These were some of the comments I received when I first told people I was training for Tough Mudder. Tough Mudder is a ten to twelve mile obstacle course with 20-25 military style obstacles designed by the British Special Forces. They claim to be the toughest course of its kind available to civilians. The obstacles include everything from crawling under barbed wire or through covered trenches, to jumping into a container of ice water and diving, to running through a setup full of electrical wires with 10,000V charges. And, of course, there is a ton of mud. Several of the obstacles involved crawling, wading or jumping through deep, thick, shoe- and soul-sucking mud.

When my friend Phil told me about this race four months ago in the middle of a party, it sounded like a fun idea and I told him I would join. Having a rule that whatever agreements I make I do my best to stick to – no matter what state I made them in (it was toward the end of the party when I tipsily agreed), I began my training. Phil had done a Tough Mudder previously. He also had quite a bit of muscle mass on me – and even owned workout equipment – a world, I was not too familiar with. While I have been doing yoga on various levels of intensity for close to 25 years, I hadn’t really worked my physical body much. When I started training with him three months ago, I couldn’t even run a mile, and I do have to admit that if it wasn’t for my friends’ leadership and inspiration, I would have easily quit before even beginning.

But I kept going. We ran several times a week, my other friend Abra took me swimming once a week, and various friends shared their workout tips and PDFs on bodybuilding with me (do highly recommend 4-Hour Body by Timothy Ferris – thank you Neil!) This resulted in me building myself a “Hungarian Hammer” – a home-made version of a Kettle ball, which I became intimate friends with.

For three months, I pushed myself running to the point where several areas of our running terrain where transformed from puke corner to Kahuna corner once I mastered running through them without losing breakfast. I also began swinging that Hammer first with 30lbs then 40lbs for the last month, doing push-ups when I had breaks in my day, and first and foremost constantly envisioning the end of the race:

A Beer at the Finish Line

It is good to have a goal. It is even better when you can visualize it clearly. My focus for the training and for during the course was the beer at the end of the finish line. I knew I wanted to drink it and hug my friends. I kept visualizing this multiple times a day, and ended up even lucidly dreaming about this moment the night before the race.

While a crappy beer might be a dubious motivation for something exercise related, it provided that perfect balance for me. I smoke. I drink. While I eat healthy and I use my body when I can, I have never been a poster child for physical exercise. That said, I do believe it is important to push ourselves on all levels. Most people know me for my delicious brains. My mental body functions exceptionally well, I can make complex systems simple and communicate them. I am also pretty in touch with my emotional realm, have a strong connection to my intuition, but I had been neglecting my body.

We have multiple interfaces into reality: body, emotions and mind, heart, our creative ability, our ability to see the big picture and even our ability to understand correspondences and create synchronicities. While I had been doing pretty well on some of the higher functions, I had been neglecting my root circuit. The one that connects me to this physical reality.

“In the province of the mind what one believes to be true, either is true or becomes true within certain limits. These limits are to be found experimentally and experientially. When so found these limits turn out to be further beliefs to be transcended. In the province of the mind there are no limits. However, in the province of the body there are definite limits not to be transcended.” – John Lilly

We are always changing. The key is to stay moving. Continue to challenge perceived limitations, continue to push the boundaries of our self-definition. So I went from someone known as mostly a skinny artsy intellectual, to someone who kicked ass next to Firemen, SWAT team members, and Marines.

Not to say that it wasn’t scary. When the shuttle bus that picked us up in front of our cushy hotel in Vegas arrived at the event in the middle of the desert, and I saw people running up and down the hills in the distance, I felt a mixture of excitement and utter dread. But what to do but go forward at this point? Not just for myself, not even just for my team, but for all the people who were inspired by my pushing myself – and our first job in life is to be human prototype. Each one of us has that invitation. So I pushed.

Mudder Principles

After climbing the first set of 7-8ft walls to the starting line I waited as the pit filled up with excitement and anticipation for the next launch wave. The MC was firing everyone up, repeating the Tough Mudder principles:

As a Tough Mudder I pledge that…

• I understand that Tough Mudder is not a race but a challenge.
• I put teamwork and camaraderie before my course time.
• I do not whine – kids whine.
• I help my fellow Mudders complete the course.
• I overcome all fears.

Radical Self-Reliance and Camaraderie

One of the aspects I appreciated most about this exercise was the paradox of utter self-reliance and camaraderie. It is not a race, it is a challenge. There is no competition but with yourself: YOU are alone in this. YOU had better prepare. YOU need to make it through.

We originally started training together, but then work schedules, injuries and styles ultimately shaped each of our own training paths individually. The first time I realized that I would have to run alone I was annoyed. I had signed up for this to have a team, to have others to motivate me… Only to realize that ultimately, this was about me. My capacity, my responsibility to show up. My will to see this through. And so I ran, and then I ran some more.

At the same time, I could not have done this alone. There were moments when friends and strangers extended a helping hand, and I got to do the same for them. We all do need each other on this planet. None of us can do it all alone. Everyone needs a little support at times. Each of us has different strengths and different weaknesses. Some obstacles were easy for me and much harder for the muscled crowd – like pulling yourself across a lake on a wire, others were nearly impossible for me alone, like running and jumping up a 15ft half-pipe in the hope that someone catches you and pulls you over the rim.

But because everyone there knows that everyone else is there fighting only with themselves, everyone is willing to support each other. The more I thought about this, the more I thought what a great baseline for a cultural operating system this would be. The only other place where I had seen a similar attitude was at Burning man: radical self-reliance and gifting. What would a world look like where everyone took full responsibility for themselves and we shared freely with each other?

It seems hard to imagine this world after generations of being conditioned into believing that the slaves are supposed to be competing for the gold coins the masters let them play with. And then again, why not?

It surely worked for making it through Tough Mudder. Twice I felt a moment of panic: The first time when we were swimming in an breath-numbingly cold lake and had to bop under barbed-wire covered rows of barrels. After attempting to dive under the first one the air in my waterpack pulled me upward and I hit my head against the bottom of the barrel. I wanted to inhale in shock but realized I was under water, being pulled backward by the current. Next thing I know, I was back out in front of the barrel I had just tried to dive under – panic beginning to creep up in my neurological circuits. A stranger next to me looked at me, smiled, and said: “Now let’s do this!” – and I so did. Never saw the guy again during the rest of the course although I kept looking for him to thank him, until I decided to simply take that gratitude with me and hold on to it.

