My 22 Cents on The Secret/Bleep Stuff ... So Far

This is a portion of a post I put up yesterday on The Great Integral Awakening Facebook site in a thread about The Secret and such. I didn't intend to talk about this, but after reading Mary's excellent opening post, I decided to indulge the impulse.

Sorry 'bout the caps, Facebook has zero formatting capability. Here goes:

I liked this bit from The Nature of Nature article:
"As Wilber puts it, the child asks their parent to change the spinach into cake so it will taste better. He addresses this quite directly, saying bluntly that such thinking is delusion. Thoughts do not alter matter in this way. It doesn't matter if it is a child asking their parents, a devotee praying to a guru/God, or a "manifestor" "intending" it through a quantum fields - These are all pre-rational delusions, end of story. They represent a profound misreading of both quantum physics and enlightenment texts (he quaintly suggests/blames "Boomer" narcissism [Boomeritis] for this misreading, but he is clear it goes much deeper than this)."

[my 22 cents]
Spinach into cake is pre-rational. That's why a child is asking it. It's the same with turning wine into blood. The official Catholic position on that is that the bread and wine actually change (even though human sense organs and technology cannot detect it) by means of God's power - which is directed by the Priest.

In pre-rational thinking, the self is INSIDE of the experience. That is why a child thinks this way. The child has not yet differentiated him/herself from the powers so that he/she is seen as an ADDITIONAL power. The child is not a separate agent operating with it's own power, but is subject to power. Because of this, the mind directs behavior to ACT AS IF "The Powers" will do thus and such TO the child. And when someone is acting as if something is true, then people tend to respond to them as if it is true, and the manifestation spirals. That's why it works. Even if it's lying!

Here is a quote from KW which I've had to alter because he didn't utter it in sentence form - however it accurately gives his meaning:

"Your value structure brings forth the phenomena that it registers."

[had to perform a "spell" of finding lost things in order to find that quote. It was deeply buried in notes I took on a book for class.]

But what happens if the experience is inside of the person instead?
- I begin to think in ways I've never thought before.
- I perform a magical ritual to change my thinking.
Which came first? It's a chicken and egg thing. KW calls it "tetra-arising". But when I first found Integral, I saw that people were holons. We were both wholes and parts. Physically, mentally, spiritually, etc. So, I saw right away that I change the environment AND the environment changes me. It goes both ways. In a holarchy, one kind of power residing in the wholes works downward, while another kind of power residing in the parts works upward. Both of those powers work on me and I on them in all 4 directions simultaneously. If I start a ball rolling, it will come back to me somehow, somewhere.

The thing is, we act upon holons above and below us all the time unconsciously anyway. It's unconscious because the rational thinking movement has caused us to not look at and repress this process, whereas this used to be the primary mode of cognitive operation in the olden days. None of this technology is new. Calling it "quantum" to me seems silly. It's magical thinking. That doesn't make it dumb or wrong, but that's what it is. And we can't stop doing it. In fact, we have to do it. Magical thinking is the foundation that our understanding of causality is built upon. And science is build upon causality. If we cut off the branch of magical thinking, the twig of causality that we're sitting on would fall to the ground. Trust me. I've lived in that kind of limbo for the first 46 years of my life. It doesn't work.

What I've done is rebuilt the branch of magical thinking by learning "Magic" proper. Literally. It's a Therapeutic process for me. I'm surrounded by people who think it's a Spirituality, so it's hard for me to find people to talk to about it this way. It's not a Spirituality. It's Psychology. The best magicians know this. Even Satanists know this. The phenomenon is happening inside of me. The wine does not have power. I DO! Even after I "charge it" with power, it is I who am sub-consciously keeping track of the chain of command and who ACTS AS IF what I say will happen will happen. I am doing it. Not the Chalice. Not the Knife. Not the Pentacle. Not the Wand. Not the Wine! Me!

Because I'm learning Magic - which is hella more fun, btw, than any other therapeutic technology I can think of that targets this issue - I can now perceive cause and effect in my day to day life more effectively. I can see how I've been causing stuff to happen that I didn't want. I can see how other people cause me to do stuff that I don't want to do. It's all being laid bare now, just because I'm learning principles of Magic which were formed by extremely primitive people who thought that a lock of hair from a powerful person had power in it. I've been "educated" about co-dependency for 20 years. I can teach it. But I couldn't live it until I saw it naturally like I see a cup or a rock right in front of me. That kind of emergence is only brought about developmentally - which I lacked because my Randian Objectivist mother forbade me to think magically.

These principles are inside of me. I am not inside of them. It's possible to hold this kind of thinking inside of me without being owned and limited by it.

When I was a practicing Christian, I was inside of that experience for quite some time. I was careful to find the Jesus that wanted me to grow and mature and learn to take care of myself, so I wasn't exactly expecting a Mercedes Benz in my stocking for Christmas. But I was expecting a Church to come to my aid if I suffered loss as long as I had demonstrated enough devotion and correct theological dogma. WRONG! Even when I shifted blame onto the Church and let God off the hook, I wanted Him to act independent of the Church. WRONG again! I went down the drain because I was inside of the experience and hadn't yet differentiated myself from the powers so that I saw myself as an ADDITIONAL power. I was not a separate agent operating with my own power, but was only subject to power. This is the common way people get past the Mythic stage: by finally becoming the Victim of God. It happened to all the Patriarchs. I don't know why we're surprised when it happens to us! Oy!

