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Let Yourself Be Worthy

Gary Z McGee
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7
Let Yourself Be Worthy

“The least of things with a meaning is worth more in life than the greatest of things without it.” – Carl Jung

Pretend I’m an enlightened Yogi-Zen Master sitting high on a jagged, wind-blasted, unforgiving mountain. You’ve traveled through hell and brimstone to reach the top. The path was filled with a plethora of trials and tribulations.

You’re now exhausted, covered in sweat, and seeking only one thing: wisdom. Imagine me illuminated, meditating, glowing like a fractal-Buddha. My wrinkles, my long gray beard and my wise eyes staring down the improbable universe that surrounds us.

You are taken aback, astonished by my vibrant, thunderously quiet energy. You’ve come for answers. And though you’re skeptical, your curiosity trumps your doubt. The stories you’ve heard about me could no longer be ignored.

And so you ascended the mountain, and now you’re standing in front of me, nearly out of breath, and you ask:

“Oh wise master, how do I conquer fear, guilt, shame, and attachment?

I look down at you from my precarious stone perch, eyes blazing with thousand-year-old wisdom. Moments go by without a word. The silence is deafening. Finally you can take it no longer,

“What,” you plead, “what is the answer?”

I open my mouth as if to speak. More moments go by. Seconds pass as if in infinities. Then, finally, I say only four words: Let yourself be worthy.

That’s right! You want to conquer fear, guilt, shame, attachment? Let yourself be worthy. You want to break mental paradigms and stretch comfort zones? Let yourself be worthy.

You want to think outside of boxes and hijack evolution into revealing its secrets? Let yourself be worthy. You want to discover love and recondition preconditions? Let yourself be worthy.

You want to usurp thrones, burn down high-horses, and change the world? Let yourself be worthy. The irony is that you just climbed a MOUNTAIN! That very act was an act of self-worth. I mean, the very act of climbing that mountain was an act of conquering fear, and letting go of guilt, shame, and attachment.

You had the answer within you all along.

You let yourself be worthy of climbing that mountain, only to find that the journey WAS/IS the thing. My answer “let yourself be worthy” is the answer to almost any “how to” question one could ask.

All too often we live slow, inert, humdrum lives, grinding our way through a nine-to-five day, oblivious to what lies outside our comfort zones. We are mostly ignorant to what looms outside the almighty “box” of the status quo.

We tend to be consumed by our over-consumption. We’re more inclined to decline into the quotidian stagnation of our habits, than to rise up and “seize the day.” That is, unless we allow ourselves to be worthy.

The beauty of it is that nobody else gets to dictate our own worth. We may give into people’s opinions on the matter, but when it really comes down to it, we are the ones who allow ourselves to be worthy or not. Every single one of us has the capacity to “right the ship.”

Every single one of us has the potential to “change the world.” We just have to allow ourselves to do it.

We have to give ourselves permission to become game-changers. Otherwise, we’ll just keep playing the same old boring games. We are, each of us, valuable. We are, each of us, precious contributors.

But it is up to each of us alone to wrestle whatever inner-demon needs to be wrestled, in order to clear the path for our potential to shine. Fear, guilt, shame, grief, lies, illusions, ego-attachment; all these things dissolve in the face of self-worth.

Embrace your fear and insecurities. Embrace your anger and your doubts. Dance them into something worthwhile. Transform the fear into courage by letting yourself be worthy. Transform the anger into passion by letting yourself be worthy. Dance with the fire. If it burns you to ashes, rise like a phoenix. Life is too short to live it second-guessing your authenticity.

Your unique gift to the world simply cannot be given if you’re worried about the nature of the gift. You are here to shake things up and create something that nobody else can. Stop holding yourself back.

Let your fingerprints glimmer under the black light of everything you love. Seize your life by seizing the day by seizing the moment. Fall in love with yourself all over again. Be fierce. Be brilliant. Be extraordinary. But first, let yourself be worthy.

