Mythology & Metaphors of Our Species Evolution

The Cleft & Our Metaphors of Evolution?

Inspired by;
A CONVERSATION WITH DR. JOHN WEIR PERRY

From When The Dream Becomes Real:
the inner Apocalypse in mythology, madness and the future, By Michael O’Callaghan

A notion that, Attachment, Separation & Loss.
Is perhaps the ultimate challenge to deepening awareness, for a sentient species, in our current global challenge to deeper individual self-awareness, in our 21st century A.D.

2012: "The ascension is not a rising to “above” it’s a Fall, just as its always been, when you seek awareness of the Universe within, & truly feel the presence of this Eternal Now. In Eastern mysticism, such experience is known as a Kundalini awakening, or in the “stillness” of the great Prince, Buddha being?"

Perhaps not the most beautiful photo to represent a story about mythology, science, spirituality, and our species evolution. Yet this is the normally hidden reality of that most precious organ of species differentiation, our brain. Its neural evolution and its role in the life of the mind, particularly the mind's relationship to our body, which is I believe what so many of our mythological and metaphor stories, and tales are actually about. This particular blog post represents the culmination of a five year self-education journey, with four full term euphoric episodes of spiritual Ecstasy.

A journey that has led me to believe that Science & Spirituality are Converging Now? Not this minute, this week or this year, yet in this, our 21st, coming of age century. What follows is a timeline of unfolding euphoric vision, and my explanations of why science, spirituality, metaphor and new meaning are currently emerging, within our species journey of, Cosmic evolution.

PSYCHOSIS: A Journey, documents a five year unfolding of a natural process, of self-revelation. Being with the fist of four full term psychosis. In 2012, this year of great yearning for a spiritual ascension, this particular post will dovetail into Peter Joseph's Zeitgeist: movies, to show a misinterpretation of "the system" out there. Innate affect/emotions are the keys to our future and the realization of heaven, right in front of our eyes. When we honor and do not deny our instinctual evolution, and the millions of our ancestors who have suffered and sacrificed to bring us to this point in our sentient species journey.

For many this post will read like a hodge-podge of emotive associations, which seem "objectively" unrealistic. While other readers with a more intuitive mode of perception will "get it," particularly with the video clips which enhance the intuitive mode. We are it seems, on the brink of a new era in human history, with many thousands around the globe, starting to sense a rising new age. Ancient wisdom's, like the Mayan long calendar, which is now being re-read with a positive view, rather than with our traditional love of, adolescent dramatization?

It would seem that we are entering a new era, in understanding of our human nature and its evolutionary heritage, with mental health in particular, up for a re-assessment. Strangely we have held a shocking double standard about mental health and madness, with creativity and great spiritual inspiration labeled divine, while the same internal pathways, lead to labels of mental illness in others? Seemingly justified by adopting a mechanical cause & effect view, of nature's most refined biological organism.

Descartes famous phrase for modernity has a lot of misery to answer for, in that his "I think therefore I am," seems so often to lose the art of genuine PRESENCE. The unthinkable-unspeakable reality of pure being, as Eckhart Tolle reminds us of in his book "The Power of NOW." It has been the return journey to an "embodied" sense of self which has seen psychosis experience enable a metamorphosis of the organism labeled David Bates. Consider;

Does Psychosis have Purpose?

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From a comment made on MadinAmerica.com on June 15th 2012;

SENSITIVITY-EXISTENTIAL ISOLATION & PSYCHOSIS:

"If the human race survives, future men will, I suspect, look back on our enlightened epoch as a veritable Age of Darkness... They will see that what was considered 'schizophrenic' was one of the forms in which, often through quite ordinary people, the light began to break into our all-too-closed minds." _R.D. Laing.

“Who experiences a "schizophrenic break"?
Well, there's a lot of controversy about this! There is a constitutional element, which is often interpreted as a "genotype of pathology", but this depends on how you see it. I see it as a genotype of sensitivity! Among adolescent siblings in a family, for example, it’s usually the most sensitive one who's going to catch it.

So it starts with a feeling of isolation...
“Yes. Now the symbolic expression of this is falling into a death – not only a death state, but also a death space – the "afterlife," the "realm of the ancestors," the "land of the dead," the "spirit world." The common experience here is for the person to look about and think that half the people around him are dead too. While in this condition, it's very hard for one to tell if one is really alive or not.” _John Wier Perry.

“Humans have three principal defense strategies—fight, flight, and freeze. The Polyvagal Theory describes three developmental stages of a mammal’s autonomic nervous system: Immobilization, mobilization, and social communication or social engagement. Faulty neuroception might lie at the root of several psychiatric disorders, including autism, schizophrenia, anxiety disorders, depression, and Reactive Attachment Disorder. We are familiar with fight and flight behaviors, but know less about the defense strategy of immobilization, or freezing. This strategy, shared with early vertebrates, is often expressed in mammals as “DEATH FEIGNING.” (capitals mine) _Stephen Porges.

"Right away at the beginning, the death experience is accompanied by the feeling that you've gone back to the beginning of time. This involves a regression, a return to the state of infancy in one's personal life history. But hand in hand with this is the feeling of slipping back into the world of the primordial parents, into a Garden of Eden. For example, it's a very common experience to feel one is the child of Adam and Eve, say, at the beginning of time. This is very symbolic, obviously. It's pretty much a representation of the psyche at the start of one's individual career after birth." _John Wier Perry.

Please listen carefully to the story of the Ghost Dance, the carpet & the Cleft?

At first viewing, it would seem ridiculous to make any connection between the vision
& the bilateral hemispheres of the human brain photo? Explanations below?

Metaphorically speaking, Adam & Eve, would be the Sun & Earth, with the world taken from Adam’s rib? Can we really have any “cognitive” concept of what our nervous system is “aware” of, pre & post birth. What unconscious level of awareness is Stephen Porges “neuroception” referring to? Consider Roland Fischer’s suggestion about what we may once have “known” yet need to forget in our social/survival mode of functioning?

Space and Increasing Hyper and Hypoarousal:
“Although the newborn infant's only reality, in the beginning, is his CNS activity, he soon learns, by bumping into things, to erect a corresponding model "out there." Ultimately, his forgetting that his CNS activity had been the only reality will be taken by society as proof of his maturity, and he will be ready to conduct his life "out there" in (container) space and (chronological) time.” _ Roland Fischer.

Are we not composed of star dust & all those chemical elements?

Is the typical “self-referential” ideation in a “psychotic break” a rationalized “hyper-sensitivity” to nature & all that lies beyond Eve’s protective atmosphere? A sensitivity which is non-verbal, non-cognitive and is a more refined integration of all five physical senses, when we fall beneath our normal nervous system orientation of “social engagement.” An overwhelmingly “unconsciously” stimulated experience, “rationalized” by the mind as “the TV is sending out hidden messages, just for me?”

Stephen Porges groundbreaking discovery of a third branch of our autonomic nervous system, shows our unconscious orienting responses are like two different operating systems, to use a computer analogy. (1) Social Engagement, an evolved nervous system responsiveness “innervated” by the feedback signals of head & facial muscles, with their vagal control over the heart. (2) Survival Orientation, an evolved nervous system responsiveness, shared with all other mammals and heightened due to our “sensitive skin,” which under hyper-vigilant threat attains a higher “resonance,” with background sensory information.

Consider Sylvan Tomkins ideas about affect/emotion and our sensitive skin;
“The face appears to me to be the central site of affect/emotion responses and their feedback., but I have come to regard the skin, in general, and the skin of the face in particular, as of the greatest importance in producing the feel of affect/emotion. Three of the most compelling states to which the human being is vulnerable arise on the surface of the skin. Torture via skin stimulation has been used for centuries to shape and compel human beings to act against their own deepest wishes and values. Sexual seduction via skin stimulation has also prompted human beings to violate their own wishes and values. Fatigue to the point of extreme sleepiness appears to be localized in the skin surrounding the eyes.” _Sylvan Tomkins.

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SYSTEMS THEORY is now being used to understand the complex non-linear feedback systems which integrate our human experience, particularly the early maturation of brain and nervous systems, via environmental feedback. It is becoming increasingly clear that human inter-subjectivity, is more resonant affect/emotion than left-brained linguistics and dialogue.

Consider Allan Schore’s understanding of our non-linear bio-metabolic-energy transformations, which turn matter into “meta” within the human mind;
“In physics a property of resonance is sympathetic vibration, the tendency of one resonance system to enlarge & augment through matching the resonance frequency pattern of another resonance system.

In contemporary bioenergetic theory, information is conceived of as ’a special kind of energy required for the work of establishing biological order’. The processing of all forms of information by the brain, including that embedded in internal representations, occur through transformations of metabolic energy.

The extraordinary power of the concept of energy transformations derives from the fact that these fundamental phenomena occur on each and every level of living systems, from the molecular to the societal.

The growing postnatal brain, the physical matrix of the emerging human mind, is supplied with a continuous supply of energy from metabolic processes. A fundamental tenant of this theory states that the assembly of complex systems occurs under conditions of thermodynamic non-equilibrium (a directed flow of energy).

This energy is utilized to facilitate the cooperativity of simpler sub-system components into a hierarchically-structured complex system that expresses the emergent functions of organizing and maintaining stability.

Bioenergetic conceptualizations thus need to be implanted into the central core of psychoanalytic and psychological theory, a position they now occupy in physics, chemistry, and biology. Thermodynamics are not only the essence of biodynamic, they are also the essence of neurodynamics, and therefore of psychodynamics.” _Allan N Schore.

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If the word “evolution” is to make sense on a felt level of experience, where life actually occurs, should we not consider that it is the body, its five physical senses and the motor act of orienting responses, which informs the subjective awareness of the human/animal mind? Consider;

"My belief is in the blood and flesh as being wiser than the intellect. The body-unconscious is where life bubbles up in us. It is how we know that we are alive, alive to the depths of our souls and in touch somewhere with the vivid reaches of the cosmos" _D. H. Lawrence.

"The motor act is the cradle of the mind - The capacity to anticipate and predict movement, is the basis of what consciousness is all about" _Sir Charles Sherrington.

"The brain is waking and with it the mind is returning. Its as if the Milky Way entered upon some cosmic dance. Swiftly the head-mass becomes some enchanted loom, where millions of flushing shuttles weave a dissolving pattern, always a meaningful pattern, though never an abiding one: A shifting harmony of sub-patterns." _Sir Charles Sherrington.

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In Buddhist art, one must find the stillness within, which allows the movement and thought bubbles of cosmic inspiration to flow. Is there so much more to hallucination, delusion and psychosis than meets our “pathologizing” and fearfully judgmental eyes?

Consider my recent thoughts as five weeks of “psychosis” peaked;

“Madness? An attachment awareness of the divine, a sense of eternity in a single moment.