The next time I had a moment of panic was toward the end of the race. We were supposed to swim across a lake. Not a big deal, unless you have already covered nearly 11miles and are getting toward the end of your strength. Fortunately, I had been swimming regularly as part of my training, but swimming with boots, in clothes and with a backpack still sucks. The last ten or so feet seemed insanely long. My chest was cramping from the cold and I could hardly breathe. It was here that I reminded myself that all will be well, that I will make it that I just need to breathe and make it through – thank you to years of yoga and pushing out that fight-or-flight instinct with breathing. After a deep inhale a hand came out of nowhere and pulled me for the last couple of feet until I could feel solid ground underneath. I babbled a thank you as I slowly climbed up on my two feet and kept going…

After a few more obstacles, the half-pipe mentioned above, and more trenches of mud, we faced the final obstacle: a setup with tons of electrical wire hanging down, potentially providing 10,000V electric shocks. As with most obstacles, just as we arrived, we were invited to go through. This proved quite helpful. Thinking about jumping off a 15ft ledge or about running through something that could provide equal pleasure to being tazed by a police officer is not something you want to think about for too long. So we hooked arms and ran through. Miraculously, none of it got really zapped, and we gloriously made it those last few feet over the finish line.

After getting past the people offering me water and bananas, there it was: the holy grail, filled with sparkling amber delights… Rarely had a beer tasted that good.

Shortly after, I got to have my first smoke – the looks were pretty amusing. It seemed I was the only one there who had this habit or fessed up to it in front of all those fit people. But I didn’t care. Exuberant with joy, I congratulated every other Mudder who came by. Sharing this joy was probably one of the best parts of this experience, both with the people at the event, later in the hotel, and with the many wonderful supporters out there who heard about me doing this, donated to the project or simply liked my posts.

Thank you to all of you, because without you, this would not have happened!

So please give yourself a fist pump for me

[Show as slideshow]

12►

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bAwekkgCeik

Please forgive me for having neglected this blog lately. Am working on getting back on track, and you should expect more to come in the near future.

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Since becoming aware of his existence, man has sought to give meaning to it. In his comparatively short life on earth, a whole array of philosophies, cosmologies, ontologies have arisen and have been amply documented. In terms of their stance on the underlying meaning, nearly all of these models of reality fall into one of two categories: materialistic or spiritualistic.

Materialism

Materialistic models focus on matter, on this life, the tangible, sensually experiential, this life span, while spiritualistic concepts focus on spirit, the other life, the non-visible, intangible, the domains of other worlds, the afterlife.

Materialistic philosophy can be traced back at least to the Greek philosophers, who tried to find the “stuff” the world is made of. Some assumed earth, some fire, some water, some air, each providing elaborate systems which could explain why this or that particular element was superior to the others. As man began to grasp the world around him, he tried to find underlying meaning within it. Being in this life, he tried to find explanations within this life for his very existence. As matter was a core element of everyday experience, he sought to thus explain this existence with the building blocks he had available.

“The philosophy of materialism, which dates back to the Greek philosopher Democritus (ca. 460-ca. 370 B.C.), matches the worldview of classical physics which is variously termed material, physical, or scientific realism” (Goswami 1993, p. 15). It is popular to this day. Anyone, whose focus is on this life, be it on one’s family, work and career, material possessions, anyone who would deem themselves a “realist”, would probably subscribe to this category of philosophy. In the process of moving away from religion as superstition, materialism is the next logical step. Leaving behind the fairytales and myths of the past, denouncing them as naivety, man turns to matter, to the “hard facts” of life, to that which is measurable, quantifiable, to that which can be experienced by the senses and can be counted, compared, objectively verified. It allowed for “God” to be left out of the equation, even out of books as in the famous example of Laplace, who stated when asked by Napoleon why he did not mention “God” in his book that he did not need this particular hypothesis.

The philosophy of Materialism has five core elements:

• Strong objectivity
• Causal Determination
• Locality
• Physical or Material Monism
• Epiphenomenalism

Objectivity

Descartes was instrumental in proposing the idea of objectivity. “His famous philosophy of dualism divided the world into an objective sphere of matter (the domain of science) and a subjective sphere of the mind (the domain of religion). Thus did Descartes free scientific investigation from the orthodoxy of the powerful church. Descartes borrowed the idea of objectivity from Aristotle. The basic notion is that objects are independent of and separate from the mind (or consciousness)” (Goswami 1993, p.15). This did man a great favor. It freed up the possibility of focusing on this world without being tied to otherworldly explanations. It allowed for science to develop, for man to build cars, airplanes, and even space rockets. Assuming that this world functioned as a “World Machine”, the notion Descartes intuited upon being impressed by the gardens of Versailles full of automatic contraptions spewing water, moving objects around, clicking and clacking, allowed for man to build more machines of the sort. It allowed for him to indeed make this world his domain, in which he could manipulate and organize contraptions and objects to his liking.

It is curious to note, how here also phylogeny and ontology correspond, how this developmental step also corresponds with the development of the individual. Persistence of objects is an important learning step typically experienced around the age of 11 months, when the infant becomes interested in appearing and disappearing objects and will begin to look for objects out of sight. Objectivity is thus an important concept and needs to be learned in order to function in this reality.

Causal Determination

Learning to manipulate his environment, the infant also around the same time learns the concept of causal determination. He learns to manipulate objects and begins to grasp the connection between events. In materialism, this corresponds to the concept Newton formulated as a law of physics, the notion that if position and vector of an object are known, predictions can be made about the future position of the object. It is the notion of the billiard ball universe in which each object moves blindly until coming in contact with another object, the impact determining the future course based on equations that can with certainty predict the outcome.

Locality

This concept is further related to the third element of materialism, the concept of locality. Discovered by Einstein, locality asserts that all objects “must travel through space one bit at a time with a finite velocity” (Goswami 1993, p. 17). Einstein formulated this as part of his theory of special relativity in 1917, later to be referred to his “blunder”.

In the dualistic world, Descartes had created, the success of science in predicting future events soon let to a tip of the scale further and further away from religion: “…the triumphs of modern science went to man’s head in something of the way rum does, causing him to grow loose in his logic. He came to think that what science discovers somehow casts doubt on things it does not discover; that the success it realizes in its own domain throws into question the reality of domains it devices cannot touch. In short, he came to think that science implies scientism: the belief that no realities save ones that conform to the matrices science works with – space, time, matter/energy, and in the end number – exist.” (Smith p. 34)

Monism

This led to the next element of materialism: the concept of physical or material monism, the idea that everything must be made out of matter, including somehow the domains it had previously relegated to religion, e.g. the mind.

