You know what, in many ways this is what I have been doing for the past few years in transcribing counter-narrative videos. Just listening. Very carefully. There is a kind of magic in it.
Thanks, Media Luna. I've already said everything I have to say about it in my introductory essay and also interviews with Bill Rice, Jr and with Sane Francisco. You can find these interviews gathered at the bottom of this page, "What's This All About?" https://transcriberb.dreamwidth.org/9102.html
I've been reading about reincarnation, including alternative narratives of Seth and Thich Nhat Hanh and Richard Grossinger. Maybe there is no "journey of souls" that passes through many lifetimes, but rather different pieces of the Great Soul that get broken off, only to be reunited after death with our Source. Memories of past lives don't necessarily mean that there is one soul passing through different lifetimes, but maybe that there is an Akashic information source to parts of which we are all connected, and some people are born with pieces gleaned from different lives.
I've been listening to Alma Deutscher and Jacob Collier, both of whom were clearly born musical geniuses, with knowledge and skills that had been developed in advance, maybe in past lives.
There isn't any way to be certain what happens after the death of our body. Even if we had some way of tracking "souls" after death why would we believe the technology 100%?
This is something we have to intuit for ourselves.
Breaking off for a single human life experience and returning to "source" is less believable to me than a series of lives, perhaps an innumerable number, with each iteration imbued with different experiences which give rise to different insights.
If we are a different piece of a Great Soul that gets reunited after death it would be quite a transition to go from all of the limitations of viewing and experiencing things with a relatively frail human body and mind to omnipotence and omniscience. What would be the point?
A completely actualized human being is naturally curious and welcomes experiences and understandings so that they can be integrated and brought to bear on future choices.
There is undoubtedly intelligent life out there. It seems silly and a exceedingly arrogant to think that human intelligence and capabilities are as good as it could possibly get. Imagine a civilization that was telepathic where thoughts and experiences of each individual are immediately shared to the collective. All individuals would have to, at the very least, be oriented towards peace and cooperation. Deception would be impossible. Imagine what such a society would be capable of.
I suggest that advanced civilizations have at some point come to realize that they are reincarnating. Or at the very least come to the simple conclusion that even if they weren't, acting as if they were would lead to massive breakthroughs for the society.
Policy decisions would consider outcomes that were hundreds if not thousands of years away instead of a horizon that was only 4 or two years in the future. Wars would be senseless and would become quickly antiquated. There would be little need for armaments. Things would be built and refined and not destroyed with a push of a button.
Given the potential that this view offers compared to all others combined with the reality that we will never know for sure it would be illogical to not adopt it as it would lead to immediate progress.
Or we can just shrug our shoulders and keep doing what we are doing now.
This is a great story. I am glad Kip was there for you when you needed him. Reminds of a story i read in the Whole Earth Review (or maybe it was the Co-evolution Quarterly by then) about 40 years ago. A man set up an experimental toll-free telephone confesional booth. He put a few ads out describing the wholesome service. Then he kicked back and started receiving calls. I don't remember the details of this saga. Only that it rapidly engulfed him in horror and lead to agonizing moral dilemnas. People told him about murders they'd committed and other extreme crimes. He realized he was over his head. I wish I remember how it ended. Maybe he turned his client list over to the Catholic church who redirected them to local confessors? Which makes me wonder how priests in traditional confessional booths handle these matters. Gotta go on a hunt and find that story again.
Loved this reminder of the importance of being heard in order to uncover the answers we need.
As the mother of seven, my children know that if they are faced with a knotty problem I am happy to sit down and listen, just listen, for as long as it takes them to describe the situation. It’s been my experience that saying the words aloud while being listened to with respect gives the problem a legitimacy that helps put it in perspective and can lead to a spontaneous and helpful solution.
I loved reading about your experience and many responses bubbled up. We don't need psychiatrists, but someone to listen. A house is decorated with bunting in my neighborhood and yesterday a parade took place in the tourist town of Julian. I feel the way you do. Where is the shame in our country for the genocide in Gaza? Why celebrate a country that puts profits above the lives of children? Thank you.
We can also listen to ourselves. This may seem more challenging at first but it can be done as I am finding out. In fact I am going to suggest that this is actually the core teaching in every wisdom tradition.
The language varies but I think point to the same. When we listen with full attention the mind becomes very quiet and merges with our feeling such that we have direct access to the 'felt sense'. This allows the unmet aspects of ourselves to unwind and be seen/felt and come home through the heart which is purified.
Some speak of 'prayer of the heart'. wordless prayer in the silent presence.
Others speak of 'staying in the 'I am' or staying in the 'presence'. others speak of 'all encompassing lucid attention'.
and others 'turning back the light'.
I think these are pointing to the same experience.
