Temporary Boundaries

Last night in an adventure in consciousness, a distinct awareness permeated the experience.

The shadow self or unconscious self has long been associated with the feminine, in her association with the serpent.

In it's essence the serpent has had a dual role of either providing wisdom to man, or being the source of our greatest fears. It was the serpent that was eating from the tree of knowledge. It was the serpent that told Eve of the fruit.

In last night's endeavors, it became more apparent that just as each day holds the seed of the day's night within, each new territory in consciousness explored, contains within it, the seed of the dark self, the dark star, fear, self-doubt, worry, anxiety, dread, destruction and chaos that may potentially manifest in the unknown.

I found myself observing a current state of mind and then finding tremendous love for it. I would follow that love, peace and acceptance deeper, to find that it was another sun of radiant consciousness and life.

After a brief period dwelling within this place, I would get the thought, "Is this it or is there something more beyond this sun."

The moment this thought would arise, I would be aware of a shrinking or distancing from the previous sun, as my mind ventured out into the void. At a certain period out in the void, I would get a wave of fear that questioned whether maybe I had ventured too far away from an already abundant place of light and love. I would wonder, "Maybe the last place was enough."

After a brief period of time, I'd realize I was indeed quite content where I had been and did not need to seek any further for another sun, or another modality of consciousness. To do so would create more time, another dark realm to try and explore.

My consciousness would return to it's previous sun, with an intense love and appreciation for realizing it was enough. That feeling of, "I have found enough or am enough," had such a distinctly peaceful feeling to it...that I'd realize the me that was originally observing had now began to glow so brightly, that I had become the *next* sun of consciousness that I was originally seeking. It was only after I stopped seeking or expecting one to be there, that one would illuminate.

In many iterations of this sequence, it became apparent to me that there are archetypes of consciousness involved with this expansion/contraction process. If you were to follow Ufological studies, you'd know a great deal about the serpent beings spoken of by people like David Icke and the Cassioapeans. If you were to follow the synchromystic studies of people like Goro Adachi, David Kotze, Micheal Tsarion and Soundlessdawn, you'd realize that there is again an intense connection between the human state of consciousness and the serpentine energy. Religions have long discussed the role of Satan as the serpentine tormentor of the soul where Gnostics have believed Lucifer to be the brightest star in the sky, enlightening man. Quetzalcoatl was belived by the Aztecs to be the flying serpent god associated with Venus that restored mankind. The far east believed in serpent gods or dragons that roamed the heavens. And even within our bodies, is believed to be a powerful serpentine energy coiled at the base of the spine known as Kundalini.

With this said, during the contraciton/expansion process of consciousness I became supremely aware of the importance of such beings A) guarding higher knowledge and B) sharing higher knowledge. It became clear that in each moment by existing, I was the creator of both a light of consciousness and a realm of beings that would seek to consume that consciousness. They did and do so until such a point in which I am ready for the information.

This moment typically came with accepting myself as I am and finding love for that state of being. It carried profound relief and joy to realize that it is vital for the growth and progress of my consciousness that this serpentine energy exists in this manner. I did not need to fight for their knowledge or try and take it from them. Rather I needed to find my own path through love and acceptance of the now, within.

Prior to realizing this, as stated before, I would find myself out in the middle of a dark void, quite terrified of death, terrified of failure, terrified of demons or negative entities, or terrified with fear. I'd realize that who I was before was quite sufficient and radiant with life. There was no need to push out into that void to find the answers. I am enough. In realizing that this resistance helps one see that they are enough, I suddenly had a tremendous sense of love for the void, the resistance and the guardians.

Once I no longer sought to eliminate that resistance, and instead found love for it's role and purpose. All resistance illuminated. All of that fear fled. At this point I realized that the heavy cloak of darkness was the serpentine energy above, around and within me. However, at another level, this terrifying tormentor is quite brilliant. They are brilliant from feeding off all of the vital knowledge and energy of being above and were not going to let me endeavor any further unless I would ultimately accept their existance and not seek to eliminate them. It is for them to eat first. Each moment is a moment of saying, "Yes" to their presence. By making no enemies, one has no enemies.

My love for their role and what is was their only guarantee that I posessed acceptance of their existance while at the same time, fully well knowing that they were tormenting pieces of myself that were at lower levels.

All this is to say, the clearest path between suns, and between darkspaces that are held within each moment, is love for what is and who you are at this very moment. In this journey, you find more love than you ever thought you could possibly feel and in the process find more dark, fearsome places within than you knew existed.

But in saying this, my parting thought is: it is quite worth it.

The Land Before Time

In a recent adventure in consciousness, a few themes popped up.  