Epiphenomenalism

This, then, led directly to the final assertion of materialism: epiphenomenalism, which proclaims that somehow mind, consciousness, is an epiphenomenon of the brain, of matter. “Mechanists consider mind to be part of the body, but this is a mistake. The brain is part of the body, but mind and brain are not identical” (Smith p.63).

Here we come to one of the core issues with materialism: The problem of emergence. Somehow, materialism claims, at some point, the brain developed to be complicated enough that something happened and consciousness just suddenly came to be. To this day, no proof has been brought forth for this outrageous claim.

Mind and Brain

“In The Mystery of the Mind: A Critical Study of Consciousness and the Human Brain, he [Wilder Penfield, a predominant neurophysiologist] points out that by applying electrodes to the memory and motor regions of the cerebral cortex of patients undergoing brain surgery the surgeon can make them remember past events and move their bodily members, but there is no brainspot, which, if electrically stimulated, will induce patients to believe or decide.” (Smith p.64)

Mind and brain are not identical. Apart from the proof neurophysiologists have brought forth to that extent, theoretical considerations also support this. Matter can be measured, mind cannot. “Conscious experience is, as Sir Charles Sherrington observed, ‘refractory to measurement.’

We cannot say that the experience of one light has twice the brightness of another. The terms in which we measure experience of sound are not the terms of experience. The terms of the stimulus, the physical sound, or of the nervous or other bodily action concomitant with the experience… Mind, if it were energy, would be measurable quantitatively… But… the search in [the energy scheme] for a scale of equivalence between energy and mental experience arrives at none.” (Smith p.67)

Empirical evidence further supports that mind and brain are not identical. The growing body for example of parapsychological and PSI investigations clearly indicated that consciousness is not localized in the brain, but can travel outside the body (for an overview on the “Persistent Paradox of the Paranormal” see Jahn 1982 in Goswami 1993).

Non-locality of Consciousness

This pretty much does away with both epiphenomenalism and material monism. Further, empirical evidence also suggests that non-local events exist contrary to Einstein’s initial claim. In 1982 Alain Aspect’s famous experiment showed that “two correlated photons [would] influence each other at a distance without exchanging signals” (Goswami 2001, p. 33). This appears to work not just for photons, but also for thoughts as demonstrated in a variety of experiments, e.g. in the Grinberg-Zylberbaum experiment (as related in Goswami 2001, pp. 35-38), where two subjects are instructed to meditate together to establish connection, and are then separated in two faraday cages outside the sight of each other. One is shown a sequence of light flashes resulting in an evoke potential, a specific brain response that can be measured. The other subject showed a so called transfer potential, i.e. the other subject, without being exposed to the signal showed a nearly identical response. While message transfer is forbidden according to a theorem attributed to Philippe Eberhard (Goswami 2001, p.39), this offers the possibility that in the case of two correlated brains the theorem does not apply. Given this, one can consider the possibility of seeing events through a non-local window, perceiving through another brain somewhere in a different space-time continuum. If intention is given and consciousness is establishing and maintaining such a connection, one could explain phenomena such as “recall” of past lives, autoscopic phenomena, or even remote-viewing phenomena, as those include not just “past”, but also perception of “future” events. Not a notion that fits too well with materialistic philosophy.

This non-local window also impacts the notion of causality. If events can transcend time and space, determinism becomes wishful thinking. The concept of uncertainty in quantum physics quickly demolished the notion that we live in a billiard ball universe.

Consciousness as Illusion?

Upward causality as such is a rather problematic aspect of materialism. If indeed consciousness was located in the brain as monism claims, and the brain being made of matter, then upward causality suggests that subjective consciousness is really only an illusion, as every thought we have would be the result of a myriad of events that already occurred, our thoughts being the result of certain particles hitting other particles, tracing the chain of events back to the beginning of the universe – not an all too pleasant notion.
Strong objectivity also denies subjective perception altogether. If everything was objective, how could there be subjective consciousness unless it was an illusion?

We are beginning to see how materialism really fails to provide a comprehensive explanation of reality. While practical in many ways in order to navigate in our every day experience, it does not provide room for consciousness and subjective experience of reality.

Materialism and Meaning

It further does not offer much in regard to meaning: If all was matter, and if consciousness was indeed located in and an epiphenomenon of the brain, then experience and all subjective existence would cease to exist in the moment of physical death. The logical conclusion for a meaning of life then, would be the Epicurian philosophy of “Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow you shall die.”
The meaning of existence from a materialistic perspective then invites a ego-centric and reckless existence, it suggests to amass as many material possessions as possible, live every moment fully even to the detriment of others (and especially the ones not yet born, as one will be gone by the time they inherit the earth), and overall focus only on one’s own sensual experience, as it will cease one day without consequence.

Spiritualism

Consequence is the focus of the alternative category of philosophical and religious systems, the spiritualistic branch. Much older than materialism, spiritualistic systems reach back to the beginning on man’s attempts to make sense of his world. They range from early animistic superstitions to elaborate and elegant systems of thought refined over the course of thousands of years.

Translative or Transformative

Spiritualistic systems can be categorized into two different aspects: translative spirituality and transformative spirituality: “In the area of spirituality, for instance, we need at the very least to distinguish between horizontal or translative spirituality (which seeks to give meaning and solace to the separate self and thus fortify the ego) and vertical or transformative spirituality (which seeks to transcend the separate self in a state of nondual unity consciousness that is beyond the ego)” (Wilber 2001, p. 73-74).

In many ways, these two aspects also correspond to the exoteric and esoteric traditions in most religious systems – religion and spirituality not necessarily being the same. More on religion will follow in future installments of this blog. For now, the focus is on spirituality and spiritualism, which will be henceforth used synonymously.

A life beyond this one

What both translative and transformative spirituality have in common is a focus on the afterlife, denouncing this life as merely a precursor to what is to come.

Translative spirituality as Wilber suggests, seeks to give meaning to the separate self. As soon as there is “I” vs. “non-I”, one finds oneself alone. This loneliness, as Erich Fromm described in The Art of Loving is the primary driver for human activity. Translative spirituality takes this for granted, and simply provides frameworks which can be believed in, so that the separation becomes bearable, usually with the promise of a better existence in the life beyond. Transformative religion does not accept this separation, often considers it an illusion, and seeks to therefore transcend it sometimes even within this lifetime, but for sure in the life beyond.

In common between the two is definitely the aspect of the life beyond, whether expressed in concepts such as heaven and hell – providing a morally prescriptive framework for this lifetime –, or in the idea of nirvana or the void, which can be attained as a result of proper living and transformational practice, breaking the cycle of samsara, continuous birth and rebirth.