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Restore your Self worth
Be your own hero

Existential Crisis and How to Overcome it

Juan Pablo Hern
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12
Existential Crisis and How to Overcome it

An existential crises is that point in our lives where we encounter the absurd as a formidable opponent. It has crept into our lives, uninvited, and challenging the very meaning of existence. The crisis is strong: it can take away the colors of the world around us making it dull. Time, rather than a friend can become the enemy, and life, rather than a blessing, turns into a problem.

Crisis occur either when the answers to our fundamental questions are found or not found, either way, it poses a challenge that involve the whole of our being. Once we have emerged victorious, we feel a huge amount of vital energy that drives us to self-fulfillment.

We face questions like: what does it mean to be alive, what does it mean to be existing as a human being? What is my purpose? Is there a set of predetermined meaning or is it something that we construct with our own convictions?

Existential is a philosophical current captured mainly in literary works, which revolves around how we experience life with our human condition, that is, life as we live it, alongside with the good and troublesome parts.

The premises few of the philosophers talk about are brave ones, usually stressing on liberty and dealing with nothingness. One of them was the Danish philosopher, Søren Kierkegaard, also known as the “father of existentialism.” He proposed that we can “operate” within three ontological stages, which are –

soren-kierkegaard-philosopher1) The aesthetic: characterized by sensual quests and having vague determination in life. Life in this stage is frugal and vaporous.

2) Then comes the ethical stage: It is lived when there are commitments in our lives. It can be things such as ethical principles, societal obligations that gives meaning to all our actions, which in turn build our life like a project, solid and rigid and bound with compromises.

3) Finally comes the religious stage: This is the stage when one falls into a deep love for life and for others, nothing is burdensome and everything feels joyous; life is no longer a moral battle that need to be implemented but rather a phenomena worthy of veneration.

The movement between the stages is done through “leap of faith,” which is a possible means for an individual to reach a higher stage of existence that transcends and contains both an aesthetic and ethical value of life.

It is a radical metamorphosis that would make ourselves look at our past selves like the butterfly would see the caterpillar. The only sins in life are to “downgrade ourselves” from one stage to another: for we are losing a precious modality of being.

Meaning of life existential crisis

Another existentialist was Jean Paul Sartre, a great French philosopher from the 20th century who had some beautiful views, that were forged while struggling with the factual and ideological calamities faced during the World War II.

He wrote some amazing plays, like “The Flies” where he sought to create a brave ideological model that could cope with the devastation in a post-war period. One of his other works “No exit,” emphasized the existentialist idea that people are judged solely on the things they have done. (like José Ortega y Gasset said: I am I and my circumstances).

He said that freedom is fueled by the fact that we are a conundrum, a postulation that evades solution. Emerging out of uncertainty we have no essence. He said, “Existence precedes essence.” We exist, but not as a fixed thing, we have to build ourselves standing on nothingness, and not on any set of characteristics. Our destiny (not in a deterministic way, but rather as a hardwired potentiation) is to be free!

While the Spanish novelist Miguel de Unamuno captured the struggle of an existentialist dealing with external forces, that seek to bend our path towards self-realization. In one of Unamuno’s key works, “Mist,” there is a character Augusto that rebels against the author. Having heated debates, Augusto asserts that he exists, and therefore, he is free to take the course of his life into his own hands.

We have our own perspectives; in fact, there must be as many perspectives on existence as there are people who are and will exist. But regardless, when we encounter a crisis, a question that seems like a formidable opponent, there is always a way to defeat it: go within.

I propose the following method: Let us stop trying to find a solution to the big questions in life. Instead of finding what life is, we have to be life. Just like the moon shines, and the fish swim, each of us have profound passions, follow them, it is to do our dharma.
The-meaning-of-life-is-just-be-alan-watts
To follow one’s passions is to open the inner door to the outer world; and when we do this, we start extending ourselves into the outer world. It is by connecting with oneself that we can see how it can be absurd to ask for the meaning of life, for you already know what it is and you can base it on the warm feeling you get in your stomach once you stop holding back on what really moves you.