Mania? I fall out of my braced muscular defense which habitually miss-regulated and thwarted my need of human attachment, and in the spontaneous shift in physiological state, sensory freedom reigns.

I’m suddenly born again to an awareness of so much, as if all five senses have come back online, after being stuck in the freeze mode of the post trauma trap. In my body, I’m suddenly so alive.

The positive states of interest, excitement & joy resume their biological process and begin to reorganize my brain stem neural networks to mediate a free and full engagement with the experience of life.

So enraptured by this spontaneous shift towards positive affect/emotion experience, I subjectively feed this new physiological state of being with emotive scenarios of passion, glory and wonder.

I’m so overjoyed I can’t still my mind, and its role in my self-nurture during long periods of isolation, automatically continues and I overshoot the runway of my new physiological approach to the experience of life.

Its natural intent, as the non-linear biological system, which is the organism known as David Bates, is miss-perceived by subjectivity, and the physiological need to BE in the here and now moment, is thwarted.

Thwarted because I confuse my minds sense of “I” with the deeper consciousness of the sensate experience of the body. The subtle sensations, sensory vibrations and arising images that resonate in an attunement/attachment connection, as that oceanic feeling of oneness, so common to the manic/mystic experience.

Attachment, Separation & Loss, is perhaps the ultimate challenge to deepening awareness, for a sentient species.”

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“The ascension is not a rising to “above” it’s a Fall, just as its always been, when you seek awareness of the Universe within, & truly feel the presence of this Eternal Now. In Eastern mysticism, such experience is known as a Kundalini awakening, or in the “stillness” of the great Prince, Buddha being?

Is it time to re-address the tribal metaphors of life’s meaning, to a species understanding? In a Universe of 96% dark matter/energy. Life is “The Resurrection.” That great symbol of sacrifice we see in Christ on the Cross, as all the Light Matter Energy, sacrificed to create your life? How does the Universe become Eternal? By evolving into a form which can act upon itself, YOU & your children’s, children’s children, forever & ever, Amen! Or whatever metaphor of gratitude you use.”

Perhaps a culmination of a 32 year journey with classic manic-depression & its resolution as a felt awareness of madness, in my sensitive human animal nature, “acting out?” Or complete B.S. Although there is five years of research about my body/brain & its homeostatic feedback systems, to complement these in-sane statements. Yet, are we not, children of the light?

When we make the effort to see the bigger picture, can we understand and accept that science & spirituality are converging in this 21st century A.D. Because this is how it happens, as the Universe within, dreams itself awake? In the strange notion of an “Eternal Now” it already did, and we’re just remembering it ALL?

"The notion of this universe, its heavens, hells, and everything within it, as a great dream dreamed by a single being in which all the dream characters are dreaming too, has in India enchanted and shaped the entire civilization.

The ultimate dreamer is Vishnu floating on the cosmic Milky Ocean, couched upon the coils of the abyssal serpent Ananta, the meaning of whose name is Unending. In the foreground stand the five Pandava brothers, heroes of the epic Mahabharata, with Draupadi, their wife: allegorically, she is the mind and they are the five senses.

They are those whom the dream is dreaming. Eyes open, ready and willing to fight, the youths address themselves to this world of light in which we stand regarding them, where objects appear to be distinct from each other, and an Aristotelian logic prevails, and A is not not-A. Behind them a dream-door has opened, however, to an inward, backward dimension where a vision emerges against darkness…" _Joseph Campbell.

“I always feel uncomfortable when people speak about ordinary mortals because I’ve never met an ordinary man, woman or child.” _Joseph Campbell.

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From Mad Visions or Mental Illness? Part 2

Think twice? The Evolutionary journey of a hidden process?

Are all our great legends, existential metaphors for the hidden journey of our maturing self perception? Why are I/we here? Where do I/we come from? Where are I/we going?
Just what is this daily perception awareness we call Mind? Is it all about the brain in our head and our taken for granted sense of ourselves and others? Or is there a more holistic and deeper reality involved in the nature of our mindful perception?

Please listen again to the story of the Ghost Dance, the carpet & the Cleft?

A raising of unconscious awareness about the enfolding of the brain?

In part 2 of an analysis of manic euphoria and psychosis experience, I offered explanations of my own experiences of madness/mental illness, and the role such experience plays in both personal and a species metamorphosis. This personal blog, started in February 2011 describes my five year journey of self-revelation, and invites readers to question whether this online documentation is an unfolding of a mental illness narritive, or my nature? Consider;

As the days passed with increasing joyous celebration turning into overactive imagination, I caught myself in survivor savior mode again, wondering just how much I'd fuse with the motif this time? Would it be another King David theme and how much conscious awareness of a trance like state would I manage to hold onto? "I'm not some individual character from Biblical prophecy, come to usher in the Messianic Age," I admonished myself. I kept telling myself to stay with the physical needs of easy movement and new sensory awareness, "let time integrate new experience and don't amplify these body sensations by thinking to much." I told myself. "And why does it feel like the auditory stimulated self hypnosis, I wrote about in "The Music of Trance State Mania?"

The sense of rapture and fuzzy awareness of a pre-verbal state of being is intoxicating though, with an overwhelming desire for an exploration of this new territory and its pre-verbal meaning. Its as if a void opens in my usual, socialized sense of normality, into which my whole life experience begs for re-interpretation? A different narrative story of a life, not of dialogue and language, but of a deeper and unspeakable symbolic meaning? A search for the God of my creation who's name cannot be uttered, as the Old Testament cautions?

The Right & Left Hemispheres of the Brain
Right Regulates Emotion - Left Cognition?

Yet what leads me to associate my brains neural development, with Moses parting of the Red Sea though? Surely that's history not metaphor? Is it simply a messiah complex, a fixation I've had since childhood, a deep need for love, a wannabe need for status, a psychologist might suggest? I agree with that, yet there is also an awareness of my minds need for security in a sense of certainty, with its all to quick dismissal of a deeper urge?
Does the Book of Exodus story of The Crossing of the Red Sea, tell an inner story of the human body/brain and of cellular urges for a mind needing to understand its own birth in Africa and its journey to a mature awareness? (the promised land?)

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Synchronicity? Is it real & meaningful? Consider;

Comments from the webzine MadinAmerica.com

David Bates on June 17, 2012 at 7:04 pm said:

Is it “revolution” or “realization” that needed?

What does it mean to “awaken” and realize that there is nothing new under the sun, as we wake each morning & “act out” our unconscious arousal needs?

Perhaps its all about chemistry, when we see a bigger picture?
Underlying cognition, is the essential need of organismic homeostasis?

“LIFE AS HOMEOSTASIS

Living organisms are self-replicating and self-sustaining dynamic chemical systems. They obtain energy from, and information about, their environment – including its chemical, physical, geological, and biological components. A feature that distinguishes living from non-living matter was identified by Claude Bernard.

This is homeostasis – the maintenance of a constant internal environment despite changes in the external environment. A second feature of all known life, first proposed explicitly by Schleiden and Schwann, is that living things are composed of spatial compartments, called cells.

Cellular homeostasis requires a system of integrated feedback and feedforward, producing adaptive responses to, and anticipation of, ultimately uncontrollable changes in the properties of the outside world.

As life evolves, it extends its reach by maintaining its constant internal environment in new external environments, previously inhospitable. _John F. Allen, Ph.D. “Journal of Cosmology, 2010.”

As self-awareness evolves, it extends its reach by maintaining its constant internal environment in new passing moments?

Origins, Abiogenesis and the Search for Life in the Universe.http://www.amazon.com/dp/0982955219

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David Bates on June 17, 2012 at 9:27 pm said:

Please consider how much American debate is immersed in its cultural history of “fighting?”

Of black hats & white hats?

Consider what Joseph Campbell is saying to each and every one of us, when he suggests we become motivated by “awe,” instead of the “awful” in “them.”

“The problem is that people have tried to look away from space and from the meaning of the moon landing. I remember seeing a picture of an astronaut standing on the moon. It was up at Yale and someone has scrawled on it,

So what?’

That is the arrogance of the kind of academic narrowness one too often sees; it is trapped in its own predictable prejudices, its own stale categories. It is the mind dulled to the poetry of existence. It’s fashionable now to demand some economic payoff from space, some reward to prove it was all worthwhile. Those who say this resemble the apelike creatures in 2001. They are fighting for food among themselves, while one separates himself from them and moves to the slab, motivated by awe. That is the point they are missing. He is the one who evolves into a human being; he is the one who understands the future.” _Joseph Campbell.

Is there really a territory “out there” where we see them?

Or is the territory within, emotionally projected onto them?

Can we pause & really FEEL these words?

Songwriters: ROGER WATERS, RICK WRIGHT
Us and Them
And after all we’re only ordinary men
Me, and you
God only knows it’s not what we would choose to do
Forward he cried from the rear
And the front rank died
And the General sat, as the lines on the map
Moved from side to side
Black and Blue
And who knows which is which and who is who
Up and Down
And in the end it’s only round and round and round
Haven’t you heard it’s a battle of words
The poster bearer cried…….

Can we become aware of how we “scan” words for an emotional feedback that will maintain our (homeostasis)?

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Each day as I rise and look to see what greets my eyes, synchronicity happens? Synchronicity like the view of John Weir Perry's video that appeared on my good friend Michael Cornwall's facebook page.

Michael Cornwall. My beloved friend and mentor for twenty years John, sharing how the deep psyche brings us madness/visionary experience to contribute to needed culture change. For my extensive interviews with him, see my madinamerica.com blog post called- "Jung's first dream, the mad god Dionysus, and a madness sanctuary called Diabasis." There is an embedded link to my Diabasis research that tells John's amazing story of knowing Jung, and then creating the medication free Diabasis in San Francisco.

It is impossible for me to make such coincidences happen, and I had not seen the John Weir video clip before today. When in a "psychosis" phase, I simply go with the flow, and readers can read into this post whatever they wish.

Yet consider the "timeline" synchronicity of these apparently coincidental events?

I write this;

David Bates on June 17, 2012 at 9:27 pm said:

Please consider how much American debate is immersed in its cultural history of “fighting?”

Of black hats & white hats?

Consider what Joseph Campbell is saying to each and every one of us, when he suggests we become motivated by “awe,” instead of the “awful” in “them.”

So what?’

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Immediately after writing the above, I check the facebook page of my friend Michael Cornwall & spot the John Weir Perry video clip, to which I write this blog post, based on John’s telling of ghost dance story, & my reaction to my own “sense” of vision’s and metaphor’s being about the evolutionary journey of the human brain.