Teleology

In both cases, this lifetime is considered a staging area for the life to come. In that, spiritualism is teleological in its nature. This lifetime, the life of matter, in which we find ourselves, is not considered meaningful as such – it only serves to attain a desired future state. The only reason provided for this lifetime is as a test God provides for his creatures, a test, which will determine which future state is attained. Or, in some systems, it is even considered maya, an illusion, a state of being that is not real at all. Transformational practice in this case serves to awaken the illusioned mind that deems matter more than an opportunity to resolve karma, the sum of propensities for actions and thoughts that needs to be resolved in order to transcend the separation state.

Nonsense

An intriguing factor of spiritualism is that it is essentially nonsense. Logically, no statement about otherworldly existence can be validated as true or false, thus from a logical perspective any spiritualistic theory must remain in the realm of faith or belief only. Raymond Moody described this elegantly in The Last Laugh. This does not take away from the beauty of these systems or the practical guidance for everyday life that can be derived from it, but it for sure makes it vulnerable to attacks from a scientific perspective, as has been the case, leading to the ascent of materialism described above.

Providing Meaning?

Unlike materialism, spiritualism is focused on providing meaning. It fails to do so, though, in that it does not provide an intrinsic meaning for this existence in the material realm. It only provides derived meaning, giving this existence only value in that it prepares for an afterlife of some sort.
With that, we end up missing meaning altogether. While materialism did not provide meaning for this existence beyond merely the sensual realm, and as we have seen with its own inherent flaws, spiritualism denies this life meaning beyond its preparatory function.
What then can provide meaning that would transcend this apparent dualism? We shall see as we continue our investigation…

References:

Goswami, Amit. 1993. The Self-Aware Universe. New York: Tarcher/Putnam.
Goswami, Amit. 2001. Physics of the Soul. Hampton Roads Publishing
Smith, Huston. 1976. Forgotten Truth. The Common Vision of the World’s Religions. San Francisco: Harper
Wilber, Ken. 2001. Theory of Everything. Shambala

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Most of the time, we do things habitually: We get up, brush our teeth, put on clothes, commute to work, do what we know how to do all day, get ourselves some entertainment, undress, go to bed, sleep. Rinse. Repeat.

Habits are the foundation of existence. Habits of thought, emotion, deed. If we had to rethink how to brush our teeth, how to walk, what we do everyday all the time, we would go insane – and we probably would not be able to function all too well in this reality. Most of the habits we have serve us. Otherwise, we would not have let them become habits in the first place.

Cha-Cha-Change

But things change all the time. While we still carry the five year old and the twelve year old we once were inside of us, some of the habits and beliefs that served us then, do not serve us any longer today. Our environments have changed, our relationships, our activities.

Crisis of Meaning

Most of the time, people will still stick to their habits and beliefs, even if they do not actually have meaning anymore. Only when things break down do we experience a crisis of meaning. Often this does not happen until later in life, when we have actually accomplished the things that were supposed to be meaningful to us, or when we realize that we hit a half-way point on the journey toward death.

What is meaning?

Meaning comes from the verb to mean, which comes from German meinen, originally meaning “to think” or “have an opinion”. “Mein” in German is also a possessive pronoun and translates to “mine”. It’s your unique point of view not that of someone else.

Your meaning is and can only be your own. It’s about your opinion, your thoughts, your values.

MaMa-Mine

Many of our values are adopted from MFPT (mother, father, preacher, teacher – all in the most encompassing sense). If we simply adopt them, without questioning them, they are ultimately meaningless… and you are not living your own life. You are living the life “other” is expecting you to live.

Make life your own

Only if you reflect on your values, beliefs and habits, only if you decide to indeed make them your own, do they gain meaning. When you do things in accordance with your values, it becomes meaningful to you. When you take the time to ask for the motivation behind your actions, you begin to fill your day with meaning, make it meaning-full. You stop being reactive and start becoming proactive about your life.

If it ain’t broke, fix it anyway

As pointed out above, if you had to consider everything all the time, you would have difficulty functioning in this reality. There are habits that serve us. Some obviously don’t, while with others, it’s harder to tell. Get started on the low-hanging fruit. Find the habits that you engage in and don’t even know why anymore. Start filling that space with new habits that you would like to experience, so that the old ones can go away. Then hone in on the more subtle dynamics.

Practice, practice, practice

That is why it is important to take time out to reflect. Similar to sports where you practice and practice, and practice: refine subtleties again and again. Then, when you hit the field, all you can care about is being in the moment. At that point, there is not time for reflection. At that point, you simply shift into being and doing.

Reflection time again

Create that space in your life. Whether weekly or even better daily, take time out to reflect. You can do it in the mornings, looking ahead at your day, or in the evenings, letting the events of the day pass by while asking yourself which values of yours the activities of the day served. Ideally, do both. And keep record. This will help you see your own progress and help remind you why you do all this in the first place:

To live a life of meaning…

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“Nemo” is not a fish

The word “nemo” comes from Latin. It means no human, or nobody. It is curious that in the children story of “Finding Nemo” (I know, this is not about fish, I promise), a timid father is finding his lively son. Note these two personalities for now. Nemo was also the name of the anarchist captain in Jules Verne’s “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea“. A pirate that could not be contained by the system of the time due to his ingenuity.

Finding Nobody?

Two much older stories come to mind that will allow us to go even deeper: One is Plato’s “Symposium” (from Greek syn – together, and pinein - drinking), a story about a group of friends drinking and philosophizing together about the nature of love, and Eros, specifically (vs. Agape, which is a higher form of love that is beyond the romantic).

Aristophanes (who was a well know comedian and one of the participants), tells a story about how humans used to be all powerful, and with that became too cocky. This angered the gods. So they tore them into halves. Since, Aristophanes claims, they have been running around confused, trying to find the other half.

This has led to our modern notion of romantic love. It has been the source of phrases like “my better half,” and has led millions to try and find Mr. or Mrs. Right out there.

Projection

C.G. Jung cracked that code. He suggested a psychological dynamic called “Projection”, and elevated thinking about romance into the intellectual circuit. Each of us, he suggested, has an internal “Other”, an anima or animus, depending on whether you are male or female (and please keep in mind, we are talking archetypes here, this means, your sexual orientation has nothing to do with your primary operating gender). This is your other half. It is not outside of you, but inside of you.

When you fall in love, you most often don’t actually fall in love with the person in front of you. You fall in love with your projection of your own inner other gender onto that person – how else could you fall in love at first sight, you don’t even know that person…

This is why, after the honeymoon wears off, relating to a partner becomes a constant disappointment and compromise – because they simply aren’t your other half, as much as you would want them to be. And often people wake up one day looking at the person next to them and wonder what they ever saw in them. They break up, and go searching for the next idol to project their internal self on.

