carnival

One of my teachers said there is always more.

It's why no one can give you a definitive answer when it comes to the spiritual trip or the nebulous idea of enlightenment.

The answer would be in terms of what do you want me to say?

Nothing is defined.

It's absurd.

I cannot describe it.

I can point you towards teachings and experiences which will allow you to see it for yourself.

That's the role of a teacher.

The student must experience it themselves.

It's the idea of the shaman as a doorman.

He or she leads you to the door.

You knock and enter because this is what you wanted.

Then the great cosmic joke is unveiled.

It's always interesting to see how you react to it.

People can't handle it, and they go crazy.

It's best to be a squirrel, gather nuts, and not worry about finding meaning in life.

It's the level of consciousness which spurs you on towards attempting to find meaning.

We are all from the same bucket of energy and every form of energy which has life has the same potential.

The only difference is unlocking the governors upon that potential.

There's what Aldous Huxley described in the "Doors of Perception" as a reducing valve which prevents our mind from knowing everything.

The more you can access, the more is revealed.

If you want to go on a spiritual trip towards enlightenment, you need a method to open the valve.

If you open it up too much at once, you will not be able to handle it, and you will suffer mental health problems.

If you open it a little bit at a time, you will eventually be able to work with the knowledge.

You don't need much.

You find the sweet spot and create a container for your exploration.

Within the container there is enough to keep you going for a long time.

Within the oval container you find the edges through ritual.

You can explore the edges of the container to get glimpses of the great beyond.

Without the discipline of a container, you will eventually get too high or too low and not be able to return.

This is my contribution to the spiritual seeker community.

What about the corporate teat?

It's very rewarding.

I can see how some people are wary of a corporate job when they have an inner calling of freedom.

Corporations are good at tying you to them, and you base your life on being available for the company.

They reward you when you do this.

The benefits are great.

They fund your retirement.

You get regular pay.

The key to happiness is knowing what they are doing, harbouring a general disdain, and soldiering on.

It's a fool.

If you start your own business, you will tie yourself to your business.

The rewards are potentially greater.

No one gets rich working for the man.

You get rich through growing your business and through profiting not by a single digit percentage, but by multiple percentages.

The average is 15% to 25% for a good business while a high growth tech company can hit 50%.

The corporation will give you a 2% yearly raise while they strive for higher returns.

The company grows and you get a little bit.

Even in the down years they are still outpacing your raise.

It's best you don't have access to the balance sheet because if you did you would be angry with them and their financial dealings with you.

They speak of family and then they lay off your friends.

It's really quite the game.

What's your advice?

Do what they ask, pretend to care, and build your own wealth.

Take your money and invest in solid businesses through the stock market.

A solid business will see their share price rise between 10-15% a year accounting for fluctuations and the volatility of the market in general.

There's nothing you can do when world events cause market turbulence.

It's best to do nothing and ride the rollercoaster.

If you can get this side hustle going early in life, it's like having a business that generates extra money with the key being that you don't have to do anything.

Then you take the profits and reinvest in the business, making profit off your profits.

All the workers who put in time at these solid businesses are making you money while you do nothing.

That's my advice to the corporate worker, well, people in general.

What about herd behaviour in the stock market?

Yes, that's why you do nothing about turbulence when you are in it for the long haul.

The financial markets will follow the emotional sensibilities of human beings and how we react to news and events.

You could trade for gain based on this behaviour.

You do the opposite of what you are feeling, which is hard to do.

It's risky, so over the long haul it's best to sit and watch, however if you want to make a living trading the secret is to buy low and sell high.

It's very simple.

The problem is you go against what you are feeling and want to do.

What you are feeling is the call of herd behaviour.

Humans are bovines in disguise.

We follow the herd.

When the market is going up, we want in.

It's a thrill and a dopamine hit.

When crypto is soaring, we want in.

When the market drops, fear and panic sets in, and we want to get out.

Cut your losses and regroup.

The market always goes up and then it comes down.

Look it up.

If you know this, what do you think is the best strategy for being a trader?

Sell when you think it can't go much higher and buy when the market takes a dump.

The biggest problem with this strategy is missing out on the rebound after the dump.

Those are the huge days where if you miss them it will fuck up your year.

Just like holding on for too long at the high point because the drop comes fast.