I am glad for your comment. I don't know if you are right, but I follow the teaching of Nisargadatta Maharaj. My understanding is proceeding quickly after so many years of reaching a limit. I know now (not as a concept) that we are the same consciousness. I am consciousness, not the body. I've been reflecting on the young woman who feels unattractive. She doesn't understand herself, but has courage to speak about it. Thank you.
I'm touched that you would ask me to read your poetry but I'm honestly not qualified to comment in any way. I am only really discovering myself that the whole thing is about the heart.
I think the entire essence of Nisargadatta teaching is contained in the line 'stay with the I am'. Ultimately to go beyond the 'I am'...which there is also some reference to in western mysticism such as Meister Eckhart' 'cloud of unknowing'.
My favourite Nisargadatta teaching is: (to paraphrase)
The door that locks you in is the same door that sets you free. The 'I Am' is the door. Stay at it until it opens.
Oh how I love this post! A celebration of connection and bearing witness.
And I couldn't agree more with this: "July 4th has taken on a completely different meaning to me as an adult. In my view the public has been sold an illusion of self-governance, sovereignty and freedom."
Holding space for someone, is both an honour, a gift, and a great responsibility. We honour each others courage and unique experience on earth. We receive a gift of perspective, allowing us to evolve as an individual and therefore collective. The responsibility comes in resisting the urge to problem solve, because that action negates the gift and loses the connectedness.
In this modern society, we inherently look to "fix", rather than "hold", because since industrialisation, we are time poor and intentionally have zero space for contemplation or listening.😉
We don't cause "trouble" or question the system when you have no time to stop and consider the system itself.😐
Isn't that convenient for the system..
That's why philosophy was killed.😉
Thank you for noticing Kip's honourable actions and hopefully he'll start a movement towards tthinking and listening spaces again.
I suspect the course of a few lives will have been changed as a result of the conversations described. A few degrees of change- creates an angle that eventually widens greatly, taking us to an entirely different end point.
I really love this post and find it so interesting that we wrote very similar pieces on the same day. Clearly, it’s bubbling up from the collective .🙏🏼♥️
“The further you live away from your neighbours, the more you want to get to know them”. Which begs you consider the opposite. Having a good neighbour is different than being one. Not only that, but the last thing you would want is to squander your reputation with your only link to civilization. Rip them off, and others will soon know. Then you must consider the role you play in making this a just world or the problem-filled opposite that we endure.
Consider the life of a Thule Inuit (Eskimo), before there were steel axes for stone age societies. There, you lived like a king in an austere but beautiful land, or not even land, just frozen water. Your lively hood was on or even in the water, you lived in a house of snow, hunted sea mammals to feed your family and fed plentiful fish to your dog team. When possible, a skin boat (which you built, having seen one once before) carried you precariously over the water, where you not only survived, but thrived.
Grouped together, the best hunter became the leader of the people: not elected mind you, but chosen by those starving and desperate to learn the technology of seal hunting, that separated those living from the also-rans.
Though not Christian, still they exemplified a coherent solution to life’s many problems with magnificent parallels to us. The same morality, ethics, (well, they did share their wives with strangers) and family-centred life that we cherish. Like us, they were stardust (what else?), shaped by the forces that be, with no warfare, no elections, no sheriff and no administrative state (not) serving others, but serving themselves at the expense of their duty to those they served. This is the definition of PARASITISM, which our ancestors solved long ago with the introduction of sex and diploid reproductive differentiation. Countering this type of life-sucking social force will require something equally revolutionary if we are to repent, acknowledge sin and survive what we have allowed to become extant..
Love this.
You know what, in many ways this is what I have been doing for the past few years in transcribing counter-narrative videos. Just listening. Very carefully. There is a kind of magic in it.
I would love it if you expanded on your thoughts and feelings about the work you have been doing and shared it as a post on your substack.
Thanks, Media Luna. I've already said everything I have to say about it in my introductory essay and also interviews with Bill Rice, Jr and with Sane Francisco. You can find these interviews gathered at the bottom of this page, "What's This All About?" https://transcriberb.dreamwidth.org/9102.html
Great work, Transcriber B
Thanks for taking a look. I really appreciate your efforts, I hope you know that.
I will read. Thank you for your work!
Thanks for your interest
A few Substack writers have interviewed her. They've all been great. I don't have links...but consider doing a search. You won't regret it.
thank you for sharing that story, i am moved.
Sweet tale, thanks! And thanks again for bearing witness so consistently.
I've been reading about reincarnation, including alternative narratives of Seth and Thich Nhat Hanh and Richard Grossinger. Maybe there is no "journey of souls" that passes through many lifetimes, but rather different pieces of the Great Soul that get broken off, only to be reunited after death with our Source. Memories of past lives don't necessarily mean that there is one soul passing through different lifetimes, but maybe that there is an Akashic information source to parts of which we are all connected, and some people are born with pieces gleaned from different lives.