YOU complete me…

Another aspect of projecting your own inner other half onto someone outside of you, is that you implicitly assume you are not complete by yourself, and you need that other person to complete you. This is the recipe for co-dependence. If you define yourself through your partnership unit, instead of defining your partnership as a commitment between individuals based on a solid foundation of agreements, you are in for either a trip toward the least common denominator of tolerance, or a constant flow of self-annihilating conflict and disappointment.

But there are good news…

The other of the stories that came to mind, is an old Indian story about hiding from humans that they are indeed all powerful. The gods sent out scouts to find a location to hide this secret. They went to the deepest seas, highest mountains, darkest caves, and realized that eventually man would make it even there. So they hid the secret inside the human heart.

You are complete

In a previous post I mentioned Self as opposed to persona. Each of us has a smaller self, and also a higher Self we can connect to, and even more so put our smaller self in service to. Remember above when the timid fish is finding the lively one. Our job is to let go of our fears in order to connect to our higher Self – who might just be a bit of an anarchist… That is all you need to find. Realize your inherent wholeness, and “nemo” will vanish into thin air.

Then you can have truly authentic and rewarding relationships, not based on need, but based on choice and volition.

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As a newborn, you have no distinctions of this world. All around you is a colorful, noisy mess of a constantly changing kaleidoscope of perception.

We first begin to know ourselves through experiences of pain and separation: ripped out of the warmth of the womb, cut off from our feeding line, spanked into taking our first breath.

A little later, happily feeding, and while we are still hungry, mom removes her breast before we are done. MMMmmmmaa, the first sound babies are capable of making evolves as an attempted command to that thing that feeds us. She might or might not come back, but in either case, we suddenly realize, she is separate from us…

Then we hit our head against a table: “ouch THAT hurt me… I would not hurt myself… THAT must be separate…”

Slowly the child begins to realize itself as separate from the world that surrounds it. And through expressions, first clumsy sounds, then words, we learn to distinguish what is what in our environment, and what we can and can’t control through our expression. And realize that there is an expression for us, our name. Then “ME” dawns… Welcome to the terrible two’s…

From here on out, we are continuing to learn distinctions, words, expressions for that which we encounter. First mostly through our parents, than through other children, teachers, media and our entire cultural environment.

Distinctions create actuality

One could go even further and daresay they create your reality. It is through our distinctions that we experience that which appears to be around us. Our mechanism of perception acts similar to a sonar. We receive data into our eyes, we evaluate concepts and determine distinctions, which we then “perceive” in our environment. Reality only occurs in our imagination. Our distinctions are the paint we apply to the canvas of our experience.

We learn distinctions

Distinctions are learned. Some are conditioned (e.g. most of the distinctions you learned in school were hammered in through a constant process of repetition), some are imprinted, which means they sit on a much deeper level and were created under states of neuroplasticity, or imprint vulnerability, the state of a newborn, and later through experiences such as fear, orgasm, or other trance states. They require special care if they need to be addressed.

We learn distinctions on multiple levels – physical, emotional, mental. Each manifest differently:

Physical level – Relationship to body

Babies spend hours delighting in their bodies. Few things are as much fun as to watch a baby giggling in joy at the sight of its own hands. Our body is also the root of our first experiences of pain and negative physical sensations like hunger, indigestion, teething etc. Our earliest imprints and distinctions around “Other” have to do with how we relate to our body, the first “Other” we encounter in relation to our primary point of perception, our sense of “I”.

Emotional Level – Relationship to emotion

As we begin to begin our explorations into space at the onset of mobility, we create imprints and conditioning around which distinctions fall into like and not like. We crawl towards mommy and daddy where we feel we “belong”, and are taught to stay away from strangers. We learn to move toward that which we like, and avoid that which we don’t. Within that, we inherit our parental and societal biases associated with distinctions e.g. around sub groubs of society, and prepare ourselves for our future choice of sexual partners.

Mental Level – Relationship to thought

Mental distinctions come in the form of words. And as we begin to learn words, we also learn about the persistence of objects. Peekaboo represents the child’s learning that distinctions exist across time. Once “I” learned words for things, “I” can ask “Where did __________ go?”, if I am not perceiving the things directly. Giving words to emotional experiences results in the ability to strategize based on past and into the future. “Good” and “bad”, initially felt as immediate sensations, turn into morality, and rationalization thereof results in subsets of beliefs and the beliefs of “Others”.

“Other” dances with “I”

When you find “I” again (we tend to get lost in identity attachments in the three levels described above), you are now aware that nothing and everything else is “Other”, and that you can learn more distinctions, refine your likes and not likes, and utilizes strategies around maximizing your physical pleasures while reducing occurrences of physical pain – for “I” and – the more you expand – for “Other” through your actions.

“Other” becomes a dance in which you have two options: fear (enforce separation) or love (overcome separation).

Fear!

Fear enforces the distinctions. Ask yourself how this supports you in your experience of “I”. Sometimes separation is required, sometimes it hinders. Ask youself: Does it make your feel better about who you are? How is it working for you to be separate from what is going on? What are the distinctions you are drawing? Where did they originate? Are they yours?

Or there is love…

“Love”, a much overused term, can be defined as understanding self beyond the boundaries of “I”. Distinctions to create more separation can be drawn ad infinitum, and they can be helpful to communicate subtleties. When you simply are with “Other”, there is no need to communicate (which occurs between two separate entities), since you are in communion, and at that point, distinctions disappear and you integrate ad infinitum, until you are beyond even part and parcel of everything. Love is that which bridges distinctions.

So, when you encounter “Other”, ask yourself: Why is “Other” in my life? Why is it “Other”? Whose distinction is that? And then, once you decided, ask yourself: How can I create the most benefit for “Other” right now?

We are all here to lovingly dance with each “Other”, after all, right?

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Levels of Consciousness

Alfred Count Korzybski is one of the neglected brilliant minds of the last century, his work leading to the theory of general semantics, and also covering the curious question of consciousness. According to Korzybski, he observed three primary levels of consciousness at work on this planet:

• Chemical Binders – Plants - Physical intelligence that utilizes chemical elements for communication, processes inputs like light and water, and creates plant life. It corresponds to the intelligence of your body.
• Space Binders – Animals - Emotional intelligence and emotional territorial consciousness, the ability to move toward that which you “like” and away from that you don’t like, and to know what’s what. In addition to that the ability to know how to create emotional states in others.
• Time Binders – Humans - Mental intelligence. Through assigning agreed upon symbols to the world around us (language), we create persistence of objects and the notion of a continued experience of self.

