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I found this post engaging, as I have been coming into my own understanding and sort of "unlearning" of the world, too, but through an opposing angle. I don't know if I can ever put a name to my understanding of reality, but as I continue to dive into deep ecology and meditation, I'm arriving at a sort of animistic, atheistic mysticism. It's impossible to not feel more like an animal when you are away from people and society. To feel like you are a small but equally important piece of a very large epic drama playing out over the course of earth's history. I'm not sure if you read my posts here (starting with #2358) but I like to say that you and I are both flirting with something much larger than ourselves that feigns attempts at categorization, or language itself.
I'm actually working on a long trip report that talks about my reality getting a bit broken for a couple of hours after taking a THC edible, and it was after this experience and a lot of introspection that I've begun to suspect that the path forward with learning about this "marvelous reality" is through chemical manipulation and movement into novel environments. Our minds are a giant sponge for our senses, and they're mirrors of the place we occupy. I spent a week in Utah, exploring the Great Basin, the Pine Valley Mountains, had a near-death experience at Snow Valley State Park, and I can say with certainty that the whole of these experiences were transformative.
Still, I long for the day when I am finally free from the screen, and from the complicated systems of thought and symbols with which we overwhelm our brains to shield us from the direct experience of a world that is far richer, and far more mysterious, than the safety of our categories and theories provides for our fragile and scaredy egoes.
Friend, I've been waging this same battle since I was a teen. A sort of reckoning that, everything we see here is not really all there is, right? The unconscious mind absorbs SO much information and it shields us from all but 0.01% of it, is there really no way we can tap into more?
So I keep reading my books, I keep burying myself in systems of symbols, with the hope that one day I might forget them all
This is where I feel like you and I diverge in practice. I am certainly not an anti-intellectual, but when it comes to subjects such as these, I do feel that the more we absorb ourselves in higher learning, we cripple ourselves. To become more left-brain, you must move away from the right-brain. The man who is awakened to the hyperreal world must be high in openness, and intuition, and improvisation. It requires one to turn off the internal monologue and become the "invisible eye-ball" written about by R. W. Emerson. I am afraid that burying yourself in theory is only good for understanding theory, but it robs you of valuable time engaging in practice.
Strange that even though I live *in* nature, there is hardly a naturale place to visit these days. Everything is touched by man, and nearly every square meter of land is inflicted by the perturbation of the work of men in the tireless pursuit of.... what?
Money and power. The judeochristian drive to 'conquer' nature, and assert our superposition over it. It's an evil core that only spreads rot and ruin. I'm afraid we will never truly overcome this drive, but more hopeful minds disagree. My recommendation is to visit a large state park and keep the phone on airplane mode and DND mode. The first time I did this I entertained suicidal thoughts, which was scary... But it also helped me. Your mileage my vary.
~devilsummoner wrote (thread):
Can you have it all? That is an age old question. When you're on top, perhaps. When you're not...it seems impossible. Perhaps you're looking for the answers in all the wrong places. If I were Douglas Adams, I might say that we aren't asking the right questions.
Here's another idea. Instead of getting another grimoire, next time get a memoir. Find a dusty old forgotten tale from a past century someone wrote about their childhood. Find an anthology of short stories about bugs.