I've been listening to Alma Deutscher and Jacob Collier, both of whom were clearly born musical geniuses, with knowledge and skills that had been developed in advance, maybe in past lives.
-------------------
We come into this world awash with tears,
Mourning our incipient separation—
Too soon we age and leave it, mired in fears,
So loathe to part with individuation.
The waves that crash, the foam atop the seas,
Disguise the ocean, fathomless, profound—
And when that water splinters into me’s,
Myriad ephemeral droplets abound
And frolic in a mist one glorious trice
Fall terror-bound back in the womb, coalescing,
Rejoin the life that once was all they knew…
Perhaps our fear of change provides a clue
Why human arts nor nature’s quite suffice
To sustain appreciation of our blessing.
There isn't any way to be certain what happens after the death of our body. Even if we had some way of tracking "souls" after death why would we believe the technology 100%?
This is something we have to intuit for ourselves.
Breaking off for a single human life experience and returning to "source" is less believable to me than a series of lives, perhaps an innumerable number, with each iteration imbued with different experiences which give rise to different insights.
If we are a different piece of a Great Soul that gets reunited after death it would be quite a transition to go from all of the limitations of viewing and experiencing things with a relatively frail human body and mind to omnipotence and omniscience. What would be the point?
A completely actualized human being is naturally curious and welcomes experiences and understandings so that they can be integrated and brought to bear on future choices.
There is undoubtedly intelligent life out there. It seems silly and a exceedingly arrogant to think that human intelligence and capabilities are as good as it could possibly get. Imagine a civilization that was telepathic where thoughts and experiences of each individual are immediately shared to the collective. All individuals would have to, at the very least, be oriented towards peace and cooperation. Deception would be impossible. Imagine what such a society would be capable of.
I suggest that advanced civilizations have at some point come to realize that they are reincarnating. Or at the very least come to the simple conclusion that even if they weren't, acting as if they were would lead to massive breakthroughs for the society.
Policy decisions would consider outcomes that were hundreds if not thousands of years away instead of a horizon that was only 4 or two years in the future. Wars would be senseless and would become quickly antiquated. There would be little need for armaments. Things would be built and refined and not destroyed with a push of a button.
Given the potential that this view offers compared to all others combined with the reality that we will never know for sure it would be illogical to not adopt it as it would lead to immediate progress.
Or we can just shrug our shoulders and keep doing what we are doing now.
Josh, is this your work? It's amazing; I want to share it, and give attribution.
Thank you, Roxanne
Yes, the poem is mine. There's more here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_6y3wmZKxA
and I'm preparing a book for publication this fall.
I'd love it if you pass the poem around. I don't worry about copyright.
wow
It makes me want to get one of those "Free Listening" signs and set up shop in Center City Philadelphia. Can you buy them on Ebay?
Kip's looks hand written.
Yeah, they have technology now for mass-producing "hand-painted" signs so that the astroturf is not detected.
:-)
Do it! The City of Brotherly Love could use the representation. :)
This is a great story. I am glad Kip was there for you when you needed him. Reminds of a story i read in the Whole Earth Review (or maybe it was the Co-evolution Quarterly by then) about 40 years ago. A man set up an experimental toll-free telephone confesional booth. He put a few ads out describing the wholesome service. Then he kicked back and started receiving calls. I don't remember the details of this saga. Only that it rapidly engulfed him in horror and lead to agonizing moral dilemnas. People told him about murders they'd committed and other extreme crimes. He realized he was over his head. I wish I remember how it ended. Maybe he turned his client list over to the Catholic church who redirected them to local confessors? Which makes me wonder how priests in traditional confessional booths handle these matters. Gotta go on a hunt and find that story again.
Love this man. Just what I needed. Thank you. Please enjoy the holiday weekend.
Loved this reminder of the importance of being heard in order to uncover the answers we need.
As the mother of seven, my children know that if they are faced with a knotty problem I am happy to sit down and listen, just listen, for as long as it takes them to describe the situation. It’s been my experience that saying the words aloud while being listened to with respect gives the problem a legitimacy that helps put it in perspective and can lead to a spontaneous and helpful solution.
I loved reading about your experience and many responses bubbled up. We don't need psychiatrists, but someone to listen. A house is decorated with bunting in my neighborhood and yesterday a parade took place in the tourist town of Julian. I feel the way you do. Where is the shame in our country for the genocide in Gaza? Why celebrate a country that puts profits above the lives of children? Thank you.
We can also listen to ourselves. This may seem more challenging at first but it can be done as I am finding out. In fact I am going to suggest that this is actually the core teaching in every wisdom tradition.