The levels are not a hierarchy, but a holarchy, meaning, there is no better or worse, but they continue to add to each other, e.g. an animal also has physical consciousness, a human has physical, emotional and mental consciousness.

Charlie cut my finger

Really, he didn’t. But cutting your finger is a good example to make the above a bit more personal. Imagine you cut yourself in your finger. Your physical consciousness is freaking out at the violation, it’s rushing white blood cells to the area and attempting to figure out how to deal with the breach in the hull and contain infection. If you were only in our physical consciousness, you would probably go into shock and overwhelm and pass out.

If you were only in your emotional consciousness, you would experience, based on your operating system, an emotional freakout in the form of “Oh my G-d, I cut myself, how horrible, poor me!” or “Stupid #%^#%! &%*@$%!”.

As you shift into your rational, mental body, you figure, it would be a good idea to get a band aid and stop the bleeding.

You have probably met people that are not able to shift between the different levels of consciousness. I know people who will pass out at the sight of blood – especially their own. I also have observed people running around the room screaming in self-deprecation and anger. And I have met people that take this situation totally calm, do what is rational, and hardly notice that there are experiences on these other levels.

Who is the Observer?

If we look at our example above and what happened in the shifting process, there seems to be a fourth level of consciousness at play. The one, who realizes all the other three, and chooses the appropriate course of action. What level of consciousness is that?

Delicious Brains!

The first three circuits of consciousness can be mapped to corresponding brain functions. In a way, we have three very different brains:

• Our brain stem – our “reptilian” brain, the oldest part of our brain, regulates all the basics and can be associated with physical intelligence
• Our limbic system – controls our emotions and has centers for bliss and violence, which tend to activate each other through induction currents if one gets too excited
• Our neo-cortex – the most “human” part, where we process all the higher human symbolic functions

But where is our 4th brain? The one that is observing the other three and that makes distinctions between their respective experiences?

Is there a 4th brain?

There is a new level of consciousness we are developing as inhabitants of this planet. Acting on the third, the mental body, the age of reason, and ultimately the information age has created a new opportunity for awareness. While many still think reason is our highest capacity, we can also easily observe how many people fall short of it every day. And if we assume that rational mind is the highest human capacity, it also makes sense to allow machines to run our lives (as in Jean-Luc Goddard’s “Alphaville”, or more recently “The Matrix”) – welcome Singularity! Resistance is futile.

The new level of awareness were triggered by a variety of factors from technology that allows us to see to the other end of the world and keeps us from ignoring what is happening there, to pictures of the earth from space, which made us aware of the fact that we are on one planet together, and that there is only one human species.

Grokking I-other

In order to have a distinct sense of self, beyond the physical, emotional or mental experience, invites a true center point of “I”, which then uses our three different bodies as interfaces into the reality we are experiencing. But you are not the interface and able to hold “I” without being overwhelmed by the fact that this means EVERYTHING ELSE is “OTHER”.

Where angels fear to tread…

It’s a frightening place to go. It’s the place where you accept that as soon as you say “I” you are completely alone. It’s a dark place. An empty place where you realize that nothing has inherent meaning and that all meaning comes from you. It is a place where you take full responsibility for all of the reality you are experiencing, the good and bad. And it is also the place, where you take your rightful self-aware position in co-creating this reality with the underlying bandwidth that makes up all possible experiences.

How do I get to it?

There are many ways to allow you to get to the root of your operating system, that which determines how you operate, everything you know about everything you are aware of. Over the years humanity has collected an array of tools. E.g. yoga is a collection of tools that allow your body to be still (through asanas, the physical exercises), your emotions to be still (through pranayama, breathing exercises), and your mind to be still (through meditation, focus on one object, a specific focal point like a mantra, or even nothingness). In Western Magic, or other Shamanic traditions, aspects of the different bodies are externalized, e.g. through visualization of demons or projection through animals.

Which is the right tool?

That is for you to determine. You do it through your religion - that activity that makes you feel re-connected (from Latin re-ligare, as in ligament) after realizing “I”, and that gives meaning to you through your interpretation and assessment of your experience in this material world. Religion is a personal responsibility. No priest, no shaman, no guru, no teacher can create it for you. They can all serve as guideposts, but beware of allowing them to point you in any direction but the one that starts with owning full responsibility for “I”.

Where to start?

Start with owning “I”. And start with deciding that “I” is supposed to have a great experience on this planet. Ask yourself in any moment that does not feel like it: “Who is “I” right now?” You will find that most “negative” experiences result from attaching aspects of one of your three bodies to something outside of you. You are physically, emotionally or mentally “addicted”. Something outside of you is creating an experience for you. Own your center. That which animates all others. Live, play with your interfaces, but BE in your center – whatever gets you there.

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Brand YOU

In many ways I welcome the Brand YOU movement. For years, I have helped artists, musicians, coaches, and other individuals create brands for themselves. It is always a somewhat amusing (for me) and usually challenging (for them) process to get people to understand the difference between brand and Self. It comes out clearly when you are developing, e.g. a website. On the one hand, the act of surfing the web is a very personal and intimate one (one person, one screen), and it is important to infuse your virtual representation with as much of your Self and essence as possible. On the other hand, I keep reminding people I work with that this is not about them having to put themselves out there. It’s an avatar, a virtual persona, a mask, a representative of yourself. Not your Self.

Corporate Personhood

In many ways I like this new development as I think it is part of the move from institutionalization to collaboration as pointed out by thinkers like Clay Shirky. We have created corporations and have given them the status of personhood – a somewhat scary notion as most behave like psychopaths with no regard to others, single-minded focus on generating only monetary profit, and several characteristics that indeed do not make them particularly good citizens. But that is another story… (check out The Corporation if you want to know more)

The point here being that if we give corporate entities protection through personhood, it seems fair to give individual persons protection through incorporation. This does not just apply to limited liability, but goes beyond that toward recognition as fully functioning and trading entities (different from the capitalized version of your name on your licenses that serves as your registration of your alien vessel in foreign waters – yet another story).

Person – Persona?

Person, as a good reminder, etymologically rooted comes from “mask”. It’s a mask you wear. Let’s look at the definition of persona:

1. pl., -nas, or -nae (-nē). A voice or character representing the speaker in a literary work.
2. personae The characters in a dramatic or literary work.
3. pl., personas. The role that one assumes or displays in public or society; one’s public image or personality, as distinguished from the inner self.