It's a good rollercoaster ride.

It will be a fun activity in retirement when you can pay attention to it.

What is fun about the carnival?

The rides, attractions, and eats.

Sounds like life.

Yes, life is basic.

You want wealth and power in order to get admission to the finest carnival.

That one has the best rides and the shows are amazing.

You eat the finest food.

Is there something more to life than the carnival?

Making friends.

Making love.

What do you do with friends and lovers?

You hang out at the carnival.

Most people work for the carnival.

Yes, you must put in your time at the carnival and then you get let out to enjoy the carnival.

Some people prefer to stay home because they are tired of the carnival.

They make their own food and avoid the crowds.

As you get older, you definitely tire of the carnival.

People who enjoy peace and quiet start thinking about a cabin in the woods away from it all.

I would think the optimum balance is a cabin in the woods and then travel to exciting places.

That sounds like a good retirement.

prism

Within unity you can find self. You just have to objectify and then within the collective consciousness all instances eventually separate and objectify which gives birth to the material world. This is the same as when I see unity while separate because I am unable to separate myself from the environment, so I no longer see separate objects. The opposite must be true. Unification would want to find separation and through this desire will once again separate in order to know its many selves. One and the many. By changing perspective we can see both. Now.

So it’s all here and now. There is no place I have to go to see either viewpoint. I just need to change my conscious awareness to see it at anytime. My consensus reality prism is a separator much like a prism refracts the pure white light into its constituent spectral colours which are all the colours of the rainbow. Consciousness is King and run through a great prism separates into many instances of the whole. We as a species double down on the objectification and separation of consciousness. A perturbation of consciousness is the way on through the doors of perception. There are many modalities available to do just this, just do an internet search. Our natural inclination is to fight the change in consciousness and return to our normal waking state. For instance the other morning my seasonal allergies were peaking and so when I got out of the shower I grabbed some toilet paper to blow my nose. A piece of the paper stuck to my face just below my eye. I was locked in my routine so I did not remove it though it bugged me for a bit. Eventually I just ignored it until I looked in the mirror. I sat down a bit later with a tea, a great form of meditation, and contemplated the fact that at first I reacted with annoyance that my perception changed and I was seeing things with the tissue paper getting in the way. In order to get back to the default comfortable state I just started ignoring it. Isn't that what we do all the time? We ignore so many things in our environment in order that everything conforms to our worldview. If something feels out of place, we work to fix or remove it. I then started noticing my nose in my line of sight. It's always there but I just ignore it now because it is commonplace. Once I started noticing it, then it started bugging me, and I wanted to go back to ignoring it.

The overall lesson is that you can change your consciousness simply by being or becoming aware of environmental happenings that we just take for granted. It's hard to do though because our default state is to ignore or dismiss common occurrences and get locked into patterns of perception. As humans, it’s probably the reason we are attracted to novelty because it changes our consciousness and gets us out of locked in and mundane everyday experiences. However the novelty soon wears off and we seek out something new. As well we are easily distracted and though we may become aware of something, we soon return to our default view. So that's why seekers use agents of consciousness to perturb their consciousness. Examples of this are meditation, breath work, physical exertion, chanting, drumming, and plants or substances that alter consciousness. All these modalities then have the ability to show you other states of consciousness that are always with us, we have just filtered them out. It doesn't have to be psychedelic, it can be as simply as sitting in the forest and hearing the wind, the chattering of the birds, the frogs and crickets singing, the sun's rays glistening on a spider web, insects busily flying about, the heat of the day, the chill of the air, and so on.

mind games

Sometimes, looking at a problem from a different perspective can be quite illuminating. For instance, there is the idea that the brain generates the consciousness within our body and as a result we have a mind. How about the opposite? Our mind has a body and the brain within that body is generating our particular conscious reality. To ponder that is quite an eye opener and it is an invitation to think even more deeply about the implications. Ultimately, it's an institutional way of thinking about this situation and that would leave out any intuitive or spiritual aspects of what constitutes occluded reality. When I was presented with the idea of the mind having a body, it appealed to me because during altered states of consciousness experienced I have either viewed myself in the third person or was aware of my presence as light in the vision. This is a concept where this "mind" has an avatar, which is the body, and much like in a video game, the mind can control the actions of the player. The brain of the avatar acts as a reducing valve that limits the consciousness expression within the life form, allowing and limiting the avatar to acting on what it can perceive. As many have noted with psychedelics, especially Aldous Huxley in his book The Doors of Perception, these reducing filters are bypassed and one becomes conscious of much more than had been previously experienced.