The language varies but I think point to the same. When we listen with full attention the mind becomes very quiet and merges with our feeling such that we have direct access to the 'felt sense'. This allows the unmet aspects of ourselves to unwind and be seen/felt and come home through the heart which is purified.
Some speak of 'prayer of the heart'. wordless prayer in the silent presence.
Others speak of 'staying in the 'I am' or staying in the 'presence'. others speak of 'all encompassing lucid attention'.
and others 'turning back the light'.
I think these are pointing to the same experience.
I am glad for your comment. I don't know if you are right, but I follow the teaching of Nisargadatta Maharaj. My understanding is proceeding quickly after so many years of reaching a limit. I know now (not as a concept) that we are the same consciousness. I am consciousness, not the body. I've been reflecting on the young woman who feels unattractive. She doesn't understand herself, but has courage to speak about it. Thank you.
Yes Nisargadatta speaks of staying in the 'I am' (pure beingness).
Also my intent is not to "be right" but to put it out there as something to be tested and verified in one's own experience.
That is the only thing that counts. For anyone that would actually have ears to hear it would save them endless rabbit holes and needless searching.
Yes, I write poems about my own experience of his teachings and would appreciate your comments, if you would care to read.
I'm touched that you would ask me to read your poetry but I'm honestly not qualified to comment in any way. I am only really discovering myself that the whole thing is about the heart.
I think the entire essence of Nisargadatta teaching is contained in the line 'stay with the I am'. Ultimately to go beyond the 'I am'...which there is also some reference to in western mysticism such as Meister Eckhart' 'cloud of unknowing'.
My favourite Nisargadatta teaching is: (to paraphrase)
The door that locks you in is the same door that sets you free. The 'I Am' is the door. Stay at it until it opens.
❤️👌🐦⬛
Oh how I love this post! A celebration of connection and bearing witness.
And I couldn't agree more with this: "July 4th has taken on a completely different meaning to me as an adult. In my view the public has been sold an illusion of self-governance, sovereignty and freedom."
This was another excellent post Madhava.
I think we need a lot more people like Kip Clark
Holding space for someone, is both an honour, a gift, and a great responsibility. We honour each others courage and unique experience on earth. We receive a gift of perspective, allowing us to evolve as an individual and therefore collective. The responsibility comes in resisting the urge to problem solve, because that action negates the gift and loses the connectedness.
In this modern society, we inherently look to "fix", rather than "hold", because since industrialisation, we are time poor and intentionally have zero space for contemplation or listening.😉
We don't cause "trouble" or question the system when you have no time to stop and consider the system itself.😐
Isn't that convenient for the system..
That's why philosophy was killed.😉
Thank you for noticing Kip's honourable actions and hopefully he'll start a movement towards tthinking and listening spaces again.
#follownone #mistakeswereNOTmade
I suspect the course of a few lives will have been changed as a result of the conversations described. A few degrees of change- creates an angle that eventually widens greatly, taking us to an entirely different end point.
Touching.
I really love this post and find it so interesting that we wrote very similar pieces on the same day. Clearly, it’s bubbling up from the collective .🙏🏼♥️
I hope you are right about the 'bubbling up', Jilli.
Being Part of the Solution; Not the Problem
“The further you live away from your neighbours, the more you want to get to know them”. Which begs you consider the opposite. Having a good neighbour is different than being one. Not only that, but the last thing you would want is to squander your reputation with your only link to civilization. Rip them off, and others will soon know. Then you must consider the role you play in making this a just world or the problem-filled opposite that we endure.
Consider the life of a Thule Inuit (Eskimo), before there were steel axes for stone age societies. There, you lived like a king in an austere but beautiful land, or not even land, just frozen water. Your lively hood was on or even in the water, you lived in a house of snow, hunted sea mammals to feed your family and fed plentiful fish to your dog team. When possible, a skin boat (which you built, having seen one once before) carried you precariously over the water, where you not only survived, but thrived.
Grouped together, the best hunter became the leader of the people: not elected mind you, but chosen by those starving and desperate to learn the technology of seal hunting, that separated those living from the also-rans.
Though not Christian, still they exemplified a coherent solution to life’s many problems with magnificent parallels to us. The same morality, ethics, (well, they did share their wives with strangers) and family-centred life that we cherish. Like us, they were stardust (what else?), shaped by the forces that be, with no warfare, no elections, no sheriff and no administrative state (not) serving others, but serving themselves at the expense of their duty to those they served. This is the definition of PARASITISM, which our ancestors solved long ago with the introduction of sex and diploid reproductive differentiation. Countering this type of life-sucking social force will require something equally revolutionary if we are to repent, acknowledge sin and survive what we have allowed to become extant..