“All the world’s a stage, and we are merely actors,” dramatis personae of history. Especially the third definition is the key to our dilemma here. Persona is what you put out into the world, it is not you, your inner world.

Persona and Neurosis

The thing is, you have many personas: Who you are with your parents, your lover, your kids, your friends, your boss, a police officer who stops you for speeding, etc., each time you use a (maybe only slightly) different persona. You utilize different strategies based on your early imprints and conditioning, and based on what you have learned over the years to be successful in each scenario.

This is good and healthy. If you were always the same persona, you would lose out on the subtle dynamics created when you interact with others. What becomes problematic is when you start attaching to your personas. When you begin to identify yourself with a particular persona so deeply, that – at least for the moment – your self and other personas become inaccessible.

Attempting to keep in check these multiple personas becomes a juggling game. One of the key causes of modern day neurosis lies in attempting to keep multiple personas in congruence without a pervasive sense of Self. In extreme cases, it can even lead to multiple personality disorder… What is missing if that happens? A strong sense of Self serving as the glue or underlying web of connectivity.

The Whole Self – YOU is a Collective

Your self is an array of multiple dynamics. It’s a collective, not just of personas, but also archetypes. Throughout many traditions the self is represented as a circle:

If you think about your personas, they are your interfaces to the external world. If you begin to identify with them instead of yourself, you ultimately end up gangrene and cut off from that, which in truth is the totality of you.

Many voices

When you think about how you experience reality, there are a variety of voices in your head (however that manifests for you). Some are the voices of our parents or teachers from early childhood, sometimes the voices of our lovers or friends appear to help us make decisions, and then there are other voices that whisper encouragement or devastating thoughts into our awareness. It’s a bit like the gods appearing anytime the hero needs to make a decision in historical references like the Iliad (if you want to go deep on voices in your head, I recommend Julian Jaynes “Origins of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind”).

Archetypes – Your Guides to the Unconscious

Jung initially created the notion of archetype to describe transpersonal characters sometimes occurring in dreams, shared not just by a variety of his patients, but even across cultural contexts. In a way, I like to think of archetype as a personality schemata, a high-level template for a persona if you will.

Carolyn Myss introduced me to a very practical application of archetypes when I studied with her several years ago. She wrote about this in her book “Sacred Contracts” (I am quoting liberally, for her specific theory, please check out her work). Here, she suggests, that each of us have a collection of twelve archetypes that serve as our guides and connectors to our subconscious. Four of these we have in common, eight of these are part of our particular makeup.

Victim/Child/Saboteur/Prostitute

According to Myss, the four archetypes and their respective voices we each hear at times are the victim, the child, the saboteur and the prostitute. Each of them sound negative, but remember they are your guides to your subconscious. We create situations in life that allow us to grow. When we encounter them (and they indeed might not be pleasant), we are invited to evolve by heeding the voices of our guides, and taking action to shift back to our Self:

• Victim – “Why me?”, “They did this to me!”, “Poor, poor, pitiful me” - These are some of the thought patterns associated with the victim. We all know what it feels like to feel like a victim. Truth is, none of us is ever a victim. Events occur. Excrement happens. How we interpret the situation determines as to whether we feel like a victim or not (even Jesus on the cross did not consider himself a victim, but instead said “forgive them cause they don’t know what they do” – not much of a victim there…). When the victim voice chimes into our consciousness, it’s an invitation to ask yourself “How can I take care of myself in this moment?”, “How can I reframe the situation to feel like I have actions available to me?”
• Child - “I don’t know how this works”, “I am helpless”, “I am overwhelmed” - As the child you become small and everything else becomes big, you don’t know and everyone else seems to know, you are out of control in a confusing world. When this archetype pipes up, make sure to be kind to yourself. It’s okay that you don’t know. Nobody does, remember? Turn it around and ask yourself “How can I make this situation fun?” – a good thing about children is their attention span is not very long and easily consumed by new and shiny things.
• Saboteur - “You think you can do this?”, “Remember how you screwed up last time?”, “What makes you so special?” - The saboteur reminds us of our shortcomings, our failures, our weaknesses. Every time he sneers, you are invited to step back, take a moment, and remind yourself of what you have learned from the past failure and how this relates to your situation at hand. Every failure is an opportunity for quantum growth.
• Prostitute - “It’s not that bad”, “I know what I have here, I don’t know what’s out there”, “At least you know this” - This archetype is the reason people stay in crappy jobs or abusive relationships. It’s the voice that reminds you of uncertainty, and it challenges you to find comfort in uncertainty. Yes, knowing what you have is great, but if you really want to grow, you have to be willing to give up who you are for who you could become – which might feel like a little death… but then, some little deaths are quite pleasant

Your Personal Archteypes

In addition to the four described above, Myss suggests that each of us have eight additional personal archetypes. Examples of those are artist, guide, healer, magician, hero, helper, etc. (Myss has a long list in Sacred Contracts). You can find yours by thinking about the characters in movies or books that you relate to. Or historic figures. What are some of the patterns that connect them? Which aspects resonate with you?

Living dynamically from the center

Your personas connect you to the outside world. For them to be truly representative of your Self, they have to be infused with its essence. You have to remember who you are. If you do, then you can easily find the appropriate strategies to connect to the world outside of you in a way that serves you – through your physical encounters and personas you engage then, or virtually through the brands you create to represent you (and ideally go to work for you nearly like clones you send off to the factory). When you find yourself getting sucked into your brand or worse, having reduced who you think you are to a slogan or behavior pattern, time to step back, and evaluate how this particular strategy is serving you.

Your archetypes are your inner voices that guide you to areas of your unconscious where you might have open wounds, trigger points, or learning lessons. When they pipe up, you know you need to pay attention and ensure that you are keeping your center. From here, you can now ask yourself what dynamic this voice is serving in this moment. What beliefs or truths do you hold that are being enforced by this voice? Who would you be if you had solved this already?

You are many People

Around ninety percent of the DNA in our bodies is not ours. It’s the DNA of bacteria, fungi, and things I am sometimes not sure I want to know about. Your consciousness is not much different. There is more than one entity running the show. We collate them into an experience of self, but ultimately, it takes a village to make you happen, inside and out. The key to having a coherent and forwarding experience here is to get to know your team. Don’t try and make them all one. They tend to resent that (just like you want to maintain your individuality and not become part of the masses). They are here to help you. As you learn to embrace your personas, use them effectively to maneuver the outside world, you will find that being yourself with different strategies is way more rewarding than constantly trying to adjust your personas to the demands of other people and letting them tell you who you are.