It is true that to have a direction is important. As Seneca de Younger once said: “if one does not know to which port one is sailing, no wind is favorable.”

Eight Signs You may be Experiencing a Spiritual Awakening

Gary Z McGee
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33
Eight Signs You may be Experiencing a Spiritual Awakening

Spiritual awakening is a slow and sacred process of transformation, when you realise the importance of connecting with the inner power and listening to yourself, instead of what the world tells you to do and become.

Authenticity is what you seek, and befriending your inner demons is what you strive to do.

“Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.” ~ Miles Kington

Here are 8 signs you may be experiencing a spiritual awakening

1. You’re more in touch with your spiritual foundations through transformative meditation:

You realize, as Jung noted, that “the experience of the Self is always a defeat for the Ego.” And through the seven primary chakras you are becoming one with the cosmos, receptive to stimuli to which, in the time before, you were insensate.

You’ve felt the powerful kundalini energy rising up from your roots, passing through the sacred waters of the sacral, basking in the fire of the solar plexus, breathing in the vital breath of the heart, absorbing the ethereal voice of the throat, pouring through the dissolution of the Third Eye, and spilling up and out like a mighty fountainhead into the greater cosmos.

2. You are beginning to want more freedom and less stuff:

Your heart is not heavy with materialistic burden. You understand that ownership-based love can never be true love. You realize like Osho said, “Love is not about possession. Love is about appreciation.” And although there are some people in the world who are so poor all they have is money, you continue to love without expecting anything in return.

You have frequent, overwhelming episodes of appreciation for the abundance the natural world has to offer. Like Gandhi, you live simply so that others may simply live.

3. You realize that the door to your prison cell is wide open (and always has been):

seeing-the-light
Rumi, “Why do you stay in prison when the door is wide open?”

You have a growing propensity toward breaking mental paradigms, stretching comfort zones and thinking outside the current box. You have a tendency to think and act spontaneously rather than from fears based on past experiences, and you are constantly attempting to recondition any and all preconditions.

You enjoy each moment, relishing, in carpe-diem-ecstasy, your bountiful freedom. It was Rumi who asked, “Why do you stay in prison when the door is wide open?”

4. The world is a playground, and you are on recess:

You don’t take yourself too seriously. You realize that, though hard work is necessary, sincere play is paramount. You understand that play is the only way that the highest intelligence of humankind can unfold.

Your sense of humor has become your safety net. You understand that sincerity is primary and should always trump seriousness. Like Nietzsche wrote, “The struggle of maturity is to recover the seriousness of a child at play.”

5. You have acquired the counterintuitive practice of relishing in your mistakes:

We all make mistakes. Sometimes the mistakes we make are huge, like overeating, or putting all our eggs in one basket. Sometimes the mistakes we make are small, like eating too many beans, or making a wrong turn at Albuquerque.

But you appreciate the strange flukes and foibles that knock you off course or lead you astray. These can be setbacks or stepping stones. It’s up to you which. But you have discovered the capacity to use them as stepping stones.

Wanderer above the Sea of Fog painting by Caspar David Friedrich
Wanderer above the Sea of Fog painting by Caspar David Friedrich

6. You have an overwhelming feeling of being connected with others and nature:

You realize, as Aldo Leopold did, that “The land is not a commodity that belongs to us; it’s a community to which we belong.” You are becoming more aware of your connection to the community and cosmos. Your ego-centric tendencies are fast dissolving into eco-centric magnanimity.

You realize, as Darryl Anka surmised, that, “Everything is energy and that’s all there is to it. Match the frequency of the reality you want, and you cannot help but get that reality. It can be no other way. This is not philosophy. This is physics.”