As I begin to write this blog post, Michael writes this;
Dr. Michael Cornwallon June 17, 2012 at 9:38 pm said:

Thank you brother David. Being present with ourselves is a surrendering as you say- The soul work we all have to endure-or not, takes us deep into liminal territory where the next existential step is always into an empty space that is full of our emerging essence. I just saw a fine youtube video clip of my beloved mentor and friend John w. Perry, that just was posted for the first time ever. He talks about visionaries like you undergoing the transformation that is a cycle of death and rebirth- for themeslves and the culture they are embedded in.

I live in Bangkok Thailand, while Michael lives on the American west coast, with our only connection to date, a shared interest in the natural coarse of "psychosis." Is the above timeline of the appearance of the video clip, posted on Michael's facebook page by a third party, just a meaningless coincidence?

Yet this is consistent with my journey of 32 years classic manic-depression & the last five years in particular. With posts like this one, now a written "timeline" record of my journey. In choosing to do this so publicly from 2010 on, I follow my heart felt guidance in seeking to understand the "nature" of my experience and question my medical diagnosis of "mental illness."

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Euphoric Revelation or Mental Illness?
Consider an earlier post Science, Spirituality & Psychosis;

Are Science & Spirituality Converging ?

SCIENCE & SPIRITUALITY
IN THE 21st CENTURY A.D.
“Andrew Newberg and his colleagues have, in their seminal book “Why God Won’t Go Away,” brought together a vast amount of research on the brain substrates underlying a variety of different spiritual experiences. The application of this type of brain research to trauma transformation is a rich area of further research and exploration.
The autonomic nervous system (ANS) gets its name from being a relatively autonomous branch of the nervous system. Its basic, yet highly integrated function has to do with the regulation of energy states and the maintenance of homeostasis.

The ascension is not a rising to “above” it’s a Fall, just as its always been, when you seek awareness of the Universe within, & truly feel the presence of this Eternal Now. In Eastern mysticism, such experience is known as a Kundalini awakening, or in the “stillness” of the great Prince, Buddha being?

Is it time to re-address the tribal metaphors of life’s meaning, to a species understanding? In a Universe of 96% dark matter/energy. Life is “The Resurrection.” That great symbol of sacrifice we see in Christ on the Cross, as all the Light Matter Energy, sacrificed to create your life? How does the Universe become Eternal? By evolving into a form which can act upon itself, YOU & your children’s, children’s children, forever & ever, Amen! Or whatever metaphor of gratitude you use.

Where is heaven? Is it not, right in front of our Eyes? Are we not, Children of the Light?

A Chemical Universe?

“If you want to change the world, you have to change the metaphor” _Joseph Campbell.

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Earlier comments made during my last full term psychosis;

From comments made about psychosis, hallucination and delusion on the MadinAmerica webzine;
Psychosis = Hallucination+Delusion I do believe that when taking new knowledge, like “the polyvagal theory” into consideration, along with all the new awareness of our internal chemical makeup, we can re-interpret the tribal existential metaphors of mythology, to see them in a new light which combines both right-brain intuition & left-brained logic & reason.

All of the posts I make, point to “natural cause,” for what we call “mental illness,” and just like the Fischer piece above show how the nervous system & the “body” plays a role in “psychosis,” with its positive & negative symptom expression.

The Bowen theory of an unconscious “emotional projection process,” shows how we react to each other, in the anxiety of the lived moment. The exerts from his writing show how society functions in this unconscious stress related “us vs them” fashion, which is perhaps one of the “hidden” factors in a “mental illness epidemic.”

This particular topic thread concerns research into psychosis, with a link to a research paper which takes a medical model pathology view of psychosis and studies a meta-analysis of symptom expression in psychiatric patients. My comments on the topic point readers towards an alternative view of hallucination and delusion, expressed in a brilliant paper by Roland Fischer, A Cartography of the Ecstatic and Meditative States Fischer's paper is consistent with views of mental illness which note the role of our autonomic nervous system and body in symptom expression. Its interesting to note that all reference work which relates the body and somatic experience to the experience of mental anguish, has been routinely ignored, in more than a century of scientific inquiry.

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Previous Psychotic Episodes?

From the six week psychosis I went through in Sept/Oct 2010, with manic posts made on TheIcarusProject.net made under the user name Batesy57. This was the first time I started to "act out" a psychosis experience in very public way, with most people eventually reacting negatively to my manic urging.
In the survivor recovery movement of ex psychiatric patients, it is generally considered counter-productive to "act out" in this way.

The rational assumption is of a process which affects others to much and triggers symptom expression. Yet there are some who believe we thwart the natural process of the body/brains own healing powers, by shutting down "psychosis" to soon? There are even people who believe the psychosis process is a deeply spiritual unfolding of our core human reality, as a product of Cosmic evolution. When in a psychotic phase people like myself spontaneously explore existential metaphor and meaning, with posts like this one.

The Revelation:

What do you think John?

“Few are those who see with their own eyes and feel with their own hearts.” _Albert Einstein.

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Are Science & Spirituality, really Converging Now?

Is mythology up for review in our 21st century A.D. now that we’ve reached the point of a spiritual & scientific convergence?

Are modern science & spirituality, mutually exclusive? Or are we heading in the right direction, after all? There was a huge fearless effort in the 1950′s to set us free from fearful reactions, and further differentiate the emotional and intellectual functioning of the body/brain, and its relationship to the world and the Cosmos within. Fearless efforts, made by people like John Weir Perry, R. D. Laing and a host of others, who were perhaps reacting to the misery and scale of loss in two world wars.

Our modern Western culture seems stuck in a mechanically minded Cartesian logic, which now sees us giving powerful anti-psychotic medications to two & three year old's. Have we lost connection with our soul, in our search for reason and logic, becoming disembodied in our everyday sense of self & dissociated from nature?

Is it time to re-visit old myths & legends with an new awareness of our internal makeup, to see that what many literal rationalists regard as Biblical history, is in fact Prophecy? When I wrote at the peak of a five week psychosis;

SCIENCE & SPIRITUALITY IN THE 21st CENTURY A.D.

“Andrew Newberg and his colleagues have, in their seminal book “Why God Won’t Go Away,” brought together a vast amount of research on the brain substrates underlying a variety of different spiritual experiences. The application of this type of brain research to trauma transformation is a rich area of further research and exploration.

The autonomic nervous system (ANS) gets its name from being a relatively autonomous branch of the nervous system. Its basic, yet highly integrated function has to do with the regulation of energy states and the maintenance of homeostasis. The ANS is composed of two distinctly different branches. (Although the parasympathetic branch is dived into a primitive (nonmyelinated) and an evolutionarily recent (myelinated) branch.)” _Peter Levine, “In an Unspoken Voice.”

Psychotic Illness & Meaningless Emotive Imagination?
It is this myelinated branch of parasympathetic stimulation of the heart & therefore metabolic rate, ventral vagal complex (VVC), which is metaphorically eluded to in the mythology of the Christian Bible. “The Ark of The Covenant.” Put very simply, it’s the secret of your Smile, and those two hundred muscles of your head & face.

And of coarse you don’t want to know about this, inside your Cartesian “mind-set” awareness of being, because life truly flows in “unconscious” spontaneous, physiological reactions, like when you feel the pure joy of being alive here in heaven.

The ascension is not a rising to “above” it’s a Fall, just as its always been, when you seek awareness of the Universe within, & truly feel the presence of this Eternal Now. In Eastern mysticism, such experience is known as a Kundalini awakening, or in the “stillness” of the great Prince, Buddha being?

Does this statement have any meaning, at this point in Time?

Is it time to re-address the tribal metaphors of life’s meaning, to a species understanding? In a Universe of 96% dark matter/energy. Life is “The Resurrection.” That great symbol of sacrifice we see in Christ on the Cross, as all the Light Matter Energy, sacrificed to create your life? How does the Universe become Eternal? By evolving into a form which can act upon itself, YOU & your children’s, children’s children, forever & ever, Amen! Or whatever metaphor of gratitude you use.

“Rather than describing the autonomic nervous system as a linear ‘arousal’ system focused on the sympathetic nervous system, or a balance system focused on the opposing influences of the sympathetic and parasympathetic pathways, the function of the autonomic nervous system is hierarchically organized. As emphasized above, the hierarchical organization is phylogenetically determined and can be summarized as the following three sequential functional subsystems:

1. The ventral vagal complex VVC: a mammalian signaling system for motion, emotion, and communication.

2. The sympathetic nervous system SNS: an adaptive mobilization system supporting fight or flight behaviors.

3. The dorsal vagal complex DVC: a vestigial immobilization system.

Each of these three neural constructs is linked with a specific response strategy observable in humans. Each strategy is manifested via differentiated motor output from the central nervous system to perform specific adaptive functions: to immobilize and conserve metabolic resources DVC, to mobilize in order to obtain metabolic resources SNS, or to signal with minimal energy Expense VVC.” _Stephen Porges, “The Polyvagal Theory.”

To paraphrase the late & truly great Harry Chapin;

“Something keeps calling our name.

Something keeps calling our name.

Or is it just the rustling of the wind.

Or is it just that we need our friends.

Something keeps calling our name, our name.

Sometimes we don't talk too much, or touch hardly at all.

How can we hope to share this life, divided by a subjective wall?

Is it time to taste the truth and toss it of our tongue?

You see the world has come a-calling, and it's bleeding at our door.

Are we supposed to turn away, or is this what we're here for?”

Is it time for realization? 1 Species, 1 World, 1 Universe, 1 Love.

Is it time to realize, that the Universe is a friendly place & FEAR is only the shadow "within" & not really "out there." With the realization of a “meant to be” eternal now, can we stop fighting ourselves & get on with building a new Jerusalem, here on Earth’s green & pleasant land?

Everything we really need is “inside” us, health, wealth & happiness are not “objects,” they are metaphors for the hidden reality of a holistic sense of well being. The very best medicine, is literally contained within our laughter & our heart felt smile.

Words are only metaphors, metaphors for a hidden reality within?

Science & Spirituality are converging in this 21st century A.D. Although to an Eternal Now, Time means nothing & everything? Perhaps this is why the existential metaphors always apply to “this” here & now.

Such is the silly stuff I go through during the height of “psychosis,” my brain dis-ease?

Be well:))

David Bates.

June, 2012.

*******

Does Life Imitate Art - Cosmic Art?

The Third Rock from the Sun

Your art filled nature, is a Cosmic reality, her little cup of life?

Has the Siren been singing her sweet lullaby's for a long, long time as her children continue to emerge into REALIZATION?

Where is the ROCK? Where is Jerusalem? One Tribe, Or One Species?

Please read the sub titles.
Is this song infused with Tribal or Species Metaphors?

Is Jerusalem Symbolic of Earth?

Psychosis? Its Visions of Metaphor & Existential Meaning?

"Quiet an experience to live in fear, isn't it. That's what it is to be a slave."
A slave to our denied and unconscious, Instinctual Motivation?

