-healing is based on my own personal experience. This follows a diagnosis, almost 4 years ago now, of stage 4 lung cancer, metastasized to the brain & several vertebrae.
    Now in exploring shamanism and self-healing, I will not focus on shamanic healings themselves, although such healings have been an important part of my overall self-healing, including work with a shaman and medicine man from the Safara tribe in the Northern Amazon. In this presentation, what I want to do is focus on my own work with spirits, and what I learned about self-healing from the shamanic worldview.

    Well for me, the preface “there is only self-healing” means in a sense that the body, the mind, the ego, heal with the help of healers, doctors, treatments, etc. And this has been reinforced throughout my 4 years of living with cancer. Hence, shamanic healers, and for that matter, energy & other spiritual healers who understand the breadth & depths of self-healing approaches, can help their patients in the awesome responsibility of self-healing.

    Now I know that each journey with cancer, and for that matter, each journey with any illness, is unique & individual, and so is one’s way with self-healing. Self-healing is unique and individual. I can only share my own experience and hope it will stimulate among my listeners a deeper understanding of self-healing for each of you in your own ways. 

    My learning has been continuous since the early cancer diagnosis 4 years ago, and it continues today. I am thankful to the cancer for the deep learning I have received. Now while my learning has been deepened over time, it has come over time. I will offer my thoughts in this presentation not chronologically, but according to what for me are major aspects of the shamanic worldview, or the shamanic practice if you wish.
    As a physicist I admit that I still need a structure and a framework for my knowing and teachings. So the 3 major aspects of the shamanic worldview that I will use in making my presentation are:

    One – everything is sacred, everything has a spiritual dimension, everything has spirit.

    Two – everything is interconnected. There is no separation.

    Three – there are 2 worlds we live in: the physical world and the spiritual world. We have full responsibility for our thoughts & actions in both worlds.

    I’ve been engaged in a multifaceted approach to self-healing that I label ‘partnering with cancer.’ What has become clear to me, as you will see in my presentation, is that one’s attitude, one’s behavior, are essential, crucial elements of self-healing.

    Let me start with my first category, ‘everything is sacred, everything is spirit, spirits are everywhere.’ Since my first cancer diagnosis 4 years ago, I’ve been communicating daily, & several times a day, with my spirit helpers, spirit guides, and teachers, asking for help, protection & guidance. As I have, since the very start of my shamanic practice, I never ask for a specific outcome. What I ask for is the most appropriate outcome, in light of the welfare of the whole, now & into the future. I know that spirits know better than I do. I also journey regularly to spirits of nature and of the cosmos, asking for guidance.

    And I see the sacred in everything. Since the start, I’ve journeyed to the spirit of cancer. I do this daily. And the spirit of cancer has become one of my major teachers, particularly on how to approach my illness. I have learned early that my cancer is not a random happening, but that it is, in a way, an initiation. And I am grateful for what I have learned, not only about self-healing, but also about myself, my life, and my role in this world.

    As I became aware early in my shamanic practice, and I talk about this in my book, all man-made objects have a spirit, have a spiritual dimension, are sacred. Nature creates forms, such as rocks, mountains, lakes, rivers, that have a spiritual dimension, have a spirit. Everything we humans create such as buildings, computers, cell phones, cars, medication, is made from material coming from the Sacred Mother Earth. We humans are a part of nature, we are not separate, we are nature, we are a part of nature. Forms we create therefore are sacred, have a spirit, if only we are willing to acknowledge this, become aware of it.

    The Safara shaman, from the Northern Amazon, with whom I work, prepares for me a sacred liquid plant medicine consisting of 5 plants (doesn’t include Ayahuasca), and I take this sacred medicine three times a day. I contact daily, when I take the medicine, the spirit of the plant medicine. I’ve been on chemotherapy in the form of daily pills since the start, 4 years ago. Daily, when I take my chemotherapy pill, I journey to the spirit of my chemotherapy. The chemotherapy for me is a sacred medicine. That is part of my self-healing. I’ve been on a second type of chemo for 2 years, after the first type became less effective, and the spirit of the second chemo has become a major teacher for me. As I take my plant medicine and my chemotherapy daily, I carry out rituals to honor the spirits, and to ask for the most appropriate outcome in the light of universal welfare. And I ask that my healing be shared with all beings. The spirit of my chemo, which is called Tagrisso – it’s important to have a name – has been the main guide in creating this ritual, which the spirit of my chemo modifies every now and then.

    Let me give you more examples of the kind of spirits in our journey to self-healing. I undergo regular medical tests and procedures, and I work with the various spirits involved in these procedures. Every 2 or 3 months, I have CT scans and MRIs. And I always contact, when I go for these procedures, the spirit of the hospital, the spirit of the room where the machine is located, the spirit of the CT scan machine, the spirit of the MRI machine. By the way, when I’m contacting the spirit of the MRI machine, I also ask if the spirit would help those patients who are claustrophobic in the MRI machine (which fortunately I am not).

    Now let me give you a specific example in some detail. After the first cancer diagnosis 4 years ago, I had a radiation treatment for my brain tumors – all 26 of them. This is an advanced medical procedure called gamma knife, which uses high-energy gamma radiation that is focused specifically on the tumors, and hence, has no effect on healthy neurons. Because of the number of tumors, the procedure took nearly 5 hours, as I lay immobile, for about 90 minutes at a time, under the radiation dome. In preparation for the treatment procedure, I had done several shamanic journeys to various spirits, such as the spirit of the hospital, the spirit of the radiation dome, the spirit of gamma radiation, to honor them, bless them, thank them and ask for the most appropriate outcome, in accordance with the greater harmony of the whole. When the procedure started, and I was under the radiation dome, I started again journeying to the spirit of gamma radiation. While in earlier journeys I could not quite distinguish the spirit’s form or how it presented itself, this time the spirit clearly showed itself as an elder woman. I asked for guidance as I underwent the procedure. The spirit reminded me – and remember I’m a physicist – that right after the Big Bang at the birth of our Universe, the very first manifestation of matter or energy was in the form of high-energy electromagnetic radiation – and that is gamma rays. Also, some of these gamma rays, as described by Einstein’s equation e=mc2 – energy and matter can transform into one another. So some of these gamma rays were transformed very quickly into matter and anti-matter. The matter, which was quarks and electrons, became the building blocks of photons, neutrons, atoms, molecules, starts, planets, our own bodies. Now the spirit of gamma radiation told me, and I quote, ‘You are being healed by your Cosmic ancestors.’ We all came down from those primordial gamma rays – all the atoms in our bodies came from those gamma rays. Now hearing this, brought a fundamental change to the medical procedure I was undertaking. I was no longer being bombarded by radiation with all the scary aspects of this. My Cosmic ancestors were healing me. This was a sacred treatment. The 5 hours in the dome were filled with joy, wonder & gratitude. The 26 tumors, by the way, have all gone away, and have not reappeared since. I am grateful.”
    Claude Poncelet shares his Powerful Cancer Story: "Shamanism and Self-Healing" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKKGQ3W4Pc8

 

You think I'm an ignorant savage
And you've been so many places
I guess it must be so
But still, I cannot see
If the savage one is me
How can there be so much that you don't know?

 
"Colors of the Wind" Songwriters: Alan Menken / Stephen Laurence Schwartz

 

Connie Talbot singing "Colors Of The Wind"