7. You understand that the journey is indeed the thing:

You’ve discovered that most of your pleasure comes not from your achievement of a goal, though there is some pleasure that comes from that, but from the process of achieving that goal. It’s not just that you are on a journey; it’s that you are the journey.

You are not simply crossing the bridge from animal to Over-man (Nietzsche’s Übermensch), you are the “bridge” itself. Indeed, you understand – from balls to bones, ovaries to marrow – that the glue that binds finitude with infinity is the human torn between being both an animal and a god.

8. You’d rather be slapped with the truth than kissed with a lie:

You embrace the pain that comes from knowledge and laugh at the bliss born out of ignorance. You accept that pain is a side effect of doing what you love, knowing that pain is merely the hard center of love that must be embraced, softened and transformed into wisdom.

You have an appreciation for truth that trumps any amount of pain or suffering that’s necessary to achieve it. Like the Dread Pirate Roberts says to the princess in the Princess Bride, “Life is pain, princess. Anybody who tells you otherwise is selling something.”

Image Source:
Spiritual Awakening
Wanderer above the Sea of Fog painting by Caspar David Friedrich
Spiritual Awakening Image
Spiritual Awakening Art

Saving Gaia: Disassembling the Man-machine

Gary Z McGee
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9
Saving Gaia: Disassembling the Man-machine
resurrection_of_gaia
Resurrection of Gaia

“Nature has neither core nor skin: she’s both at once outside and in.” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

Wild nature and human nature are both becoming endangered species. As other species die all around us, lost forever in the biological ether, we seem to be quite fit in our survival. Indeed, we even seem to be prospering. But it is now becoming apparent that there’s a glaring sickness at the heart of the human condition: we’ve confused the survival of the fittest with those that kill. And so everything dies around us while we prosper.

While we plunder and horde, the world becomes more and more depleted. While we go through the culturally prescribed motions of conquer, control, consume, destroy, repeat; the world goes through the motions of dying. The irony of this is that eventually we too will become depleted, and we too will die, as nature is a finite resource (although gargantuan in its capacity) that needs time to replenish.

Yin Yang of World Hunger by Deevad
Yin Yang of World Hunger

Because of this we are approaching a bottleneck of cataclysmic proportions. On the one side is the man machine, fueled and ruthlessly efficient at taking. On the other side is nature (to include human nature), fuel itself, and exhaustibly giving. Daniel Quinn created the concepts “takers” and “leavers” in his novel Ishmael that reflects this dynamic quite well.

The man machine takes, stockpiles, and then takes some more. Nature gives, renews, and then gives some more. But nature is not an infinite resource. It takes time to renew itself. And the man machine is consuming faster than nature has time to replenish its resources.

The concepts “nature” and “human nature” are interchangeable here. The man machine is made up of aspects of human nature, but is not itself human nature. The man machine is a cultural accumulation of old bad habits passed down and spoon-fed into new bad habits, decorated with a plethora of unhealthy ideologies and mental paradigms rooted in parochial ignorance. It uses stopgap dogmatic rigidness and fear-tactic ruthlessness to keep itself entrenched.

It has become a “machine” because it has become heartless and inhumane. The irony is that it is held-up by billions of people (takers) who have hearts, who have human nature, who love and hunger and hurt. But this is also the beauty of it: that it IS held up by people with hearts who can, at any moment, shrug away the outdated, unhealthy world view of the man machine, and adopt a new healthier, more holistic way of being and becoming (leavers); a mature way that strives for equilibrium between nature and the human soul; a way that teaches us to, as Gandhi once said, “live simply so that others can simply live.”

The tragedy of our times is that we (society) live and die for the man-machine. Instead of the machine being a tool for us to use, we have become a tool for the man-machine to manipulate. The tragedy of this is that life itself has become bureaucratic, which brings about absolute decay and crushes the independence of the individual. No less vividly, is its effect on all order of things – from the ecological and economic, to the psychological and spiritual.
life-and-death
When it comes down to it, we are made of the earth. We are the earth’s highly evolved conscious organs. Our eyes and brains are extensions of her miraculous biology. Our knowledge is her knowledge, and we have a duty to her. Why are we burdened with this duty?