Consider;
"Human beings have been designed over millennia, through natural selection and social evolution, to live with and to move through extreme events and loss, and to process feelings of helplessness and terror, without becoming stuck or traumatized. When we experience difficult and particularly horrible sensations and feelings, our tendency, however, is to recoil and avoid them. Mentally, we split off or “dissociate” from these feelings.

Physically, our bodies tighten and brace against them. Our minds go into overdrive trying to explain and make sense of these alien and “bad” sensations. So, we are driven to vigilantly attempt to locate their ominous source in the outside world. We believe that if we feel the sensations, they will overwhelm us forever. The fear of being consumed by these “terrible” feelings leads us to convince ourselves that avoiding them will make us feel better and, ultimately, safer. (p, 180)

If we go underneath the overwhelming emotions and touch into physical sensations, something quiet profound occurs-there is a sense of flow, of “coming home.” This is a truth central to several ancient spiritual traditions, particularly certain traditions in Tibetan Buddhism. (p, 182)

My approach to healing trauma rests broadly on the premise that people are primarily instinctual in nature - that we are, at our very core, human animals. It is this relationship to our animal nature that both makes us susceptible to trauma and, at the same time, promotes a robust capacity to rebound in the aftermath of threat, safely returning to equilibrium. More generally, I believe that to truly understand our body/mind, therapists must first learn about the animal body/mind because of the manner in which our nervous systems have evolved in an ever changing and challenging environment. (p, 225)

However, there is an almost violent schism lurking in our cultural zeitgeist. Lets face it; the fight against evolution by the proponents of “creationism” and “intelligent design” is not really about professed gaps in the fossil records; its about whether or not we are basically animals. (p, 225)

In fact, the word instinct is rarely found in modern psychological literature. Rather it is purged and replaced with terms such as drives, motivations and needs. While instincts are still routinely drawn upon to explain animal behaviors, we have somehow lost sight of how many human behavior patterns (though modifiable) are primal, automatic, universal and predictable. (p, 231)

"In the Beginning, before the Word, was Consciousness. The primal consciousness in man is pre-mental, and has nothing to do with cognition. It is the same as in the animals. And this pre-mental consciousness remains as long as we live the powerful root and body of our consciousness. The mind is but the last flower, the cul-de-sac." _D. H. Lawrence.

The capacity to anticipate and predict movement is the basis of what consciousness is all about. Any animal that is able to modify its behaviors (in response to changes in its situation) is imbued with some form of consciousness. In this way “mindedness” derives directly from improved organization and execution of bodily movement in time and space. The father of modern neuro-physiology, Sir Charles Sherrington put it this way; “The motor act is the cradle of the mind.” (p, 239)

Only man routinely becomes lost in regret for the past and fearful of what will happen in the future, causing us to be disconnected and adrift from the now. One might even call this lack of living in the present moment a modern-day malady. It appears to be a by-product of a loss of connection with our instinctual animal nature. (p, 240)

"We are exquisitely social creatures. Our survival depends on understanding the actions, intentions and emotions of others. Mirror neurons allow us to grasp the minds of others not through conceptual reasoning but through direct simulation. By feeling - not by thinking" _Giacomo Rizzolatti. (p, 241)"

Exerts from "In an Unspoken Voice" by Peter Levine PhD.

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Back to A CONVERSATION WITH DR. JOHN WEIR PERRY

From When The Dream Becomes Real:
the inner Apocalypse in mythology, madness and the future By Michael O’Callaghan;

"Did Jung really see this as a healing process?
He did indeed! He believed that "schizophrenia" is a self-healing process – one in which, specifically, the pathological complexes dissolve themselves. The whole schizophrenic turmoil is really a self-organising, healing experience. It's like a molten state. Everything seems to be made of free energy, an inner free play of imagery through which the alienated psyche spontaneously re-organises itself – in such a way that the conscious ego is brought back into communication with the unconscious again.

How long does the experience normally last?
The acute hallucinatory phase, during which these contents go through the reordering process, usually lasts about six weeks. This, by the way, corresponds to the classical description of visionary experiences in various religious texts, such as the proverbial "forty days in the wilderness" often referred to in the Bible. Anyway, six weeks is roughly it."

*******

A Metaphor of Brain Evolution?

Am I just being silly about the "Arc of the Covenant?"

Or is this sense of prophecy in Biblical mythology and metaphor, based on an understanding of Stephen Porges recent discovery of a third branch to our autonomic nervous system.

The evolution of our unique smile?

What is "The Polyvagal Theory?

Metaphor-Myth & Life's Deeper Meaning?
Parting a Red Sea? Or The Brains Twin Hemispheres?
From Gut Instinctual Reactions to Metaphysical Mind?

Consider a post from June 2011: Bipolar Mania

As Stephen Porges points out, "The muscles of the face and head influence both the expression and receptivity of social cues and can effectively reduce or increase social distance.
Neural regulation of these muscles can reduce social distance by making eye contact, expressing prosody in voice, displaying contingent facial expressions, and modulating the middle ear muscles to improve the extraction of human voice from background sounds:" The Role of Social Engagement in Attachment and Bonding.

"Looking into that mirror, praying in earnest for a new direction, I promised I'd do whatever was required if he would just show me the way. Nothing happened for minutes as I sat there with firm resolve, looking at my own reflection, looking into my face. Then it began, a change at the top of my head and I felt it flow down slowly, through my face and into my shoulders, then down through my chest and into my pelvic area. I sat with a sense of "what is it? Wonder" although not in thoughts." See: The Man in the Mirror

"It was like I'd been sitting in bath of water that was over my head and someone had pulled the plug, I sat and felt the calm descending as the tensioned dissociation drained down and out, as if like water through my toes. I was suddenly refreshed, happy, excited and new." Looking into that mirror at my own face and so affected by loss and isolation that I was completely ready for a new approach in life, did I unconsciously trigger the third branch of my auto nervous system? I think so!

Immersed in the Unconscious Reactivity of our Auto Nervous System activity?

The Creativity of Unconscious Expression?
If our brain-nervous system activity is overwhelmingly electro-chemical? What do words really express?

Warm Faced Yellow Submarine?

"We all live in yellow submarine,
yellow submarine, yellow submarine,
We all live in yellow submarine,
yellow submarine, yellow submarine.

(Full speed ahead, Mr. Barkley, full speed ahead!
Full speed over here, sir!
All together! All together!
Aye, aye, sir, fire!
Captain! Captain!)

Words are only Metaphors?

As we live a life of ease(life of ease)
Every one of us(every one of us) has all we need,
(has all we need)
Sky of blue,(sky of blue) and sea green,(sea of green)
In our yellow(In our yellow) submarine.(submarine) ( Haha! )"

We all live in yellow submarine,
yellow submarine, yellow submarine,
We all live in yellow submarine,
yellow submarine, yellow submarine.

"The body is clearly an instrument of physical processes, an instrument that can hear, see, touch and smell the world around us. This sensitive instrument also has the ability to tune in to the psyche: to listen to its subtle voice, hear its silent music and search into its darkness for meaning." _M Mathew.

The Evolution of Our Unique Social Expression - The Arc of the Covenant?
The mind arises through the electrochemical activity of the brain, and in understanding this fundamental reality, we sense that all our thoughts are only symbols of this internal activity? In this 21st century AD we only just beginning to understand the chemical reality underpinning our sense of objectivity. The neuroscience of the brain is still so early in its its evolution that we lack an effective language to articulate it to ourselves. My own journey has led me into a deeper awareness of the electro-chemical mechanics of my unconscious motivations, yet even with much better knowledge and a solid felt awareness, I'm still forced to use object based words like mechanics, to convey a sense of meaning in this simple black and white format.

EXAMPLE: Is daydreaming a dissolving of our objective perception and does daydreaming come from a deeper state of being? If so, what are the hidden mechanisms of our body/brain that enable these simultaneously differing states? Could it be that dreams are a differing state of being because dream was the proto-type of our waking consciousness? In a chapter titled, “Sleep, Arousal, and Mythmaking in the Brain,” Jaak Panksepp, a leading researcher in the neurobiology of emotions, tells us; See: (Nature's Madness)

“We are forced to contemplate the strange possibility that the basic dream generators are more ancient in brain evolution than are the generators of our waking consciousness.” (Panksepp, 1998).

We have only just begun to explore the environment, inside ourselves;
"When I began reading neuroscience, I fell in love with the vocabulary. Words such as neural oscillation, pulsation, or sinusoidal waves, like music, evoked in me a sensory resonance born of a mysteriously intangible recognition. Perplexed, I surmised that this terminology activated contact with a dimension of implicit experience where words bridge the passage of the body through the mind and the mind through the body. I became interested in exploring a rationale for these powerful, yet easily overlooked responses." Aline LaPierre, Psy.D. The Language of Neuroception & the Bodily Self

We are still first and foremost "instinctual creatures" guided by the constant millisecond reactions of our autonomic nervous system, our auto pilot. Instinct tricks the mind into a belief in objectivity as some kind of insight into reality, when such a mindful sense is little more than an instinct driven survival reaction. The very same instinct driven reactions that makes us squeamish towards real self awareness, to the muscle, blood and sinew of vitality and particularly our internal chemical functioning.

Letting go of the minds subjective NEED to know, can liberate a FEELING of LIFE?

A more technical explanation;
Investigation of the phylogeny of regulation of the vertebrate heart has led to extraction of four principles that provide a basis for testing of hypotheses relating specific neural mechanisms to social engagement, fight–flight, and death-feigning behaviors: • There is a phylogenetic shift in the regulation of the heart from endocrine communication to unmyelinated nerves and finally to myelinated nerves. • There is a development of opposing neural mechanisms of excitation and inhibition to provide rapid regulation of graded metabolic output.

• A face–heart connection evolved as source nuclei of vagal pathways shifted ventrally from the older dorsal motor nucleus to the nucleus ambiguus. This resulted in an anatomical and neurophysiological linkage between neural regulation of the heart via the myelinated vagus and the special visceral efferent pathways that regulate the striated muscles of the face and head, forming an integrated social engagement system.

• With increased cortical development, the cortex exhibits greater control over the brainstem via direct (eg, corticobulbar) and indirect (eg, corticoreticular) neural pathways originating in motor cortex and terminating in the source nuclei of the myelinated motor nerves emerging from the brainstem (eg, specifi c neural pathways embedded within cranial nerves V, VII, IX, X, and XI), controlling visceromotor structures (ie, heart, bronchi) as well as somatomotor structures (muscles of the face and head).

The vagus nerve, a primary component of the autonomic nervous system, exits the brainstem and has branches that regulate the striated muscles of the head and face, e.g. facial muscles, eyelids, middle-ear muscles, larynx, pharynx, muscles of mastication, and in several visceral organs, e.g. heart, gut." _Stephen Porges. The Polyvagal Theory

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Metaphor & Deeper Meaning?
Is it time for realization? 1 Species, 1 World, 1 Universe, 1 Love.

