Poetry
Poetry
My unfiltered heart and soul
Awakening can be... non-dual awareness infinite consciousness natural mind time changing shape embodying bliss psychedelic connection to the void Universal love merging and dissolving one sense door energy wholeness & balance shamanism, magic & mysticism joy & peace
Introduction
My process was a process of being present with and opening to the full spectrum of experience; removing the barriers and filters between me and direct experience. A lot of this was incredibly beautiful and magical and a huge amount of it was incredibly stressful.
One of the most confronting parts of this was the soul realm, which consists of an unfathomable quantity of archetypal forces, collective energy and things that go far beyond a western scientific materialist perspective or paradigm. Western society would diagnose a lot of these experiences as psychosis and I was in severely altered states of consciousness for years. I now live here.
Becoming non-dual with something is about removing the barriers and blocks between you and it. A lot of this process of becoming non-dual with experience was about integrating collective shadows, which meant going through long periods of unbearable emotional and physical pain. I felt suicidal for large parts of this, but it was also a time of huge creativity and relentless insight.
Most people who can comprehend what I might mean do not want to open into an experience of non-duality with meaning or energy in the world; it is far too overwhelming for them and beyond what they need to awaken for them to be their full expression.
However, it’s important to recognise that these are the sorts of things that exist outside the boundaries of a self and under the surface of the conceptual, controlling mind. When the self has gone your perception of what reality is can change radically, creating a much more honest and accurate depiction of life and experience.
Self-boundaries and reifying minds are actually there to keep people safe a lot of the time and that is an important role. I am not encouraging people to follow the path I went down of completely letting go of these things, but I am sharing some of the experiences, insights and wisdom that I have integrated and brought back with me as I believe that they are important.
I also want to lift the shame and pathology that we have in our culture around some of these states of consciousness and ways of experiencing. In other cultures they would be considered as gifts and cultivated in the contexts of shamanism, sensitivity and wisdom.
The journals I created and the artistic content that nourished me throughout my experience were incredibly rich and meaningful. They saved my life and also 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.
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
Awakening needs to incorporate a sense of deep and authentic connection between people that creates resilience and gives people the resources to be present with the truth, to face their suffering, to rise from it and be willing to keep going.
Love
Both are true, depending which moment you ask in.
Spaciousness
Self-portrait of me making enough space to hold the proportionality of some of my feelings.
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
Psychosis
Me captured by the amazing Sari Soininen, as part of a series of portraits of people who have experienced psychosis. She pointed out how the photos came out looking like a Goddess of Fire.
Psychosis, and how we relate to it, is a topic that is very close to my heart. In the right conditions, psychosis isn’t a mental illness but a way for the psyche to heal itself or a process of the door opening to deeper layers of reality.
Helping people engage with it in a more positive way, as well as ensuring that people get the practical and medical support they need, creates a lot more shamans and sensitive people in the world and means that people suffer a lot less.
I have a written a guide to holding, healing and integrating spiritual psychosis here.
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.