Post three of seven, in section My Experiences
Introduction
My awakening opened me up to a fuller spectrum of experience than I could have imagined was possible. A lot of this process was incredibly beautiful and magical, and a huge amount of it was incredibly stressful on my body, heart, mind, and soul. I was in altered states of consciousness for years, and I now live permanently in a very different paradigm.
One of the most confronting parts of the process was becoming present with the soul realm, which consists of an unfathomable quantity of archetypal forces, collective energy, distributed intelligence, and things that go far beyond a modern scientific materialist perspective on reality.
The journals I kept during my process and the artistic content that nourished me throughout my experiences were incredibly rich. They helped me find the gold in the chaos – to mine the truth and love from the experiences I was having.
Here are a few extracts from my journals that feel meaningful to share. You may also want to check out my art journals from a more recent solo retreat.
Systems
Some of the ways I noticed in my direct experience that humans operate as collectives and individuals. Each aspect can create an entirely different lens or paradigm that people operate in, which shapes their entire world-view.
I have been inspired by the 7 chakra system, Fredric Laloux, Abraham Maslow, integral theory and more.
Awakening
This drawing depicts the different parts of awakening and the edited one shows where most people’s experience is confined to – the Mind.
This can happen especially with people who have a very awakened mind and is sometimes explicitly the objective of some traditions; essentially creating a world where the mind believes that it is right, in order to avoid the pain, overwhelm and stupidity of the other parts. However, this creates huge shadows and loses out on the full richness of experience.
So one of the biggest questions for awakening is, how do we get people out of their heads and into life?
What’s most important to recognise is that the downsides are often the doorways into these parts:
- Without being honest about unsatisfactoriness and working through it, you won’t get aligned
- Without letting yourself be overwhelmed, you won’t have an ineffable experience
- Without wanting to figure it out your mind won’t learn anything
- Without feeling the pain your heart won’t open
- Without allowing yourself to be dumb you won’t get into your body
- Without accepting the needs of both yourself and others you won’t feel rooted
The more we can create environments that make this easier for people, the better the outcomes from awakening.
Looking Through The Eyes of the Cosmos
The two birds around the eyes are a phoenix and a peacock.
Awakening needs to incorporate a sense of deep and authentic connection and give people the resources to be present with the truth, to let go of what no longer serves, and to re-emerge into freshness.
Care
Sea horses are one of the only animals in which the male can get pregnant. This was symbolic of balancing the masculine and feminine; by valuing the feminine elements – care, emotional labour, presence – and making them more visible, it creates a more balanced and equal experience for everyone.
Prayers
May you experience enough safety in life
That your body can viscerally relaxMay you be surrounded by people
Who support you to express yourselfMay you experience being held
In a compassionate and non-judgemental spaceMay you fall in love with someone
Who sees the real youMay you feel enough security
To be able to share yourself
And your resources freely and openlyMay you find enough meaning and purpose in life
To make it feel like it’s worth itMay you have the courage
To stand up for these things
For yourself and others
Notebooks
Divinity
For me, a choir is a perfect metaphor for God or Cosmic Intelligence – there is a rhyme and reason to things and the expression of it arises from the collective. There is no single source of truth.
True Nature
Interdependent origination
Enactivism
Quantum entanglement
Animism
Everything is God
An atemporal mychorizzal network of love
String theory
Time as a dimension
A divine cosmic body of intelligence
Psychedelic fractal unfolding…It’s all the same explosion of life
Spiritual Psychosis
Me captured by the amazing Sari Soininen, as part of a series of portraits of people who have experienced psychosis. Sari pointed out how the photos of me came out looking like a Goddess of Fire.
Opening the door to deeper layers of reality is inherently disruptive to existing ways of looking. I have a written a guide to holding, healing and integrating spiritual psychosis here. Sari was interviewed about her experiences in the Guardian.
Freedom
“The cost of freedom, is giving up control”
Soul
The octopus is a symbol for the shared soul; it represents how the soul is a fundamentally different form of intelligence than that which comes from awareness.
An octopus’ brain is spread out across its body. Humans access the soulful knowing that emerges from the collective conscious through intuition. This intuitive wisdom is very different from the knowing that comes from the heart and mind.