Is it time to realize, that the Universe is a friendly place & FEAR is only the shadow "within" & not really "out there." With the realization of a “meant to be” eternal now, can we stop fighting ourselves & get on with building a new Jerusalem, here on Earth’s green & pleasant land?

Everything we really need is “inside” us, health, wealth & happiness are not “objects,” they are metaphors for the hidden reality of a holistic sense of well being. The very best medicine, is literally contained within our laughter & our heart felt smile.

Words are only metaphors, metaphors for a hidden reality within?

Is the Universe Friendly?

"I think the most important question facing humanity is, ‘Is the universe a friendly place?’ This is the first and most basic question all people must answer for themselves.

"For if we decide that the universe is an unfriendly place, then we will use our technology, our scientific discoveries and our natural resources to achieve safety and power by creating bigger walls to keep out the unfriendliness and bigger weapons to destroy all that which is unfriendly and I believe that we are getting to a place where technology is powerful enough that we may either completely isolate or destroy ourselves as well in this process.

"If we decide that the universe is neither friendly nor unfriendly and that God is essentially ‘playing dice with the universe’, then we are simply victims to the random toss of the dice and our lives have no real purpose or meaning.

"But if we decide that the universe is a friendly place, then we will use our technology, our scientific discoveries and our natural resources to create tools and models for understanding that universe. Because power and safety will come through understanding its workings and its motives."

"God does not play dice with the universe," _Albert Einstein.

Consider;
Objective History's, Ark of the Covenant:

The Ark of the Covenant (Hebrew: אָרוֹן הַבְּרִית‎ ʾĀrôn Hābərît, modern pron. Aron Habrit), also known as the Ark of the Testimony, is a chest described in Book of Exodus as solely containing the Tablets of Stone on which the Ten Commandments were inscribed. According to some traditional interpretations of the Book of Exodus, Book of Numbers, and the Letter to the Hebrews the Ark also contained Aaron's rod, a jar of manna and the first Torah scroll as written by Moses; however, the first of the Books of Kings says that at the time of king Solomon, the Ark contained only the two Tablets of the Law. According to the Book of Exodus, the Ark was built at the command of God, in accordance with the instructions given to Moses on Mount Sinai. God was said to have communicated with Moses "from between the two cherubim" on the Ark's cover.

The covered ark with golden staves carried by the priests, and seven priests with rams' horns, at the siege of Jericho, in an eighteenth-century artist's depiction.

The biblical account relates that during the Israelites' exodus from Egypt, the Ark was carried by the priests some 2,000 cubits in advance of the people and their army, or host. When the Ark was borne by priests into the bed of the Jordan, water in the river separated, opening a pathway for the entire host to pass through (Josh. 3:15-16; 4:7-18). The city of Jericho was taken with no more than a shout after the Ark of the Covenant was paraded for seven days around its wall by seven priests sounding seven trumpets of rams' horns (Josh. 6:4-20). When carried, the Ark was always wrapped in a veil, in skins and a blue cloth, and was carefully concealed, even from the eyes of the priests who carried it. There are no contemporary extra-biblical references to the Ark

*******

A story of a tribal journey? Or a species journey out of Africa, towards the West & East, with metaphor and myth about our evolving body/brain, and its immersion in the very fabric of the Cosmos? What does it really mean when we speak of an eternal now, and the Universe Within?

Were the great stories of the Bible written using a different awareness to our everyday sense of objectivity? Having overcome my learned fear of disruptive euphoric experience, and given myself the time and space to explore its meaning, a natural metamorphosis, seems to be unfolding?

"This, by the way, corresponds to the classical description of visionary experiences in
various religious texts, such as the proverbial "forty days in the wilderness" often
referred to in the Bible. Anyway, six weeks is roughly it." _John Weir Perry.

Is there a deeper reality expressed in euphoric states of psychosis? During 40 days & 40 nights?

How Long? Before We Sing This New Song?

Metaphor-Myth & Life's Deeper Meaning?
Parting a Red Sea? Or The Brains Twin Hemispheres?
From Gut Instinctual Reactions to Metaphysical Mind?

(Sing this with me, this is 40)

I waited patiently for the Lord.

He inclined and heard my cry.

He lift me up out of the pit.

Out of the mire and clay.

I will sing, sing a new song.

How long to sing this song?

How long...how long...how long...

How long...to sing this song.

He set my feet upon a rock.

And made my footsteps firm.

Many will see.

In the Belly of the Whale. William Blake.
Our Shadow Taller than our Cosmic Soul?

Many will see and hear.

I will sing, sing a new song.
I will sing, sing a new song.

(Sing it!)

How long to sing this song?
How long to sing this song?
How long...how long...how long...
How long...to sing this song
"40" written by Ginny Owens.

Is the task of maturing self awareness best described in Joseph Campbell's defining of the hero's journey, upon which so much movie making is based. In the movie Avatar, Jake's journey to a heart felt maturity begins in the belly of a spaceship. Is this an objective dramatization of a subliminal metaphor? In William Blake's painting of the belly of the whale, we see the cosmic serpent so universally described in primitive creation mythologies.
(see Mad Visions part 1)

Is it only our Instinctual Shadow, Preventing an Understanding of Our Cosmic Soul?
Consider more thoughts on altered states of mind;

Ancient Hebrews and Early Christians

One encounters many instances of higher communication in the Bible. Dream interpretation is common. God speaks to men directly and also through angels and at times appears in burning bushes and whirlwinds. Prophets communicate with God. Joseph, for example, uses a silver cup like a crystal ball for divination. Miracles of a wide variety abound in the works attributed to Moses. Of particular interest is the ark of the covenant, a device through which the God of the Hebrews spoke to his people.

Judaism was neither a nature religion of the type that focused primarily on the changing of seasons and ensuring fertility, nor was it primarily a religion of mystical union through contemplation. There were elements of natural and mystical religion in Judaism, but it was primarily a historical religion in which God interacted with and shaped the destiny of the Hebrew nation.

Prophecy

Nevertheless there are many instances in Judaism of prayer as an altered state of consciousness, of healing, glossolalia or speaking in tongues, revelry, fasting, retreating to the wilderness, and possibly the use of mind-altering drugs as anointing oils, as well as esoteric communities such as the Essenes and various schools of prophecy. An important branch of Jewish mysticism was based on attaining the vision of the throne of god as described in the first chapter of the Book of Ezekiel.

The cabalistic tradition in Judaism is based on the ascent of consciousness through various stages to the ultimate vision of the throne of glory -- and beyond all vision to union with God.
The Roots of Consciousness by Jeffrey Mishlove, PhD.

*******

After five years of research and four full term six week experiences of psychosis, can I show the deeper meanings related to an eternal now, of our species myths & mythologies? Can I show you "evolution" in the metaphor meanings of prophecy, in Biblical stories like "The Arc of the Covenant." Can I show you how euphoric states of higher metabolism, bring unconscious evolutionary awareness into conscious view. Can I show you that the Exodus out of Africa via Egypt to the West, is as much an internal neural pathway, as a a path through the external wilderness. Like the evolution of a neural pathway in the reflex arc

Can I show you how these metaphor stories, relating to a hidden unconscious process, were always about emotional projection-prophecy, and not literal history, in their deeper layers and existential meaning? Can I show you the similarities between the autonomic nervous system and visceral reflexes, and Biblical motif's like snakes, rod's and staff's? Example: Autonomic Nervous System and Visceral Reflexes Just what is inside the arc of the covenant?

The Ten Commandments or Tenth cranial nerve?

Consider;
Definition of Tenth cranial nerve.
Tenth cranial nerve: The tenth cranial nerve, and one of the most important, is the vagus nerve. All twelve of the cranial nerves, the vagus nerve included, emerge from or enter the skull (the cranium), as opposed to the spinal nerves which emerge from the vertebral column. The vagus nerve originates in the medulla oblongata, a part of the brain stem.

The vagus nerve is a remarkable nerve that relates to the function of numerous structures in the body. The vagus nerve supplies nerve fibers to the pharynx (throat), larynx (voice box), trachea (windpipe), lungs, heart, esophagus and most of the intestinal tract (as far as the transverse portion of the colon). And the vagus nerve brings sensory information back from the ear, tongue, pharynx and larynx.

The term "vagus" (Latin for "wandering") is apt because the vagus nerve wanders all the way down from the brainstem to the colon, a long wandering trek. Sounds like Moses in the desert?

Consider again? The Ark of the Covenant (Hebrew: אָרוֹן הַבְּרִית‎ ʾĀrôn Hābərît, modern pron. Aron Habrit), also known as the Ark of the Testimony, is a chest described in Book of Exodus as solely containing the Tablets of Stone on which the Ten Commandments were inscribed.

According to some traditional interpretations of the Book of Exodus, Book of Numbers, and the Letter to the Hebrews the Ark also contained Aaron's rod, a jar of manna and the first Torah scroll as written by Moses; however, the first of the Books of Kings says that at the time of king Solomon, the Ark contained only the two Tablets of the Law.

According to the Book of Exodus, the Ark was built at the command of God, in accordance with the instructions given to Moses on Mount Sinai. God was said to have communicated with Moses "from between the two cherubim" on the Ark's cover.

Again: The Polyvagal Theory
• There is a development of opposing neural mechanisms of excitation and inhibition to provide rapid regulation of graded metabolic output.
• A face–heart connection evolved as source nuclei of vagal pathways shifted ventrally from the older dorsal motor nucleus to the nucleus ambiguus. This resulted in an anatomical and neurophysiological linkage between neural regulation of the heart via the myelinated vagus and the special visceral efferent pathways that regulate the striated muscles of the face and head, forming an integrated social engagement system.

• With increased cortical development, the cortex exhibits greater control over the brainstem via direct (eg, corticobulbar) and indirect (eg, corticoreticular) neural pathways originating in motor cortex and terminating in the source nuclei of the myelinated motor nerves emerging from the brainstem (eg, specifi c neural pathways embedded within cranial nerves V, VII, IX, X, and XI), controlling visceromotor structures (ie, heart, bronchi) as well as somatomotor structures (muscles of the face and head).

*******

Back to A CONVERSATION WITH DR. JOHN WEIR PERRY

From When The Dream Becomes Real: the inner Apocalypse in mythology, madness and the future, By Michael O’Callaghan

A notion that, Attachment, Separation & Loss. Is perhaps the ultimate challenge to deepening awareness, for a sentient species, in our current global challenge to deeper individual self-awareness, in our 21st century A.D.

WHERE ARE WE NOW?

2012: "The ascension is not a rising to “above” it’s a Fall, just as its always been, when you seek awareness of the Universe within, & truly feel the presence of this Eternal Now. In Eastern mysticism, such experience is known as a Kundalini awakening, or in the “stillness” of the great Prince, Buddha being?"

