Raw Experience vs Pale Ideas
As the landscape of what’s emerging changes rapidly I’ve found it difficult to get a fix on what to prioritize and share. Here I’ll note two related perspectives that have been popping for me.
New Festivals
I was at Soulshine Festival in September near Toronto, Soulshine’s third year. For me it was about emerging new consciousness and new ways forward (as well as fun, music, sushi in deep woods, fireside chats . . .).
There was also a strong component of women-only and men-only events and I was part of the latter. Tendrils reached out to do more conscious meeting with the two sexes in the future. Historically this two-sexes-consciously-meeting is new for most of us. I think of men and women as two cultures who don’t understand each other very well. While innumerable couples have found love, as groups of men and groups of women, we haven’t learned to trust each other deeply yet. Paradoxically that may be because of how important we are to each other, because of how enormous our potential is – how great the love.
Men and women are like two poles of a battery. When each pole is able to stay strong and coherent in the presence of the other, a current of unity and of love arises between the two. But as groups we typically don’t stay strong and ourselves in the company of the others. Social stories and old hurts seem to reduce the trust between us.
We’re not there yet as cultures, but we’ve named the future meeting and we’re going there, as cultures. Not just at Soulshine Festival but maybe out there where you live to. I do believe that that the unitary current that flows between two clear poles is the game changer wherever it shows up. The time we’re in is marked by polarities that don’t see or respect the other. Individuals don’t see that they’re part of polarity that becomes stronger and saner through the other.
Historically awakening was for individuals but now it seems to be in the air to wonder whether a mass awakening might be possible..
Everywhere we see a fledgling consciousness starting to awaken and arise but it’s not very here yet and so it’s hard to see. We don’t have a language for it and that makes it hard to get a hold of too. We’re inventing language for it. Even the fact that we’re doing that, wondering about it is a hopeful sign. Maybe we’re learning to see, preparing. When the Europeans showed up in their ships, the native North Americans had a hard time conceptualizing and understanding what they were seeing - were these Gods or what? They had no frame of reference for this mysterious occurrence. Similarly we’ve not been able to feel into the meeting of sovereign women and men. It may be coming but it’s not here yet.
Great stuff happens at Soulshine but it’s not quite Paradise found, not yet. The parking lot had hundreds of tons of high industrial metal in the form of cars, not to mention all the gadgetry we had with us for camping. It took a lot of outside energy from mammon to support the thing. Just as it takes a village to raise a child, it seems to take the military-industrial complex to raise a consciousness festival. Not that Soulshine was exclusively that; it was an outing, a time away, a dance party, a rave, a music festival, a holiday. The notion of awakening would seem bizarre or precious to many people. It’s not part of the common parlance.
Aubrey Marcus has a short video on why he’s NOT going to Burning Man festival this year and what he and others are doing instead this fall. I think that they’re picking up on a similar vibe to what’s happening at Soulshine, a coming together in search of a new consciousness.
What is a New Consciousness?
For that matter what is sleep and awakening? Even asking the question makes a big assumption. Oh, there's something called awakening.
Are you sure?
Well, yes, I am sure of that. But what is it? It’s the basis of inner religious work throughout history and, depending on how we define religion, the basis of the exoteric spiritual project as well. Both refer to a higher or deeper understanding that’s often experienced and referred to as a waking up to a larger personal reality, a greater consciousness.
The key to this waking up is a distinction between a concept about spiritual experience, and a direct experience of it. The concept may be “true,” a saying of Jesus, a high truth from the Hindu Vedas, or a poem of Rumi or Rilke. But words formed into a concept are not an experience. They even get in the way because they reinforce the sense that the concept is the thing, that the map is the territory. It’s not. We’re not saved or helped much by words but by the truth they point to.
I’ll share an experience I had as a young man that brought this home to me. (I quite quickly forgot it but that’s not the point here.)
In my 20s I was in India with the controversial “guru,” Bhagwan Rajneesh. Bhagwan was later named Osho and the Osho people were early adopters of a process called Enlightenment Intensive and continue to be a branch of it.