Consequently, the avatar can become more aware of the environment it is in. Why would this mode of exploration of consciousness originally have been made available to the avatar to discover? Well, combining what I have learned with this new way of thinking I have my own ideas.

The "mind" in question controlling the avatar is what I would describe as the mind's reduction into consciousness now being the combination of the right and left half of the brain. To further elucidate what I mean, it has to do with what I call the soul or heart space which is the right hemisphere of the brain in addition to the analytical and no-nonsense left half. Furthermore, I have been able to separate my modes of cognition into what I call the ego-mind and the heart space. The left brained ego-mind is very judgmental and competitive. It is interested in establishing a separate identity and it views the self as autonomous. Conversely, when taking in life through the heart space we feel very connected. We can experience a deep feeling of love for oneself and each other and we wish to help one another. So, in essence, a byproduct of the brain acting as a reducing filter which has divided cognition into two halves, is the production of an autonomous entity called an ego which is created by an over reliance on the critical left-brained thinking. The ego has in turn usurped local control of the avatar by shunting the right half aside. The ego consequently becomes prey to malevolent forces within its psychic sphere. The malevolent forces within culture then use the ego to control the avatar and along with that control the attached soul is essentially buried. The ego-mind has done such a good job at obscuring the heart space that we have pretty much forgotten our true origins. There are faint echoes of the heart when we peer back into history or if we are very perceptive we can see it in our mythology and fairy tales. Echoes in history do remain of this lost nature of ourselves in our religious stories.

The abduction and rescue of Helen of Troy in the Iliad.
Persephone and her descent into Hades, from which she returns to life.
The descent of Orpheus into the underworld to rescue his wife, Eurydice.
The return of Odysseus to his kingdom, Ithaca, to reclaim his wife, Penelope in the Odyssey.
The rescue of Andromeda by Perseus.
Sleeping Beauty and her need to be wakened by Prince Charming.
Cinderella being the treasure hidden away waiting to be discovered.
Rapunzel trapped in the castle and discovered by a prince.
Ishtar's descent to the Underworld in the Epic of Gilgamesh.
St. George's slaying of the Dragon to rescue the Princess.
The rescue of the kidnapped Sita by her husband, the god-king Rama, with the help of Hanuman in the Ramayana.
Dorothy and her longing to return home in the Wizard of Oz.

Our prized left-brained way of analytical thinking has further alienated any chance of recovering the lost piece of who we completely are. The pinnacle of intellectual inquiry is now firmly materialistic. The soul is the fount of wisdom to which we need to reconnect. It's the imperishable "mind" which lies dormant within all of us.

Taking this further is the idea of all of consciousness being a "mind at large" - a sum total of everything. Through the use of psychedelics, you can enter into a conversation with such an entity who seems distinct from your conscious self. I believe this is where in some cultures the phenomenon has been interpreted as being the spirit of the substance used to enter into this state. Examples would be the Aztecs use of psilocybin mushrooms known as "Teonanácatl" which means god mushroom. Also popular psychonaut Terence McKenna in his lectures would refer to the mushroom speaking to him during his altered state and there are the numerous examples in history of the veneration of the mushroom. To me, this mind at large is the Logos, the spirit, the Christ who is the origin of all knowledge and understanding. This access to spirit is also continually under attack. This is the attack on the divine masculine which is found in traditions throughout the world.

Osiris' dismemberment at the hands of Set.
Dionysos ripped apart by the Titans.
Jesus Christ's crucifixion by the collaboration of the Jews and Romans.
Abel's slaying by his brother Cain in Genesis.
The yearly ritual slaughter and holocaust perpetrated on the lamb in the Torah.

By now you may see where I am going with this - the sleeping soul, Wisdom, must awaken and reconnect with the Knowledge found at the feet of the master, who is the Logos. It's the heavenly sacred marriage of Sophia and the Christos or the earthy conjugation of Mary Magdalene and Jesus Christ. The placement upon the earth and the intent for the use of psychedelics is a bridge to lead us back to this union if we use them wisely.