Consider;

The covered ark with golden staves carried by the priests, and seven priests with rams' horns, at the siege of Jericho, in an eighteenth-century artist's depiction.

The biblical account relates that during the Israelites' exodus from Egypt, the Ark was carried by the priests some 2,000 cubits in advance of the people and their army, or host. When the Ark was borne by priests into the bed of the Jordan, water in the river separated, opening a pathway for the entire host to pass through (Josh. 3:15-16; 4:7-18). The city of Jericho was taken with no more than a shout after the Ark of the Covenant was paraded for seven days around its wall by seven priests sounding seven trumpets of rams' horns (Josh. 6:4-20). When carried, the Ark was always wrapped in a veil, in skins and a blue cloth, and was carefully concealed, even from the eyes of the priests who carried it.

Do Humans + Animals Share a Common Ancester?

Avatar: Making the Movie

The Meaning of Blue:
Blue signifies the celestial love of truth. That "blue" has this signification, is because it belongs to the color of the sky, and because by this color is signified truth from a celestial origin, which is truth from the good of love to the Lord. This good reigns in the inmost heaven, and in the middle or second heaven it is presented to view as crimson and blue; the good itself as crimson, and the derivative truth as blue.

For in the other life, and in heaven itself, there appear most beautiful colors, all deriving their origin from good and truth. For the sphere of the affections of good and truth is sensibly presented before the eyes of angels and spirits by means of colors, and specific things by variously colored objects. They are presented to the nostrils also by means of odors.

For everything celestial, which is of good, and everything spiritual, which is of truth, is represented in the lower heavens by such things as appear in nature, thus to the very senses of the spirits and angels there. The reason why the spheres of the affection of good and truth are visibly presented by means of colors, is that the colors are modifications of heavenly light, thus of intelligence and wisdom (AC 4530, 4677,4742, 4922).
By blue is signified the celestial love of truth, and by garments of blue, the knowledges of truth from this love, in Ezekiel:--

Fine linen with broidered work from Egypt was thy spread, that it might be to thee for a sign; blue and crimson from the isles of Elishah were thy covering. These were thy traders with perfect things, with bales of blue and broidered work, and with treasures of precious garments (Ezek. 27:7, 24); speaking of Tyre, by which are signified the knowledges of truth and good (AC 1201); knowledge and the derivative intelligence are described by broidered work from Egypt, and by blue and crimson from the isles of Elishah; broidered work from Egypt being the memory-knowledge of truth; blue and crimson from the isles of Elishah being the intelligence of truth and good. The Spiritual Meaning of Blue

An Eastern Meaning of Blue

MindBodySpirit - LJAmlie

Awakening the Body+Mind+Spirit
Everyone's path is very unique when they traverse through the amazing process of inner transformation. My experience is that we are turned to face our 'ego' & all of our conditioned beliefs & we often lock horns with this dualistic aspect of being human. It is the exploration of what is "right here" in each life rather than what is "out there". And this conscious inquiry begins to awaken that life Spirit within our bodies and our minds, unlocking every door that has ever been barred from our conscious awareness.
Whether you use the principles of the Law of Attraction to manifest material abundance, or seek happiness & contentment in your personal life, or wish to be of service in the world promoting healing, social justice or global sustainability, all these efforts will be trumped by the conflicts you still hold within you until you are finally willing to turn & face inward & address the conflicting beliefs you hold about yourself & the world. And your life will continue to provide the circumstances for you to see & work through these limitations until you recognize them as the powerful gifts of transformation that they are.

*******

Is there a deeper reality expressed in euphoric states of psychosis? During 40 days & 40 nights?
See: Sensitivity-Psychosis & Blue Sky Mining?

How Long? Before We Sing This New Song? - 2020?

Where is the bed of the Jordan, the city of Jericho, and The Promised Land?

The Right & Left Hemispheres of the Brain
Right Regulates Emotion - Left Cognition?

Metaphor-Myth & Life's Meaning
Parting a Red Sea? Or Twin Hemispheres?
From Gut Instinct to Metaphysical Mind?

Where is James Cameron's "Uncanny Valley?"
Is it a function of our left & right hemispheres and our "implicit - explicit" attention focusing self?
Are we entering an age of true self-reflection, as science & spirituality converge? Are we really beginning to understand the shadow within?

*******

Creative-Music & Metaphor?
Particularly from the 2nd half of the 20th century on-wards?

Words are only metaphors, metaphors for a hidden reality within?

Science & Spirituality are converging in this 21st century A.D. Although to an Eternal Now, Time means nothing & everything? Perhaps this is why the existential metaphors always apply to “this” here & now.

Why do we only see, US & THEM?

I don't know - I was really ecstatic at the time.

We crossed a threshold in 1969, leaving a blind & closed instinctual system behind?

Is the Universe reaching a Tipping Point?
The Universe Within?

Is the Universe Friendly?

"But if we decide that the universe is a friendly place, then we will use our technology, our scientific discoveries and our natural resources to create tools and models for understanding that universe. Because power and safety will come through understanding its workings and its motives."

"God does not play dice with the universe," _Albert Einstein.

The ascension is not a rising to “above” it’s a Fall, just as its always been, when you seek awareness of the Universe within, & truly feel the presence of this Eternal Now. In Eastern mysticism, such experience is known as a Kundalini awakening, or in the “stillness” of the great Prince, Buddha being?

Just a Cosmic Drama Unfolding? - An Eternal Now Emerging?

Is it time to re-address the tribal metaphors of life’s meaning, to a species understanding? In a Universe of 96% dark matter/energy. Life is “The Resurrection.” That great symbol of sacrifice we see in Christ on the Cross, as all the Light Matter Energy, sacrificed to create your life? How does the Universe become Eternal? By evolving into a form which can act upon itself, YOU & your children’s, children’s children, forever & ever, Amen! Or whatever metaphor of gratitude you use. Science, Spirituality & Psychosis

And in the end it's only round and round and round?
Haven't you heard it's a battle of words
And who'll deny that's what the fightings all about
Get out of the way, it's a busy day
And I've got things on my mind
For want of the price of tea and a slice
The old man died
Songwriters: Roger Waters & Rick Wright.

We're so sorry, Uncle Albert!

Is it time for a Mature Species-Awareness?

*******

WHERE ARE WE NOW?
Entering The Battle of Jericho?
Consider;

Is it “revolution” or “realization” that is needed? What does it mean to “awaken” and realize that there is nothing new under the sun, as we wake each morning & “act out” our unconscious arousal needs?
Perhaps its all about chemistry, when we see a much bigger picture?
Underlying cognition, is the essential need of organismic homeostasis?

“LIFE AS HOMEOSTASIS:
Living organisms are self-replicating and self-sustaining dynamic chemical systems. They obtain energy from, and information about, their environment – including its chemical, physical, geological, and biological components. A feature that distinguishes living from non-living matter was identified by Claude Bernard.

This is homeostasis – the maintenance of a constant internal environment despite changes in the external environment. A second feature of all known life, first proposed explicitly by Schleiden and Schwann, is that living things are composed of spatial compartments, called cells.

Cellular homeostasis requires a system of integrated feedback and feedforward, producing adaptive responses to, and anticipation of, ultimately uncontrollable changes in the properties of the outside world.

As life evolves, it extends its reach by maintaining its constant internal environment in new external environments, previously inhospitable. _John F. Allen, Ph.D. “Journal of Cosmology, 2010.”

As self-awareness evolves, it extends its reach by maintaining its constant internal environment in each new moment? The fundamental need of maintaining homeostasis dominates our functioning perception, including our need for group belonging and our embrace of a consensus reality. Consider;

Consensus reality
Consensus reality is an approach to answering the philosophical question "What is real?" It gives a practical answer: reality is either what exists, or what we can agree seems to exist.

The process has been (perhaps loosely and a bit imprecisely) characterised as "when enough people think something is true, it... takes on a life of its own" The term is usually used disparagingly as by implication it may mean little more than "what a group or culture chooses to believe", and may bear little or no relationship to any "true reality", and, indeed, challenges the notion of "true reality".

The difficulty with the question stems from the concern that human beings do not in fact fully understand or agree upon the nature of knowledge or knowing, and therefore (it is often argued) it is not possible to be certain beyond doubt what is real. Accordingly, this line of logic concludes, we cannot in fact be sure beyond doubt about the nature of reality. We can, however, seek to obtain some form of consensus, with others, of what is real.

We can use this consensus as a pragmatic guide, either on the assumption that it seems to approximate some kind of valid reality, or simply because it is more "practical" than perceived alternatives. Consensus reality therefore refers to the agreed-upon concepts of reality which people in the world, or a culture or group, believe are real (or treat as real), usually based upon their common experiences as they believe them to be; anyone who does not agree with these is sometimes stated to be "in effect... living in a different world."

Throughout history this has also raised a social question: "What shall we make of those who do not agree with consensus realities of others, or of the society they live in?"

Children have sometimes been described or viewed as "inexperienced with consensus reality," although with the expectation that they will come into line with it as they mature. However, the answer is more diverse as regards such people as have been characterised as eccentrics, mentally ill, enlightened or divinely inspired, or evil or demonic in nature.

Alternatively, differing viewpoints may simply be put to some kind of "objective" (though the nature of "objectivity" goes to the heart of the relevant questions) test. Cognitive liberty is the freedom to be the individual's own director of the individual's own consciousness and is fundamentally opposed to enforcement of the culturally accepted reality upon non-conforming individuals. Effects of low cognitive liberty vary from indifference to forced-medication and from social alienation to incarceration to death.

Consensus reality, is a learned perception?

"Children have sometimes been described or viewed as "inexperienced with consensus reality," although with the expectation that they will come into line with it as they mature."

"Although the newborn infant’s only reality, in the beginning, is his CNS activity, he soon learns, by bumping into things, to erect a corresponding model “out there.” Ultimately, his forgetting that his CNS activity had been the only reality will be taken by society as proof of his maturity, and he will be ready to conduct his life “out there” in (container) space and (chronological) time.

This gradually learned and projected model, then, is the representation of a world ordered and stabilized by self-programmed invariances.

The adult interprets his CNS activity within this structure of similarity criteria, or “constancies,” and thus experience can be said to consist of two processes: the programmed (subcortical) CNS activity; and the symbolic or perceptual-behavioral (cortical) interpretation, or metaprograms, of the CNS activity.” _Roland Fischer.

Descartes Error: "I think therefore I am," dissociated from my innate nature?
Are we living in denial of our true voice, in our "I think therefore I am," cognitive need to maintain a social homeostasis? (group harmony) Do we deny and suppress a deeper self-awareness, out of a fear of just how contagious innate affect/emotion is? Like someone yelling FIRE in a dark and crowded room. Have we suppressed our true voice, 2000 cubits on?
Consider;

The covered ark with golden staves carried by the priests, and seven priests with rams' horns, at the siege of Jericho, in an eighteenth-century artist's depiction.