Because, as the most powerful animal to have ever been born from her, we have the capacity to know that we know, and therefore the power to destroy. This power can knock us out of balance with nature and alienate us from each other, or it can bring us back into balance with each other and the biosphere.

This power gives us a responsibility to maintain a balance between nature and the human soul. Her soul is our soul. We must become caretakers of that soul instead of destroyers of it. That is why disassembling the man-machine – the heartless, exploitative, and deeply violent monster that we, as a culture, have created – is so important.

Image Source:

Yin Yang of World Hunger by Deevad

Resurrection of Gaia by Billelis

Life and Death

Magic Mushrooms: A Catalyst for Human Evolution

Juan Pablo Hern
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15
Magic Mushrooms: A Catalyst for Human Evolution

magic_mushroom_by_jondaleIt was a glorious morning in late August when me and my friends went mushroom hunting in the meadows in the outskirts of my place in Mexico. We searched in the patches of tall grass left uneaten by the cows that looked at us uninterested while ruminating. Hidden inside these tall patches of grass, there were large bodies of cow dung.

Mushrooms feed on cellulose, that is why they grow there. Cellulose is broken down by the cow’s digestive system to facilitate the growth of mushrooms, and it is the excess of nitrogen in the soil around the dung that keeps the cows away from eating the grass.

We collected the mushrooms filled with a mix of veneration and enthusiasm and then proceeded to a nearby forest where we ingested them.

I had taken a couple of psychedelics before, but nothing had such a strong effect as these mushrooms. Gradually, geometrical patterns of previous unseen hues and of complicated shapes twirled and tinkled.

My body felt a bit like rubber and I was yawning a lot. Everything seemed to breathe and was alive and conscious. When I went into a deeper stage, there was no longer an “I” but a “we” – me, my friends and the forest became a single unity, rejoicing in the mystery of existence.

Even though the effect of mushrooms has now long faded away, the insight that I gained from the experience is still with me: I carry it around as precious wisdom. It was a life-changing experience. It really was!

R. Gordon Wasson, an American author and ethnomycologist, played a vital role in spreading awareness of the existence of psychoactive mushrooms to a wide audience. He, like me, was profoundly touched by his first experience with magic mushrooms. It steered his life towards the study of the relationship between mushrooms and humanity (ethno-mycology).

Amanita Muscaria mushroom

He soon discovered that the magic mushrooms, that can be categorized as psychedelics, have a long and important relationship with mankind. For example, the Aztecs and Mayans incorporated its usage in their rituals of worshiping, divination and even, just for the fun of it. Similarly, the people of Siberia had a religious relationship with the mushroom Amanita Muscaria.

Here in Mexico if you take a look at the 100 peso bill, one can see how the usage of these mushrooms are incorporated into the culture of the inhabitants before the Spanish came.

A statue of Xochipilli can be seen on the bill, sitting down, in ecstasy, displaying ominous wise eyes. He is the Aztec god of art, games, beauty and flowers and on his skin we can see the image of various entheogens used by the Aztecs, like the mushroom and other ethnobotanicals.

Wasson got hold of an essay by Richard Shultes, an ethnobotanist and a psychedelic pioneer, where he described the existence of magic mushrooms and of people who were using them in a ritualistic manner. He went to Mexico to pursue the validation of his thesis.

In Huatla, Oaxaca, he met the legendary healer Maria Sabina and attended one of her healing ceremonies called velada (roughly translates into evening event) where he experienced the “childrens” as Maria Sabina called them with affection.

Gordon Wasson receiving mushrooms from Maria Sabina
Gordon Wasson receiving mushrooms from Maria Sabina

Wasson then published his findings in Life magazine in 1957, featuring him on the cover. This was the moment when the existence of these mushrooms gained attention by the general public. It subsequently sparked interest among many hippies and psychonauts, who traveled to Mexico in pursuit of these magic mushrooms.