The most prominent of them is the notion of identity.  I think for a majority of people, we perceive ourselves as the individual person that is experiencing something and thus finite and discrete.  The concepts of being connected to a larger being make sense in religious terms, but there isn't a tangible, moment to moment identity that establishes what this link to the divine is or might be.

In this exploration, those thoughts began to come in focus a little more than in the past.  I found myself expanding out into trying to leap from one thought to the next, and I began to ask why? Why do we search for something beyond our current understanding of reality?  Why is our current understanding not enough?  Why do we need more comprehension, deeper awareness, more connection for it to be enough?  

It became clearer over time that this pursuit of more thought, more insight, is equal in motivation and dillusion to the pursuit of more wealth, more love, more physical perfection.  It started to occur to me that it made no sense to search for more thought, just like it made no sense to search for more wealth or love because my searching in those areas always led me to the awareness that there is always more things to acquire, more love to be had or given, more perfection to achieve to.  The pursuit of more is always a pursuit of making time to find what is just beyond us with the hopes that it, whatever it will be, will make us content.

But as can be seen in life, achieving more only leads to the awareness that we need more.  The more money you make, the more you buy, the more money you need.  The more love you get the more love you must give, and thus the more love you must consume.  The more beautiful you are, the more beauty you seek around you.

So as with thought, it holds true.  

I found myself running through the normal sequence of thoughts, with a fear that if I were to stop thinking, then what?  Would I die?  Was my endless stream of thoughts keeping me alive? Without a ticker tape of observations, memories, projections into the future, and anxieties...what would happen?  Do I go brain dead?  Is that the death of the ego?

So in a moment, I would test making a choice to just accept where I am at, accept that this is where my thoughts might end.  I tried to accept that there are others that may move forward, infinitely into time, thinking all thoughts.  And even though their thoughts and lives would not be experienced by my own personal incarnation, could I be okay with that?  It is a curious experiment because it starts to become clearer that there is the you you've always known, that is becoming conscious of thoughts, and then there is the you in between thoughts. 

Silly questions like, "Do I have to think a thought for it to exist? Can it exist in a potential reality and maybe I stumble upon it in meditation and bring it to consciousness?"  pop up and being to fill your mind, when you stop rushing forward towards the next thought, the next moment.  It's sort of like at a deep level, we have this fear of "this" being it.  And because we're not ready for "this" to be it, we then create another moment to see if that moment is the "it" that we can be happy with. 

These ideas quickly unravel the normal perceptions of time and experience.  It becomes clearer that maybe there are things happening right now, and it's only after a certain "length of time" that we become conscious of it.  It's almost like there is a land or realm before time as we know it, in which all manner of things are determined and played out.  The effects of that realm are what we become conscious of and thus experience as life.  When really life, and all of the past as we know it, is the decayed remnants of a previous moment of time that occurred in the unconscious mind.  

This thought creates an interesting prospect: you are not in control.  Your life is the echo of a previous experience and the inability for you to predict the future is because you are not able to experience the information contained within unconsciousness.  In this instance, you are not the creator of your life, nor will any moment in the future be able to change you.  Instead it is actually at much more immediate point, right now, that everything is changing in subtle ways and your mind is running laps trying to evaluate one moment to the next to create a story about what is happening or might happen in the future.

That's a lot of energy to spend when it all happens in the unconscious, no?  

It also begs the discussion over our obsession with death and fears about dying.  Because if one recognizes that "life" is really just experiencing death, or the observation of now fading away, then it makes the notion of death quite silly.  In this scenario, life is the constant experience of death.  We are so terrified at every moment that we might be dead that we keep checking only to realize that our desire to check and see if we're dead, creates life or the experience of seeing death.  

Talk about the truth being right infront of your face.  Each moment is the death of moment that occurred and is now fading into the past.  Maybe some day we'll tire of observing our death and being afraid of our dying, and realize we are at a deep level, the source of life, or connected to it.  And thus if we are connected to it, then whatever that source is...it is the source that enables us to feel love or fear.  It sheds it's skin which we experience as life...when really it is the decaying fragment of life.

And thus, the now, in all of its forms, are the perfect reflection of the source of life.  Now is the heaven that we seek.  It is the place before consciousness, the place before time that radiates out.  

Here's a quick reality check: Are you afraid of never getting mad at someone again?  Maybe not?  How peaceful it would be to never be mad again,right?  But then ask this....Are you afraid of never getting to love another person again or be loved by another person?  Maybe so?  It occurred to me that people perceive love  as the thing that calls us back to life, that love stays with you after you die, etc.  