A comment I made on Mad in America.com can illistrate our problems with expressing our true voice.

What is affect/emotion? The question, “what the hell is an affect?” Set me of on a five year journey to uncover and understand the organic nature of my Bipolar type 1 “affective” disorder.

Within a week of stumbling on Allan N Schore’s “Affect Dysregulation & Disorders of the Self,” my body and its (homeostatic) feedback systems, as much as my brain became a major interest. Yet the commercially funded research we notice in the mainstream media is always focused on brain research alone?

Is there a cultural need of denying the raw power & the contagious affect of emotion, in our denial of the body’s role in mental anguish, our so-called mental illnesses? Is such a denial, part of the reason we “prefer” to focus on the brain, in our mechanically minded assumptions about mental distress?

How many in our survivor & recovery community have heard of Sylvan Tomkins, the father of affect theory? If not, is that because we get lost in HEADLINE focused, foreground attention, and don’t access a wealth of science research in the background? Why are all the great investigators of somatic experience and a holistic approach routinely ignored?

“INNATE AFFECT/EMOTION & SOCIETY:

Because the free expression of innate affect is extremely contagious and because these are very powerful phenomena, all societies, in varying degrees, exercise substantial control over the free expression of the cry of affect. No societies encourage or permit each individual to cry out i.e, rage or excitement, or distress or terror wherever and whenever they wish. Very early on, strict control over affect expression is instituted and such control is exerted particularly over the voice, whether used in speech or in direct affect expression.

If all societies suppress the free vocalization of affect, what is it that is being experienced as affect? It is what I have called backed-up affect, it can be seen in children trying to suppress laughter by swallowing a snicker, or by a stiff upper lip when trying not to cry or by tightening the jaw to suppress anger. In all these cases, one is holding one’s breathe as part of the technique of suppressing the vocalization of affect/emotion.

We do not know what are the biological and psychological prices of such suppression of the innate affective response. It seems at the very least that substantial psychosomatic disease might be one of the prices of such systemic suppression and transformation of the innate affective responses.

Further there could be a permanent elevation of blood pressure as a consequence of suppressed rage, which would have a much longer duration than an innate momentary flash of expressed anger.

Even the least severe suppression of the vocalization of affect must result in some bleaching of the experience of affect and therefore impoverish the quality of life. It must also produce some ambiguity about what affect feels like, since so much of the adult’s affective life represents at the very least, a transformation of the affective response, rather than the simpler, more direct, and briefer innate affect.

With anger the matter is further confused, because of the danger represented by this affect and enormous societal concern about the socialization of anger, what is typically seen and thought to be innate is actually backed-up. The appearance of the backed-up, the “simulated,” and the innate is by no means the same.

Details of the difference in socialization concern, differences in tolerance or intolerance of the several primary human affects – excitement, enjoyment, surprise, distress, contempt, shame, fear and anger – which in turn determine how positively or how negatively a human being learns to feel about themselves and about other human beings.

Such learning will also determine their general posture towards the entire ideological domain.“

Exerts from “Exploring Affect,” (1995) by Silvan Tomkins.

********

Do we really “know” how we function at an “unconscious” affect/emotion level? Is there authoritive science research that could sway psychiatric understanding, away from pharma funded, “drug” oriented, research? Are there people out there like Allan N Schore & Stephen Porges, that we never bother to access, because we have been hurt by “science?”

“It is well established that the transfer of emotional information is intensified in resonant contexts. At the moment when a system is tuned at the resonant frequency it becomes synchronized – vitalized.

Sustained facial gazing mediates the most intense form of interpersonal communication. Eye to eye contact gives non-verbal advanced notice of the other. The temporal structure of gaze, the most immediate and purest form of inter-relation, provides clues to the readiness or capacity to receive and transmit social AFFECT. (capitals mine)

Face to face transactions may be registered in long term memory as inceptive ‘flash bulb’ memories. Flashbulb memories occur during high arousal states and are an important adaptive for survival.

Mirroring Gaze Transactions and the Dyadic Amplification of Positive Affect: Dyadic mirroring gaze transactions thus induce a symbiotic, physiobiologically attuned affect amplifying merger state, in which a match occurs between the expression of rewarding arousal.

This process of interpersonal fusion generates dynamic “vitality affects.”

“A nine month old girl becomes very excited about a toy and reaches for it. As she grabs it, she lets out an exuberant ‘aaah!’ and looks back at her mother. Her mother looks back, scrunches up her shoulders, and performs a terrific shimmy with her upper body, like a go-go dancer. The shimmy lasts about as long as her daughters ‘aaah’ but is equally excited, joyful, and intense.”

Exerts from “Affect Regulation and the Origin of the Self,” by Allan N Schore.

The spontaneous, “unsuppressed” expression of affect/emotion in the scene between mother & daughter, is stimulated “unconsciously,” and the pure joy “acted out” is nature & her beauty personified.

We are really thrilled when we see “nature” acted out in this way, yet when we see nature’s negative expression we get “distressed,” the observer, as well as the sufferer. We move to shut it down because it upsets us.

Has there been an historical need to deny “emotion,” in order to suppress its capacity to create “chaos,” because raw affect/emotion, is contagious? Is it a societal suppression of our own nature, which blocks an honest and open approach to sufferers of mental anguish?

Is it our own mechanically minded “cause & effect” logic, that now needs up-dating to a systems approach, which is not so “black & white,” as “us & them?” Allan Schore, wants to take the profession back to its roots in psychoanalysis, by using new cutting edge science to make understanding the human soul, what its always been. An ART form?

The Science of the Art of Psychotherapy

********

The Battle of Jericho & Consensus Reality?

From Bowen & Tomkins to Schore, Porges & Levine. A personal journey of self-revelation? Consider;

David Bates on June 8, 2012 at 6:05 pm said:
To see how this “unconscious” self-preservation need works & is rationalized, browse the comments on any thread topic, & contemplate how people choose to take from an article/essay what they need, & leave the rest.

We do this by “scanning” for emotional resources that will enhance our sense of self, rationalizing our response as intelligence & critique? When the topic is emotionally “charged” we do what Bowen describes as emotional projection, or Fritz Pearls “one up, one down – top dog, under dog,” and we really need to be more realistic about our own functioning before we can hope to change anything.

Your nervous system unconsciously scans at millisecond speeds, seeking resources for survival, the reactive choice is made long before your reasoned rationalizations? See Stephen Porges,
“Orienting in a Defensive World.”

Bowen Theory:

“The triangling process in a large family will help illustrate the process in society. It may begin with conflict between a parent and child. When another takes sides emotionally, he is potentially triangled. When he talks (to influence others) or he takes action based on feelings, he is actively triangled.

Each person who becomes involved can involve others until a fair percentage of the group is actively taking sides. The controversy is defined on “right” and “wrong” issues, and often as victimizer and victim. In societal conflict, those who side with the “victim” are more likely to demonstrate and take activist postures. Those who “feel more responsible” for the total group will side with the parental side. They are more likely to stay silent or take action in letters to the editor, or to actively counteract the activists.

One interesting group of activists is made up of members of professional and scientific organizations who attempt to use knowledge and social status to further entangle the triangular emotional system. To summarize the process, it begins with emotional tension in a bipolar situation, it spreads by involving emotionally vulnerable others, it is fed by emotional reactiveness and response to denial and accusation and it becomes quiescent when emotional energy is exhausted.

There are several ways it can be started, intensified, deintensified, or stopped. It can be started by one person who, intentionally or unintentionally, touches an emotional trigger in the second. The triggered person characteristically defends or counterattacks which adds emotional fuel. It can be deintensified or stopped by a calm person who stays in “low key” contact without defending self or counterattacking.

The words used in triangular emotional exchange, based on rational thinking, are usually not heard by the other except to defend or prepare a rebuttal. The words can be heard only after the emotion is reduced. The triangle emotional system is most intense when anxiety is high. It disappears when the system is calm.

There is fair evidence that man functions at his best under adversity or when he is challenged. Until the mid 1960’s, I considered society’s slump to be functional, and perhaps a cyclical phenomena related to the depression of the 1930’s or to World War II, and that after World War II man became lazy and greedy as he luxuriated in the greatest period of material plenty and freedom from want in his existence.

I was guessing he would meet another challenge and rise to the occasion. After the mid 1960’s there was more evidence of an even lower level of societal functioning. There was more feeling-oriented action and less long-term principle planning, more “rights” thinking than “responsibility” thinking.

The overall pattern was closer to that of a family with a problem child, giving into emotional demands, hoping the problem would go away.

Society appears to be much more similar to a family with an intense “undifferentiated family ego mass,” than the less emotional fusion of previous periods. The members of society are fused into each other and are more emotionally dependant on each other, with less operating autonomy in the individual.

Emotional events are more similar to those “within an ego fusion” than to events between relatively autonomous people.” _Murray Bowen.

“People see what is, instead of seeing what could be.” _Albert Einstein.

The “cerebral tone,” of subjective awareness is set by a “postural attitude,” a “stance,” the body comes 1st not the mind?

I understand its very difficult to grasp this concept in our cultural heritage, which is now so over-invested in Cartesian clockwork logic, the mind has become detached from the nature of being.

There also the sage advise to the feuding couple, “do you want to be happy or do you just NEED to right?”

Please think about your postural “stance,” as you prepare to perpetuate the “us vs them,” nature of human functioning, in this sea of “unconscious” emotional re-activity we call society?

Is your feeling for a “fight,” about your unconscious metabolic arousal needs? It sure does help get us out of bed in the morning?

How much do you take your daily functioning for granted? How many “facts,” do you know about your hidden inner nature? How self-aware are You?

“Deepening awareness is a challenge. It isn’t a challenge because my parents didn’t love me enough. It’s a challenge because it’s a challenge. I don’t need to take it personally. I’ve spent years excavating my past, sorting and cataloguing the wreckage. But who I really am, the essential truth of my being, can’t be grasped by the mind, no matter how acute my insights. I’ve confused introspection with awareness, but they’re not the same. Becoming the worlds leading expert on myself has nothing to do with being fully present.”

********

David Bates on June 14, 2012 at 8:19 pm said:
“MODERN EDUCATION & ASSUMPTIONS ABOUT COGNITION:

This is the most recent instance in history of favouring man’s ‘reason’ as his distinctive glory. Although Genesis equated ’knowing’ with carnal knowledge, that fateful loss of innocence that exiled him from the Garden of Eden, in both theological and secular thought reason has been glorified as the divine spark in man. This perennial idealisation of the cognitive function has prejudged its definition.

