This will be the last installment of this series on Grief. I hope I have been able to paint a picture of why I feel hopeful and that it has been of some value.
The light of possibility is how I ended last month. The possibilities created from the practice of alchemy. Think of it as light in the dark labyrinth, of the prison that is the material world.
Human industrial society is in a predicament. Continuing is unsustainable. The energy to do so is not available to us and then there's the damage to our habitat. Stopping cold is also a problem. There is the Aerosol Masking Effect or Global Dimming to consider. You can google this if you are not familiar with the concept. So, we are in a predicament and no one knows how it's going to turn out.
Regardless, there are reasons to feel hopeful. I feel "hope" because I see that humans are a very small part of the biosphere. Also, we haven't been around very long and might be on our way out soon. Life on Earth will continue with or without humans. While I have no hope for industrialized society, I think it's more than possible that humans will survive. Continuing my work to save and preserve important elements of piano performance makes me feel hopeful. I also feel hopeful when I step outside of logic and rationality. When I'm stuck in rationality, the "facts" are quite dark and suggest industrialization to be a doomed affair. Thankfully, there is much more to life than rationality. There's beauty, gratitude, spirituality, nature, alchemy and miracles just to mention a few.
When I say miracles, I'm not talking about god or any other deity. I'm talking about something we can't explain from our current perspective.
Consider these points.
1. The universe generates novelty.
2. Novelty is one way to describe high spirits. Don't you feel high spirited when something new shows up in your life?
3. Alchemy is the redemption of spirit from matter.
Could it be that all of the novelty we see, are really spirits that have been released from a previous materiality? Perhaps the high spirits you feel around something new is not just you but a reflection of something else. Maybe miracles are going on around us every day we just can't connect the dots.
Alchemy was also used as a process of creating novelty based on intention. Language was an important element in that process. How did the alchemists use language? Part of the alchemical process was to involve your mind in the mixture. Incantations are more modern words, but words, thoughts and feelings were all fair game for 2nd century hermeticists. For more on this subject check out an ancient text called the Corpus Hermeticum.
If miracles are things, we can't explain from our current perspective then why not speak of things that are not present. If we keep speaking them and we get more people to speak them, then things that are not, might be. And how might that change the current outlook? I will continue with this topic more broadly but if what I have been saying has resonated with you, you can get more of the same by googling Terence Mckenna. I will post my series on our website, so they are available to review.
------David Cutter
The light of possibility is how I ended last month. The possibilities created from the practice of alchemy. Think of it as light in the dark labyrinth, of the prison that is the material world.
Human industrial society is in a predicament. Continuing is unsustainable. The energy to do so is not available to us and then there's the damage to our habitat. Stopping cold is also a problem. There is the Aerosol Masking Effect or Global Dimming to consider. You can google this if you are not familiar with the concept. So, we are in a predicament and no one knows how it's going to turn out.
Regardless, there are reasons to feel hopeful. I feel "hope" because I see that humans are a very small part of the biosphere. Also, we haven't been around very long and might be on our way out soon. Life on Earth will continue with or without humans. While I have no hope for industrialized society, I think it's more than possible that humans will survive. Continuing my work to save and preserve important elements of piano performance makes me feel hopeful. I also feel hopeful when I step outside of logic and rationality. When I'm stuck in rationality, the "facts" are quite dark and suggest industrialization to be a doomed affair. Thankfully, there is much more to life than rationality. There's beauty, gratitude, spirituality, nature, alchemy and miracles just to mention a few.
When I say miracles, I'm not talking about god or any other deity. I'm talking about something we can't explain from our current perspective.
Consider these points.
1. The universe generates novelty.
2. Novelty is one way to describe high spirits. Don't you feel high spirited when something new shows up in your life?
3. Alchemy is the redemption of spirit from matter.
Could it be that all of the novelty we see, are really spirits that have been released from a previous materiality? Perhaps the high spirits you feel around something new is not just you but a reflection of something else. Maybe miracles are going on around us every day we just can't connect the dots.
Alchemy was also used as a process of creating novelty based on intention. Language was an important element in that process. How did the alchemists use language? Part of the alchemical process was to involve your mind in the mixture. Incantations are more modern words, but words, thoughts and feelings were all fair game for 2nd century hermeticists. For more on this subject check out an ancient text called the Corpus Hermeticum.
If miracles are things, we can't explain from our current perspective then why not speak of things that are not present. If we keep speaking them and we get more people to speak them, then things that are not, might be. And how might that change the current outlook? I will continue with this topic more broadly but if what I have been saying has resonated with you, you can get more of the same by googling Terence Mckenna. I will post my series on our website, so they are available to review.
------David Cutter
