Good news at the interesection of the material and spiritual: your bodymind is wired to move in and out of unity consciousness and the “normal” consciousness as the individual self AT WILL.
The pathways and keys to everyday ecstatic bliss and interconnection with the singular field have been laid out inside of our own bodies.
That may be a hard thing to take for the material realists attached to the story of “life is suffering” and “the rational world of the 5 senses is all there is”, but bear with me. Just as scientific observations expanded with more precise instrumentation and changed our understanding, how we live in our own bodies can dull or amplify our perceptual capacities. There is so much more going on in the subtle and energetic realms, in the generally considered “subperceptual” field. Frankly, most of us are usually pasting over our energetic and subtle genius with our dull foods and gross movements and ambushing blunt manipulative forms of media, while at the same time, there are those among us who can listen to a plant, or taste the floor with our feet, or see emotions. Each of us have this latent capacity inside of ourselves. You have more “magic” in you then you might realize.
We can be in an ongoing process of willingly forgetting that we are part of the one pervasive energy that animates all things, and then willingly remembering. We might forget for the sheer pleasure and challenge and experience of being in an individuated consciousness. We might remember and enter the unified state when we would like some rest and replenishment, or when we want to be reminded that this is an infinite game and recenter ourselves in trust and joy and confidence and awe of the endless field.
The “at will” sometimes takes guidance and practice, but not always. It is accessible through techniques like breathwork and meditation, through rituals and entrainments like dance and song and drumming, through molecules and plant medicines, through sacred sexuality and so many more expansion aids - and when you have practiced enough - or if you have the karmic grace to get there without practice - you can just ping back and forth like flipping a switch, in each moment of the day.
Switch: I am the pervasive divine light in the field
Switch: I am focused light in a body.
(Actually, it’s not a switch…. it’s more like an oscillation…. definitely not binary. Maybe an infinity loop. Maybe a tauroid. Or a breath.)
Most “suffering” is in the contracted state.
When you can move in and out of unification at will, you take a lot of things less seriously. Especially you will take so many of the human systems and dramas more lightly … you know that engaging here is a choice…you also see how many human systems are meant to keep more people focused on playing the game of material realism, and how many human systems attempt to gate the ecstatic state and offer it only through approved power hierarchies. Boo. Not needed.
Many of us have moments of transcendence. On the dance floor, in bed, in church, running, swimming….all of sudden the boundaries of self are gone. Incidentally, in the context of sexuality, 1 in 8 people report having a transcendant exprience in sex, of seeing galaxies in the pupils of a lovers eyes. This is an ingenious design, to build a gateway into reproduction, and to make the time of copulation a sacred experience. In some ancient South Indian traditions, they say that if sex isn’t at the center of your religion, it’s dead, becauase that’s where life comes from. But more on that in the next post, or have a listen to this week’s podcast (Episode 127, 2/15/24: Altered States of Consciousness in Sexuality).
William James wrote in 1902, in The Varieties of Religious Experience, “Our normal waking consciousness . . . is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the flimsiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different. We may go through life without suspecting their existence; but apply the requisite stimulus and at a touch they are all there in all their completeness . . . No account of the universe in its totality can be final which leaves these other forms of consciousness quite disregarded.”
Walter Stace’s taxonomy of mysticism (1961) says that everyday ecstacies involve one or more of these:
Intense joyful sensations, euphoria, rapture, elation;
Feelings of unity and oneness with one’s environment;
Altered or detached perception of space and time;
Sense of profundity and release from mundane reality;
Ineffable yet rational experience.
Through the built in pathways in our bodies, we can be in the body in our separate individuated sense of reality, or be in oneness, pulsing in and out at will. WOW. It does not have to be gated by religion or by regulation.
You can dance in and out of oneness.
Your ancient body, your ancestral blood and your archetypal code remember how.
May you be love, beloved, lover; you in your sexy hungry sass and your tender innocent depth; belonging to god and to god in and as each other; you in your utter devotion. Happy Valentine’s Day soul family. To more love everywhere 💜💕💜🕉️