There were about 35 people in the room over three days and evenings. What we did was line up in two rows of people seated on the floor, each person directly in front of another. One side asked a question of the person opposite them and then gave silent witnessing attention for five minutes after which the roles were reversed. Witnessing attention meant something different from nodding, smiling or engaging - implying a preference for one kind of response or another; it was simply a neutral receiving. The question was “Tell me who you are,” and this is still an EI question. After five minutes the roles reversed and s/he who was the listener now received the question and answered. After both sides had had a turn everyone on one side moved over one position and faced the next person and the same back and forth continued.
I believe we just did this for three days but in the intensives people continued in this matter for a week or two. .
Way back then there was very little instruction for this so you’d just launch in. I can remember saying something like, “Well I’m 27 years old and I come from Canada. I like camping, I’m straight, I have four siblings . . .” It’s a comedy. After a while I ventured into my psychological state, my relationships, my hopes, what I dreamed last night, how much I weighed, my health. As time goes on over hours and days, speakers realize more and more that all those details are accidental, like clothing. They’re not who we really are, not that you know who you really are, but you realize it’s not that. As time goes on we variously got desperate or anxious or crazy or poetic or lost or ashamed, or think we don’t measure up. Or don’t want to say but we have to keep on!
Ding goes the bell, the signal to change! Try to focus on the next person who is also not just a rag tag collection of attributes. Perhaps you feel compassion for them and try and be silently there for them as you listen.
Ding. Your turn again.
It continues. Every hour you go for silent slow motion walks outside and come back again. Some people have random outbursts, crazy laughter. It slowly or suddenly dawns that you’re not any of the things you could ever say about yourself but you are the one behind to whom it’s happening. You are the one who’s making up a story about who you are. Actually it’s more that you’re this golden ball of consciousness walking around with a host of attributes that both are you and not you because you’re this other thing.
Ding.
None of this was intellectually new to me. But experientially it certainly was. For example, I’d been reading about Jiddhu Krishnamurti over years, a contemporary writer and mystic who talked about the necessity of finding for oneself what is beyond maps and not relying on assumptions. I remember the frustration of sooo recognizing the need for this, understanding but unable to reach it. I could no more proceed than speak Swahili on demand.
When I came back to Canada I didn’t hear of Enlightenment Intensive for years and when I did I was not in a state of mind to do it again. I meditated but in my case I discovered I was usually looking to calm myself. Over the last 10 years or so I’ve been involved, at times intensively in group practices that have explored how the “we” is different from the individual “I” practices. Lately this has looked more often like dyad (or group-of-two) practices. (My 2017 book Evolutionary YOU: Discovering the Depths of Radical Change is a primer and celebration of the r/evolutionary potential of group practice.)
I use my experience as an instance of something that I think is extremely widespread and normal: We humans are new to consciousness, mere babes. We’re driving a Ferrari and imagining we’re still in an ox cart. It’s normal and understandable. We’ve been around for about 200, 000 years and modern humans about 30, 000. In the long sweep of our evolution that’s just this morning, moments ago. From our sleep we don’t know how to navigate this consciousness we inhabit. In fact this tiny ability of what we have is sleep. We use a tiny part of it, a part that identifies with concepts we think are good but that we may have little actual experience of.
Both the emerging Festivals scene and Enlightenment Intensives are examples of something much more widespread, an awakening in the “field” of relational space in which perspectives that once would have seemed bizarre - or more likely would never have occurred to us at all - have become more visible and worthy of attention.
Practice Dyad Meditation?
If you’d like to explore the distinction between concept and experience come join me and others this coming Saturday, October 7th at 1pm to 2:30pm Eastern Time. I’ll introduce how the process works and give your some opportunities to practice with another. We’ll end with some group time after to reflect on what we’re learning.
It’s free but pre-registration is required. Here’s the link.
I’ll send a reminder and look forward to meeting you there. Because I’m just starting to do groups I’ll ask you to let me know if you must opt out before group time, if you plan to - so I have a sense of how many are coming.
Leave a comment and let us know you’re out there and what you’re thinking about all this.