Wasson also postulated that an ancient drink called soma, was actually made out of a magic mushroom. As we can see from the following quote, it seems to have given the drinkers many insights and made them have some sort of metamorphosis:

“We have drunk Soma and become immortal; we have attained the light, the Gods discovered.
Now what may foeman’s malice do to harm us? What, O Immortal, mortal man’s deception? (Rigveda (8.48.3))”

Soma is important because it is a crucial source of inspiration for the people who wrote the Vedas, ancient texts that originated in India, making up the oldest scriptures of Hinduism (around 1st century B.C).

The other thesis is described in the book “The Road to Eleusis” (having Albert Hoffman, the discoverer of LSD and C.A.P. Ruck as a collaborators). He makes the hypothesis that a drink called ‘kykeon’ was similarly made out of a fungal parasite of barley called ergot (it contains LSA, the precursor of LSD). Similar to the Soma, this drink allowed people to peek into the after-life.

Eleusinian-Mysteries-greece
The Eleusinian Mysteries were initiation ceremonies held every year for the cult of Demeter and Persephone based at Eleusis in ancient Greece

This drink seem to be used during the Eleusinian Mysteries (initiation ceremonies held every year for the cult of Demeter and Persephone based at Eleusis in ancient Greece). We do not know much about it since it was a well-kept secret and those who divulged the core ritual received death penalty. What we do know, is that this festival was a fundamental part of the ancient Greek culture.

Terence McKenna, another mushroom enthusiast, also hypothesized that the Eleusinian Mysteries took place under the effect of some substance that came from mushrooms (although he thought that they were some sort of Psilocybe kind). He said that the mushroom was not only a part of ancient cultures, but the very reason behind our advanced cognitive capacities.

His theory is often referred as the “Stoned Ape Theory of Human Evolution”. He theorized that the Homo Sapiens stumbled with the species Psilocybe Cubensis and started ingesting.

The effects of the mushroom that address fundamental facets help us become Homo Sapiens by modulation, our sense of ego, for example, promoting social bonding; similarly, language, could have triggered something in our psyche that allowed us to reach a fundamentally higher level of communication.

Nowadays psilocybin, one of the main alkaloids that most magic mushrooms have, is being researched for its medical uses. Research has shown that it can certainly help patients with terminal diseases come to terms with life. Also, it can help get rid of depression, anxiety and other unnecessary psychological habits.

Microscopic-view-of-mycelium
Microscopic view of Mycelium

Mushrooms are truly wonderful beings. What we usually consider to be a mushroom, for example, the ones we buy in the supermarket, are actually just their fruiting bodies. Their purpose is the dispersing of spores in to its surroundings; but if we look underground, we find that under the fruiting body there are complex networks of interlocking tubular cells called mycelium.

They grow from the mushroom’s spores, and quickly become a happy community of selfless cells that work in harmony towards their goals.

Nutrients and cellular compounds travel along these tubular networks to help the growth of mushrooms, aimed at the abortion of further nutrients. Yes, but why would a mushroom put so much of its energy into producing a substance that has no benefit to it?

I like to think that it is their gift to us, in order to open our mind and heart. It is the realization that we can be like mushrooms, to work as a community, that’s what we learn when we eat them. Rather than being separate beings from one another, we are fundamentally united: Interdependence is more important than independence to archive realization in a broader scale.

Our actions spread like spores do, let us put some good vibes into it. The cosmic sacrament with magic mushrooms is available to us as a gift from the mushroom kingdom, let us be ready for it, let us allow the mushroom to give us their wisdom!

References:

Richard Schultes
Grodon Wasson
Terence McKenna
General Mushroom Knowledge

Image Source:

Maria Sabinas Picture
Mycelium
Mushroom Drawing
Eleusian Mysteries
Starry night
Amanita muscaria
Magic mushrooms

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