Ken is right (sort of) about The Church not teaching about shifting the experience to inside of yourself. He says it differently (and says "Christianity" instead of "The Church"), but this is how I had to learn it. I haven't even heard his favorite C'ian teachers talk about it this bluntly, they go 'round and 'round and use flowery words, but I finally heard Leslie Hershberger on Integral Life nail it the other night when she was talking about C'ianity and women. People get stuck on being anti-Christian or anti-Mythic-God if they still locate authority outside of themselves. That's the key.

I think once we make the shift to locating authority to our own interior, we can consciously use the Secret stuff without making the pre-trans mistakes. I am not under any illusions that the Knife purges the water, salt, incense and fire of evil spirits. The ceremony and tangible objects and images work on primitive parts of my brain which make it seem as if I am safe from such influences. It works whether or not I believe it with my higher mind because those structures are not really connected.

This is why cognitive therapy doesn't really have any effect on trauma cases, and in some situations can actually make things worse. Language and rational thought are a totally separate brain structure from the survival structures. The survival structures require silly rituals and pictures and body movements and spooky noises and state changes. LOL It's true. All that crap works on the parts that manifest these phenomena. It took me a long time before I understood how amusing that was. For most of my life, I felt like a Victim of it and could see no way out beyond death.

Somatic Psychology has also taught me alot. "The Body Bears the Burden" by Scaer helped tremendously! I have tried to memorize the chain of command in the brain from his book. Thalamus, Amygdala, Hippocampus, Orbito-frontal Cortex, Substantia Nigra, Ventral Tegmental Area... That on top of my previously built library of neurotransmitter knowledge. Well worth the trouble. This is how one includes the rational to become trans-rational.

Also, learning about the Postmodern turn in thinking and deconstruction years ago really helped. It made me open my hand that was clutching certainty. I think that's why so many people confuse quantum theory with magical thinking. The established Scientific community wasn't really phased by postmodern thought when it first arrived because it was so romantic and emotional. They mostly ignored it. Until quantum theory arrived. Then they had to let go of certainty. Quantum stuff appeals to people who really like rationality and linear thought because it doesn't engage all that emotionalism. But magical thinking, proper, is very emotional and dramatic and full of what the kids nowadays call, "woooo". LOL It still makes me giggle when I think of myself doing this.

The stuff that we're not aware of thinking and assuming - the pre-conscious stuff, the subject which we have not yet made object - is the stuff that runs the show. That's why Shadow Work is so important. It really is in charge. Making it conscious and practicing it with intention is a wonderful exercise - and the more primitive and weird, the better. 3-2-1 is a process of putting yourself inside of something that you've previously objectified (but not very successfully). When doing this kind of practice, there is no mistaking it for whats normal. You know that you're putting on clothes that don't fit right. But you do it anyway because it changes the shape of your energy body. I often feel REALLY goofy doing Magic. I'm not "believing" it! I'm allowing a part of my unlived life to live - as Marc (Gafni) says. That's good! That means I'm hitting the target.

As far as thinking about this stuff scientifically/rationally - I've been putting together some thoughts. KW has described interiors/exteriors and single/plural existing all the way up and all the way down. So, when I heard him answer a question one day about whether atoms had interiors in the affirmative, I had to pull my brain over to the side of the road and park and contemplate that a bit. What does that say about the "Elements"? It says that the Elements have experiences - not with an awareness as full as our own, of course, but some kind of experience. In my language, I say that they "want something".

Sodium wants to give away an electron. Chlorine wants to acquire an electron. Sodium and Chlorine make good friends and are seen together quite often. They work together and play together, and when they are apart, they feel sad. Sadness, Marc Gafni has assured us, is a state experience. Saying it in this personified way is not precisely incorrect as long as I realize that it is a metaphor. If I don't know it is a metaphor, then I'm pitiable. But if I do, then I have the beginnings of skillful means. If I direct the friendship of Sodium and Chlorine to my purposes beyond that of seasoning my baked potato, then I have achieved skillful means. Salt is one of the most ancient elements used in Magic.

Carl Jung called the archetypes that underlay all matter "Unus Mundus". Elemental Charge (being something that I have not yet found a cause or a cure for) is another way of saying, "Yes!" and "No!". No is male. Yes is female. Pushing away and pulling towards. Projection and attraction. These are the fundamental dualities of Magic. Why we think something so primitive is wrong even though our most current science cannot find anything more fundamentally true and real than these two things is amusing to me. Truly, I giggle at it all.

"Jung's concepts of the archetype and synchronicity are related to the unus mundus, the archetype being an expression of unus mundus; synchronicity, or "meaningful coincidence", being made possible by the fact that both the observer and connected event ultimately stem from the same source, the unus mundus."
~Wikipedia article on unus mundus

Learning how to attract things towards me is not anything very miraculous. In fact it is one of the two most primordial of all acts. And it is just as important as learning how to project things out from me. Babies are born with reflexes built into their nervous system which do both of these things in various contexts. As they develop those two impulses become more and more conscious as the holon transcends itself. If we are fully aware, is it logical or linear to imagine that we leave such fundamental impulses behind, or is it more logical that we become more and more conscious of them and use them more and more skillfully?
[/my 22 cents]

Okay. I know I oversimplified alot of stuff there. But I needed to be concise and I can only remember so much when holding so many ideas at once. I'm lucky that I was able to hold all that since my state of mind lately has been so scattered.

So, this has implications in about 7 different directions. Anyone wanna start pulling them apart?