If human beings share sensory and motor equipment as well as drives and passions with other animals, and if reason is represented as both the distinctive and most valued function in man, then the cognitive aspects of the sensory and motor functions are denied by definition. Further, ‘irrationality’ is thereby also denied to be inherently cognitive.

‘Superstition’ and mysticism are prejudged to be different from cognition rather than to be special cases of knowing. In the extreme derivative of such idealisation, even science would fail to meet the criterion of true cognition, in-so-much as today’s science can be tomorrow’s superstition. In some theologies just this inference was drawn so that only God knew truly and fully.

Yet if all cognitive theorists would resonate with Socrates dictum that an unexamined life is not worth living, they would part company as soon as ‘examination’ was scrutinised more closely. Are daydreaming and thinking equally ‘cognitive’ ‘inner’ processes that had to be both objectified and operationalized?”

Ideology and Affect/Emotion:

Now let me introduce the concepts of ideo-affective postures, ideological postures and ideo-affective resonance. (1) By ideo-affective postures I mean any loosely organized set of feelings and ideas about feelings. (2) By ideological postures I refer to any “highly organized” and articulate set of ideas about anything. A generally tolerant or permissive attitude would be an instance of an ideo-affective posture, whereas a progressive or democratic political position would be an example of an ideological posture.

(3) By ideo-affective resonance we mean the engagement of the loosely organized beliefs and feelings by ideology, when the ideo-affective postures are sufficiently similar to the ideological posture, so that they reinforce and strengthen each other.

Ideo-affective resonance to ideology is a love affair of a loosely organized set of feelings and ideas about feelings with a highly organized and articulate set of ideas about anything. As in the case of a love affair the fit need not be perfect, so long as there is sufficient similarity between what the individual thinks and feels is desirable, to set the vibrations between the two entities into sympathetic resonance.

Exerts from “Exploring Affect,” (1995) by Sylvan Tomkins.

********

From our consensus reality of cause & effect thinking towards a systems theory understanding of our deeper nature? Consider;

SYSTEMS THEORY is now being used to understand the complex non-linear feedback systems which integrate our human experience, particularly the early maturation of brain and nervous systems, via environmental feedback. It is becoming increasingly clear that human inter-subjectivity, is more resonant affect/emotion than left-brained linguistics and dialogue.

Consider Allan Schore’s understanding of our non-linear bio-metabolic-energy transformations, which turn matter into “meta” within the human mind;
“In physics a property of resonance is sympathetic vibration, the tendency of one resonance system to enlarge & augment through matching the resonance frequency pattern of another resonance system.

In contemporary bioenergetic theory, information is conceived of as ’a special kind of energy required for the work of establishing biological order’. The processing of all forms of information by the brain, including that embedded in internal representations, occur through transformations of metabolic energy.

The extraordinary power of the concept of energy transformations derives from the fact that these fundamental phenomena occur on each and every level of living systems, from the molecular to the societal.

The growing postnatal brain, the physical matrix of the emerging human mind, is supplied with a continuous supply of energy from metabolic processes. A fundamental tenant of this theory states that the assembly of complex systems occurs under conditions of thermodynamic non-equilibrium (a directed flow of energy).

This energy is utilized to facilitate the cooperativity of simpler sub-system components into a hierarchically-structured complex system that expresses the emergent functions of organizing and maintaining stability.

Bioenergetic conceptualizations thus need to be implanted into the central core of psychoanalytic and psychological theory, a position they now occupy in physics, chemistry, and biology. Thermodynamics are not only the essence of biodynamic, they are also the essence of neurodynamics, and therefore of psychodynamics.” _Allan N Schore.

********

Mental Illness & Consensus Reality?

Is the typical “self-referential” ideation in a “psychotic break” a rationalized “hyper-sensitivity” to nature & all that lies beyond Eve’s protective atmosphere? A sensitivity which is non-verbal, non-cognitive and is a more refined integration of all five physical senses, when we fall beneath our normal nervous system orientation of “social engagement.” An overwhelmingly “unconsciously” stimulated experience, “rationalized” by the mind as “the TV is sending out hidden messages, just for me?”

Stephen Porges groundbreaking discovery of a third branch of our autonomic nervous system, shows our unconscious orienting responses are like two different operating systems, to use a computer analogy. (1) Social Engagement, an evolved nervous system responsiveness “innervated” by the feedback signals of head & facial muscles, with their vagal control over the heart. (2) Survival Orientation, an evolved nervous system responsiveness, shared with all other mammals and heightened due to our “sensitive skin,” which under hyper-vigilant threat attains a higher “resonance,” with background sensory information.

Consider Sylvan Tomkins ideas about affect/emotion and our sensitive skin; “The face appears to me to be the central site of affect/emotion responses and their feedback., but I have come to regard the skin, in general, and the skin of the face in particular, as of the greatest importance in producing the feel of affect/emotion. Three of the most compelling states to which the human being is vulnerable arise on the surface of the skin. Torture via skin stimulation has been used for centuries to shape and compel human beings to act against their own deepest wishes and values. Sexual seduction via skin stimulation has also prompted human beings to violate their own wishes and values. Fatigue to the point of extreme sleepiness appears to be localized in the skin surrounding the eyes.” _Sylvan Tomkins.

********

Consider again;
Consensus reality is an approach to answering the philosophical question "What is real?" It gives a practical answer: reality is either what exists, or what we can agree seems to exist.

The difficulty with the question stems from the concern that human beings do not in fact fully understand or agree upon the nature of knowledge or knowing, and therefore (it is often argued) it is not possible to be certain beyond doubt what is real. Accordingly, this line of logic concludes, we cannot in fact be sure beyond doubt about the nature of reality. We can, however, seek to obtain some form of consensus, with others, of what is real.
We can use this consensus as a pragmatic guide, either on the assumption that it seems to approximate some kind of valid reality, or simply because it is more "practical" than perceived alternatives. Consensus reality therefore refers to the agreed-upon concepts of reality which people in the world, or a culture or group, believe are real (or treat as real), usually based upon their common experiences as they believe them to be; anyone who does not agree with these is sometimes stated to be "in effect... living in a different world."

Throughout history this has also raised a social question: "What shall we make of those who do not agree with consensus realities of others, or of the society they live in?"

********

From the most unique understanding of the human condition I've read, consider my comment here about Peter Levine and our transformation of matter into meta, with the unconscious stimulus of our spontaneous thought/symbols;

David Bates on May 29, 2012 at 2:14 am said:

I was struck by “This extreme was allowing my thoughts to become finalized with one conclusion, i.e. that there was no real pull of gravity, only a pushing up by the earth.”

It reminded me of this;
“The apparent opposition and dominance by the military order of the intricate six-layered cerebral cortex, over the messy anarchistic networks of the “simple-minded” brain stem, was upset by the great neuropathologist Paul Ivan Yakovlev.

Yakovlev challenged the hierarchical (top down) Cartesian worldview (I think therefore I am, consensus reality) and proposed that our increasingly complex behaviors have evolved from within to outward, from “below to above.”

“Out of the swamp of the reticular system, the cerebral cortex arose, like a sinful orchid, beautiful and guilty.” _ Paul Yakovlev.”

Exerts from “In an Unspoken Voice” by Peter Levine, PhD.

The experiential writing of people like yourself and Michael Cornwall and others, is desperately needed to help people free themselves from the jargon of mechanically minded intellect’s, and learn to question our “I think therefore I am,” cultural paradigm.

********

Metaphor, Meaning & Desert Tribe Prophecy?

Is there a deeper reality expressed in euphoric states of psychosis? During 40 days & 40 nights?

How Long? Before We Sing This New Song? Till we Feel it in Our Hearts?

Just where are, The Walls of Jericho?
Within the mind's subjective illusion, of our separation?

Inside Our Hearts. Are we not, Children of the Light?

Science & Spirituality Are Converging Now?

2012: The ascension is not a rising to “above” it’s a Fall, just as its always been, when you seek awareness of the Universe within, & truly feel the presence of this Eternal Now. In Eastern mysticism, such experience is known as a Kundalini awakening, or in the “stillness” of the great Prince, Buddha being?

Is it time to re-address the tribal metaphors of life’s meaning, to a species understanding? In a Universe of 96% dark matter/energy.

Life is “The Resurrection.” That great symbol of sacrifice we see in Christ on the Cross, as all the Light Matter Energy, sacrificed to create your life?

How does the Universe become Eternal? By evolving into a form which can act upon itself, YOU & your children’s, children’s children, forever & ever, Amen!

Or whatever metaphor of gratitude you use.

Is it time for realization? 1 Species, 1 World, 1 Universe, 1 Love.

Is it time to realize, that the Universe is a friendly place & FEAR is only the shadow "within" & not really "out there." With the realization of a “meant to be” eternal now, can we stop fighting ourselves & get on with building a new Jerusalem, here on Earth’s green & pleasant land?

Everything we really need is “inside” us, health, wealth & happiness are not “objects,” they are metaphors for the hidden reality of a holistic sense of well being. The very best medicine, is literally contained within our laughter & our heart felt smile.

Words are only metaphors, metaphors for a hidden reality within?

“If you want to change the world, you have to change the metaphor” _Joseph Campbell.

From:Mad Visions or Mental Illness Part 2

In November 2011, I started to fall into an awareness of eternal now, resonating with my new understanding of electro-chemical energies within. "We are immersed in a chemical Universe, there is no separation," I thought. It has changed my understanding of my metaphor making mind, and brought a sense of "meant to be," to my life's experience. A sense of misinterpretation too, in our learned language of OBJECT orientation? "We need to change our metaphors to a chemical Universe reality," I told myself.

From: Mad Visions or Mental Illness? Part 1 Consider;
"Are we in the prophecy of the FALL? In this chemical universe, can we learn to heal a divided self & feel all those Rivers of color in our Eyes, as the Art of the Cosmic Goddess Inside? Is that her Light in Ur Eyes? YOU can see her symbology of biology everywhere when we look with the eyes of a Child? Think Chemical Metaphor Now? Not Just Objectivity? Please learn to combine the two sides of Ur Nature? Educate Ur-Self about the nature of YOU!"

Keeping in mind the video clip above of the body/brain's unconscious and hidden electro-chemical reality? Please watch "falling into you," by Celine Dion and note the sensations of internal energies? Feel the struggle of "I think therefore I am," trying to stay above (dissociated) the e-motive sway of image and sound?

We are not Objects. We are not PART of the Universe. We are The Universe!

Our notions of God - Are Projected from a hidden reality Within?
The Parts Logic, is Cartesian Clockwork Universe, Thinking?
The True Depth of Our Reality is Unthinkable?

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Is Desert Tribe Prophecy, Happening Now?

To be continued:

Bipolar Disorder Batesy

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Sunday, June 17, 2012

Mythology & Metaphors of Our Species Evolution