Similarly, as you make your archetypes your friends (e.g. by conversing with them in your head, or using automatic writing), they now will help you identify opportunities for clearing out patterns you hold in your unconscious that are not serving you.

Observe You

Ultimately, the one thing you know is real for certain, is your experience right here right now. If you are shifting toward observing what is occurring around you, and inside of you, shift to Observer mode, you have a pretty good way of finding your Self. Most of the other dynamics tend to be attached to personas or archetypes. The one thing that is for sure your Self, your tastebud on the tongue of universe, is the point of perception, the one that is reading this right now. Be that as often as possible.

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“Every child is born an artist, the problem is to remain one once they grow up.” – Pablo Picasso

One of my favorite art stories as a child came from a documentary about Picasso. It was showing his progression in understanding and communicating his reality. The documentary started with a water color he had made of a bullfight as a sixteen year old. It was beautiful and attempted to depict the bull, the audience, the vibrant colors with as much realism as possible.

The documentary went on to show his progression as a painter and artist using his depiction of bulls as a baseline. The bull went on to become reduced bit by bit as Picasso was learning to communicate the essence. Slowly it turned into the line drawing of a bull that Picasso is so famous for today.

The very last item shown in this exploration was a piece he had made out of a bicycle handle and a bicycle seat. He had arranged them in a way that they looked like a bull’s head. And even though I knew I was looking at bicycle parts, I saw a bull looking at me from the wall…

This was my first direct experience of what I have come to call the Metaphorical Mind.

The metaphorical mind is that of artists, poets, inventors and engineers. It is a mind that can see something for what it isn’t with as much ease as seeing it for what it is we commonly agree on.

A bicycle saddle or a bulls head. A handle and horns…

What something is

We tend to get stuck in determining what something “is”. But what “is” something? What “is” “it” to “you”?

Your reality is created by distinctions. Patterns you have signifiers for. Signifiers being signs which convey meaning to you. The more signs you have, the more distinctions you can create in your experience, and the more complex it will become. Benjamin Lee Whorf created the concept of linguistic relativity to account for this phenomenon. He is usually cited when people bring up that Eskimos have many words for snow, as for them subtle distinctions about the snow (its ice level, depth, crust, etc.) are crucial to survival.

Similarly, your vocabulary has developed to ensure your survival. You learned to call for your parents, direct people around your physical experience from hunger to full diapers, and later learned more subtle distinctions that allow you to manipulate and function in reality.

Schema, Schema on the Wall

Distinctions are grouped into schemata. Schemata are higher order concepts. E.g. Lemons, Oranges and Mandarins are all part of the schema “citrus fruit.”

Now that you have the schema “citrus fruit,” I can tell you about Grapefruits, which you might have never encountered before. All I need to say is that it is a citrus fruit, and you will know various properties and I can now compare and contrast it to other citrus fruit you know. E.g. I can say it’s usually bigger than an orange, pink in color, a bit more bitter, etc.
Schema are higher-level principles. We can build schemata infinitely until we end up with meaningless oneness. So obviously, it is a tool to be wielded wisely. The key being that it allows for us to abstract something from what it is, and by abstracting it into a higher level order find parallels that might be surprising, amusing (there is a great theory about humor as a benign violation but that’s a whole different story), or sometimes simply beautiful.

Living with a metaphorical mind

Living with a metaphorical mind allows for a different experience of reality. A poet friend of mine once wrote about LA that it is “a great place for paranoids, because nothing is what it seems like and the earth could open up and swallow you at any point.” I think it is a great place for enlightenment for the same reason. Realizing that nothing is what it is allows you to create your own meaning, your own symbolic reality. This is where you begin to live a magickal life of correspondences. Having a metaphorical mind that can jump in experiencing things, not just for what they are, but what they can be, provides you with:

• A richer experience of reality
• The ability to be playful in your experience of reality
• The ability to relate to others more easily
• The ability to see the bigger picture

A richer experience of reality

On a most basic level, it’s fun to create stories. Children love it (some of my last posts where about beginner’s mind and the wisdom of children). We like to make up things. Depending on our early conditioning, we will later in life adopt either the controlling parent stance that this is non-sense and a waste of time, or – as Picasso mentioned – we remain artists, having an ever new experience of this reality, learning new distinctions, delving into an ever new sense of wonder.

And be playful…

Living in a wonder world opens you up to the idea that you might be able to create aspects of your reality. I am not necessarily talking about “The Secret” here. Not the naive magical thinking of a child… and exactly that – with a dose of realism. There are probability patterns to contend with and as much as I wish somebody would knock on my door and tell me that there is world peace now because I sat on my couch and wished for it, I doubt it will go quite that way… But, imagining a world in peace might allow me to see new opportunities to apply my knowledge, skills and abilities toward that. If I only see the world for what it “is”… why would I want to get up and participate in anything? Being able to see the world for what it could be, drawing widely from all the metaphors available, might open up new realistic possibilities.

Empathy

Being versed in switching viewpoints, in drawing parallels to archetypal patterns, in seeing schemata, also allows for a deeper sense of empathy. Once you grok cubism, how can you ever assume that there is only one way of looking at the world. And if I can leave my default perspective, I might as well try on other people’s point of view and see what the world might look like from their perspective. Nothing connects people like being able to empathize with each other. We are growing up as a human species where for the first time we are beginning to have global awareness of each other. For this not to end in tragedy, we will require a lot of empathy.

The bigger picture

As we begin to have more distinctions, see more patterns and create ever higher level of schemata, it is impossible, not to see the big picture. While the big picture might be warped due to some primary assumptions that might be off (e.g. if I accept the idea that oil is required for human survival, the “big picture” would entice me to build a highly controlled society with a small oligarchic elite), it will still encompass a global understanding. With the technologies available to us today, we cannot help but to. Within this new experience, having a metaphorical mind will allow us to integrate schemata while being confronted with ever more complex distinctions. It is not easy running a city and having a political mind (from Greek polis = city). We are now being asked to step up to run a planet and having a terrestrial citizen mind. It will be easy to see differences between each other, but even more important to see the parallels. For that, a metaphorical mind will be extremely helpful.

It’s not just for artists anymore

The metaphorical mind is something each one of us has access to. We use it daily and have used it as a child to begin to make meaning of this world. Each of us can access it, and we have no excuse not to exercise this circuit. Especially in a world of crisis it is crucial for each of us to begin to see the world for what it could be. To do so for the world is a tall order. To even do that for your own life is not an easy task. But it’s like a muscle. You can exercise it. Think of all the uses for a brick. Write them down. See? Easy… Start small…

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