I once had a dream that I was in this organic maze that was constantly changing shape, becoming more complex and overwhelming. There was a digital clock, illuminated and constantly in my view, counting down by the milli-second, representing time left that I was to get out of the maze. It stopped at 11:11:11, and a voice thunderously said that if I was to say “Awake (something something)” that I would be able to escape the maze. So I did, and then I began to float up and expand out to see that the maze looked a lot like this:
Shortly after coming out of the maze, I woke up in my bed.
Both photos are a micro-image of the mycellium structure of a mushroom.
I went to Will’s birthday party last night, and he had a book called “Cosmos” lying out in the open on the kitchen table. We talked about the images in there, real and computer-generated pictures of some of the billions of galaxies in our observable universe. I’ve seen this image before, but it always sparks something wild in me every time I look at it.
Will suggested the irony that the mycellium of a mushroom looks strangely similar to the interconnected web of galaxies in the universe. I’d never thought of that but have definitely considered that the image looked strangely similar to a membrane, or even neurons in the brain.
Lots of eastern thought and even advocates of psychedelics have nearly made it a cliché that the universe is contained within its parts, much like a fractal. It makes you wonder why so many people claim that they’ve had perceptions of one-ness or “awakening” after consuming psychedelic mushrooms.
Because of the parallel, I tried to find the rant Joe Rogan does in his stand-up about the possibility of the human experience looking like this: being within a galaxy of a universe inside the ball of a guy whos in a galaxy of a universe within the ball of a guy who’s in a universe…
Thanks to first impressions of him on The Man Show and Fear Factor, I had my prejudgments of Joe Rogan until half-way through his stand-up comedy DVD that my friend Anthony showed me one night while drinking White Russians at his parents’ house. That was some time in 2008. After Joe Rogan’s routine made the transition from dick-jokes-and-boning over to the general stupidity of humans, dependence on technology, and how it relates to egyptian pyramids, I was into it.
Later, I watched a ton of youtube videos with him, and followed his blog for a while. I once blogged about his youtube rant on isolation tanks, which eventually convinced me to drive up to Santa Fe to try it a couple of times.
An isolation tank is a huge enclosed tub of water, heated to the external skin temperature (somewhere around 91 degrees) filled with 800 pounds of epsom salt to keep your body buoyant. Your ears are submerged. You’re nearly deprived of all senses (also called a sensory deprivation tank), allowing nothing external to distract you from your own mind. The deeper you relax and sink into the experience, the more significant it can be. The first time I did it, I had an image of myself free of gravity, floating vertically through outer space. I didn’t quite float through the geometric patterns Joe talks about, though. During the tank experience, the imagination volume knob is turned up, song melodies, internal conversations, dream-like visuals — all intensified.
Supposedly, one hour in the tank can equate to the benefits of having 4 hours of sleep. I don’t know how somebody came up with this, but I felt like a completely revived human coming out of it, with much more internal clarity and sharper senses than before. For a while I was looking for a way to own one, or even make my own. If I had a basement and a tank, I’m pretty sure I would take time to do it everyday.
I decided to re-watch Zeitgeist The Movie last night, mainly because it is the new remastered version, and has a little bit extra added to it.
Zeitgeist is not for the feeble, or even strong set-in-stone minded people. It challenges the biggest things relating to the conditioned mind of humanity, and most likely, even you have some of it.
It confronts what many Americans think we know about religion and government. So if you feel offended or irritated by those kinds of things, you probably won’t want to watch it.
I came around to watching Zeitgeist years ago because a friend of mine posted a link to it on myspace. I had a long phase of reading about religion and “the worlds biggest secrets”, and this came at an interesting time.
Whether or not you buy into this stuff, there is a clear sign of insanity in the way things are run in this world.
I feel like I’ve always known it, and have been fascinated by it in a way. Unfortunately, sometimes I’m so repulsed by human behavior that it causes problems of their own and doesn’t really help anything. My theory is that the ego’s problems can’t be solved by the ego. There has to be a new way of thinking, or even no thinking at all; that is, settling down the compulsive conversations we carry in our heads.
If the planet were small enough to study under a microscope, humans would look like little cells. We move about, build things, are drawn to other humans, repelled by others, and we reproduce. Our actions may even be recognized similar as the behavior of cancer cells, because, like cancer, humans are not working in harmony with life around it.
Ego appears to be the problem, because we’re so invested in it’s beliefs and self-image. We could still have egos and function fine, but without keeping the ego in check, or even recognizing its behavior, we are owned by its fears and limitations. A false sense of identity is steering the human vehicle. We are not free, but at the mercy of our ego-based neural wiring to make decisions. That includes all of the conditioning of our past, and preoccupations about our future. If you don’t think you’re a prisoner of your conditioning, try to notice when you get angry or defensive about something you believe, and see if it makes any sense to you.
Then there’s affirmations, the attempt at re-conditioning the mind to something of a more positive nature. “I love myself,” or “Everyday, in every way, I’m getting better and better.” Those hypnotic phrases might help you become productive for a while. The problem is, there’s nothing integrative about affirmations. You can pump your mind with positive reinforcement all day long, but you still have the polar opposite lingering around somewhere in the shadows. And when it rears it’s ugly head, you’re like the Patrick Swayze character on Donnie Darko; a self-help guru catatonically rocking back and forth, crying in his bedroom.
There’s an intelligence that is completely unique to our mammal-hood; one where new ideas are formed, intuition is developed, and flow is experienced. And it’s been proven that it only arrives when the mind enters small windows of silence amongst the internal conversational mind-chatter.
In my own rare experience, it’s those times of clarity when a new perception arises, and nothing more is needed. People on the outside even react to your state. It’s almost like the exaggerated portrayal of a monk walking amongst the forest with birds and squirrels perching on his shoulder, displaying an auric sheen. If a person can hold this state long enough, included that past and future are no longer a concern, then new experiences unfold. There is a whole new respect and appreciation for life, nature, animals, even for the squarish assholes on T.V.
I once read something where a guy had an epiphany. He suddenly considered that if he experienced life through another human being, from birth to death, same physiology and life-events, he would BE that person. He would act, look, dress just like them, and completely 100% be them, inside and out. It was a sudden paradigm shift from judgment to compassion. It was Joe Rogan who wrote that on his blog.
What is the part of you that could possibly experience the life of another person? It’s essentially what is experiencing your own life now. The part of you that is aware of what you see, touch, feel, taste, etc. It is what every single human, animal, and plant have. It is awareness capable of observing. It’s the lingering “something” that’s under the mind-chatter, and what steers your cells into the proper places for your body to even exist.
Then there is the trick of becoming aware of awareness. This awareness can expand or we can confine it within our own little mind-based world. But if it expands enough, that’s when we get a sense of being plugged in to the whole, and we start living in harmony with our surroundings. It can only happen when the mind is immersed in the present moment. The same idea is in the beginning of Zeitgeist.
I’m not a big fan of getting entangled in worrying about petty things, or getting involved with human micro-dramas. A lot of people experience a strange pleasure in living dysfunctional lives. I can’t say co-dependency and power-struggles have had lasting positive results for me. Human insanity is starting to rear it’s ugly head at this point in time, I think to the point where humanity might be forced into a major shift in direction before we all destroy ourselves.
Weird times.
So the solution to human crazy-ness is always a foggy one. But I think we can have confidence enough in ourselves to remember an experience or state of mind that may have once harmonized on a much deeper level than any words can ever describe. If we’re lucky enough, we may find it again hidden in our present experience. Then, life may be so kind to bestow the next little piece of the puzzle.