And after the whole gamut of thought above it occurred to me, that maybe it is not love that calls us back into life, but a fear of not getting to experience *more* love.  Furthermore, maybe the fear of change that we all experience is the one in which we are afraid of not getting to be " ourself" any more.  How silly right?  When will you not be yourself?  Especially if the self you perceive is really just the emanation from a previous source.

I am...okay

How many times a day do you spend reminding yourself of what you are not okay with?

Maybe you're not okay with your job, the way the world is going, the types of people that you have in your life. Maybe you're not okay with what happened in the past or some worries you have about the future. This list will go on and on.

As a game, try spending time being okay with the "is-ness" of your life right now. Rather than worrying about if you are good enough or going to make it out ahead, be okay with not being more. In fact, contemplate being okay with right now being the last thought you ever have or the last smell you'll ever come across. Maybe right now, you can be okay with hearing the sound of the birds outside for the last time, or seeing a new day unfold for the last time.

In doing so, take particular notice of the spaces between these thoughts and what may initiate new thoughts to occur.

You just might find that it is fear of change, fear of death or fear of this being all there is to know.

Could life and all of it's complexity really be this moment and no..."more" moments? Can you be okay with having fear within and there being no "more" to distract you or alleviate your fears?

Can you be okay with this life containing all the love that you will ever get to experience? Was the quality of the love you gave and that you received enough? Do you need...*more* ?

And suppose your answer to these questions is "yes!" "I really do need more. I am not okay with things how they are. They should be different and then I could be at peace. "

Can you observe that desire for more and be okay with it?

You may just find, you are okay with a great deal. That everything that you can see, smell, touch, taste, hear, or think is at some level possible because at a previous point, you chose to be in the situation you are in now. All the details both good and bad about what might be the outcome of past decisions, you are experiencing now. You might even argue that wanting more, will only lead to knowing there's more your want.

You may even come to the realization that there is the part of you that wants more and the part that wants nothing at all. It is completely full, satisfied, at ease, and at peace with everything it has learned and experienced and there is no "more" to want.

It does want or need more but if more were to occur it would be okay by it. It would not mind more, but it does not seek it.

Curious.

Consciousness and Illness

There may be a connection between periods of sickness and the conscious state of the organism.

This is strictly conjecture, but from one perspective, the notion of illness or physical suffering is brought on by an interaction with forms called virus or bacteria...in effect coming into contact with a foreign entity that seeks its survival at your expense.

This is the illusion. The suffering or symptoms of the illness is the signpost that is pointing towards inner resistance to changing into a new form. Rather than trying to "fight" the cold or make war with the virus, accept it. It may be there trying to tell you " you spend so much time working, that you are out of balance." Or it could be saying things like, " you thought that were indestructible, but all things are impermanent and subject to decay and eventually death."

In this light, the illness helps realign the form known as you with a constant truth about change, life and death and is thus potentially, the most helpful experience imaginable in the pursuit of answering questions like, "who am I?"

Such is the case with suffering.

In the material sense, yes, you are being invaded by virus and experiencing symptoms of suffering. In the non-material sense, you are trying desperately to avoid the death of your current form and the abyss of possibility associated with such an event. Shaman in the past may have recognized this truth, and rather than spending energy as we do in the West trying to change the form, they spent energy trying to change the consciousness of the individual.

Their power lay in their ability to interact with others at a deep level, to create calm, peacefullness and acceptance of things like change and death in another. Upon doing so, no longer was the ill body trying to avoid the fear of dying and thus was able to spend that conscious energy on healing.

This information finds relevance at this very moment due to moving into " cold and flu " season or " fear of death " syndrome. Instinctually, the change in temperature signaled to our ancestors that death lay in the wings in a few months and not all would make it. Physiologically speaking, we may carry the genetic heritage of that fear within. This also adds relevance to the ritual of Halloween, or in effect, the celebration of death and the belief that life goes on into the underworld so that consciousness may begin to accept what lies ahead with a light heart, versus one of dread.

The Three Culprits

An interesting disquisition by the inventor of Buddhist Economics, E.F. Schumacher:

For Schumacher there were three main culprits, that had all been corrosive agents in a world which had lost sight of individual responsibility and a world bound to the parameters of realism and science. These were Freud, Marx and Einstein. Freud had made perception subjective through his teaching that perception was subject to the complex interplay of the ego and the id, literally rendering it self-centered. This led inevitably to a change of attitude in human relations where self-fulfillment took precedence over the needs of others. Marx, by seeking a scapegoat in the bourgeoisie, had replaced personal responsibility with a hatred for others. His fault lay in his blaming of others for problems with society. Einstein had undermined belief in absolutes with his insistence on the relativity of everything. The application of 'relativity' in all other fields including morality, led to rejection of moral codes and responsibility.

Inspire 08 Conference

The concept of psychological archetypes was advanced by the Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung, c. 1919. In Jung's psychological framework archetypes are innate, universal prototypes for ideas and may be used to interpret observations. A group of memories and interpretations associated with an archetype is a complex, e.g. a mother complex associated with the mother archetype. Jung treated the archetypes as psychological organs, analogous to physical ones in that both are morphological constructs that arose through evolution. [3]

Jung outlined four main archetypes:

• The Self, the regulating center of the psyche and facilitator of individuation
• The Shadow, the opposite of the ego image, often containing qualities that the ego does not identify with but possesses nonetheless
• The Anima, the feminine image in a man's psyche; or The Animus, the masculine image in a woman's psyche
• The Persona

Although the number of archetypes is limitless, there are a few particularly notable, recurring archetypal images:

* The Syzygy
* The Child
* The Hero
* The Great Mother
* The Wise old man
* The Trickster or Fox
* The Puer Aeternus (Latin for "eternal boy")
* The Cosmic Man
* The artist-scientist
* The Scarlet Women
* The Faceless Man

-From Wikipedia


Often when given a client who requests a website to sell their new product or message, Creatives are forced to distil the essence of a client’s brand into ideas that are far reaching with multiple applications. A brand on it’s own exists within the context of the current linear time, needs, supply, perceptions and goals of it’s given society. This experience is often shallow from an objective point of view. Thus, one could argue that to communicate concepts effectively, a Creative must connect a brand to the archetypes outlined through Jung’s studies.

Jung theorized that humans rely upon archetypes to process the world in which they live. An archetype is a timeless, universal idea, which has emotional, physical, psychological and spiritual attributes that are deeply embedded within the fabric of the human psyche. The process of experiencing our everyday reality involves receiving external stimulus within the material realm and comparing it to these archetypes nested within the psyche to extrapolate meaning about the stimulus and create context. Similarly, by distilling brands into these archetypes, clients can associate their product or message with meaning that far surpasses objective reality.

For example, when one sees and advertisement for Gain laundry detergent, in objective reality, they are experiencing visual images and audio about soap which keeps clothes sanitary. There are multiple solutions for keeping clothes sanitary, but to distinguish themselves from their competitors, Gain may choose to advertise using images and sounds that appeal to a combination of the Great Mother, Hero, and Child archetypes. The mother portrayed is embodying all the qualities of the great goddess in her ability to provide for and take care of her child, the embodiment of innocence and purity. In doing so, she can become an everyday hero, overcoming the adversity of running a family and providing for everyone’s needs.

As in the case of Sciop and Troika at the Inspire 08 Conference, in order to distinguish their brands, they used visual images that relied heavily on organic, familiar textures with animation styles that reflect natural phenomena with properties like light, sound, fire, earth, water and air. These experiences take foreign ideas, like the Olympics or a movie channel, and begin to visually associate them with everyday human experiences with light, birds flying, the textures of the human hand, and more. Once they combined the mundane with the foreign, they began weaving meaning into the foreign ideas by applying archetypes. As in the case of Troika, meaning was added to the High Definition MTV channel by associating MTV and it’s brand symbol, music, with the archetypal narrative of the Tower of Babel and the quest of the Hero to bring spiritual enlightenment to a depraved world. The average observer may have no idea what they are watching on a conscious level, but to the subconscious, Troika is telling a story full of epic symbols relating to the soul, life, and spirituality and then associating all of that meaning to the MTV brand.

With this in mind, one may begin to see the significance and responsibility of Creatives. By invoking the artist-scientist archetype in their professional life, they serve themselves and society by tapping the imagination or creative aether to distill the material world into fundamental ideas. The modern day artist who comes up with the latest 30 second video animation for broadcast or micro-site for a new brand campaign, is charged with associating the mundane aspects of everyday life, a.k.a. material reality, with the unknown aspects of the psyche, a.k.a. archetypes. In doing so, whether conscious of it or not, they serve society by enabling it to engage with and know the self.

Welcome!

After many long conversations among close friends, it has occurred to us that each day we experience new stimuli that effect our perception of reality.

These experiences can be mundane, coincidental, dreamlike, psychedelic, emotional-well just about anything.

When trying to interpret these experiences, we need each other to help understand not only the stimulus itself, but all of the myriad of questions that come up in our process of assimilating the information into our world views about who we are, where we've come from and where we're going.

Let this be a forum for the exploration of ideas and possibilities.

Welcome.