We’re all messy. We’re all struggling. We’re all flying high in some ways and falling flat on our faces in others. Nobody has it all figured out. It’s our job to cheer each other on, lift each other up, and push each other to keep giving it our best. It matters who we surround ourselves with… We need to be better to each other. We’re all we have.
~ Amy Weatherly
We’re all messy. We’re all struggling
4 Calming Nature Rituals to Keep you Centered in Chaos
Nature heals. It heals your soul, rejuvenates your spirit and calms your mind. The pandemic has taken a huge toll on everyone and during these tough times, when movement is restricted, everyone is functioning from home – two children, my mother and my own mind – it can spell havoc.
The hill, a few mins away from our place, has been my saving grace through these uncertain times. It has been a lifeline to regain sanity. Literally, all that has happened during the day, good or bad, arguments, complaints, just dissolves into thin air, when I step out into the open meadows.
The gentle breeze that blows on my face cleanses my mind like uprooting weeds from a flower bed that allows the flowers to blossom. The earth beneath my feet grounds me and strengthens my spirit, the dried branches and thorns on the path reminds me to tread with care and not give in to the fear of getting hurt.
The fresh air is like an antidote that washes away the toxicity of the mind. The grazing cattle, elusive peacocks and the chirping birds shows that in times of uncertainty there will still be moments of awe, wonder and beauty – don’t forget to savor those moments.
“Let us… seek peace… near the inland murmur of streams, and the gracious waving of trees, the beauteous vesture of earth, and sublime pageantry of the skies. Let us leave “life,” that we may live.” ~ Mary Shelley
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References
We Live in a Generation That is
We live in a generation that is highly skilled at allowing connections to fade away. Because of social media and cell phones, we think people are replaceable, and that’s silly. You cannot replace the energy of someone who is genuine especially if they’re putting the consistent effort out, to be in your life. Appreciate them, cherish them, those people are gold.
~ Sylvester Mcnutt
4 Ways to Transform the Self and Transcend
“Question everything. Learn something. Answer nothing.” ~ Euripides
There is a world beyond our perception, a world that is all at once far away, nearby, and invisible. It is there where infinity lives, where God dies and is reborn, where everything is connected to everything else.
This world sings with a voice older than worlds. It speaks with a silence louder than anything in existence. And yet, it can be heard. But to hear it, we must be using the correct technology: transcendent technology.
There are basically two types of transcendent technology to transform the self: soft and hard. Wilderness immersion, fasting, and drumming meditation are soft technologies that gently dissolve boundaries.
Hallucinogens, psychedelics, and other entheogenic tools are hard technologies that shatter the ego and break apart rigid perceptual paradigms of reality.
Either way, the purpose is to connect the wilderness within to the wilderness without; and to access the sacred coordinates of health, beauty, truth, and harmony. Let’s break it down…
Transform the Self with Wilderness Immersion:
“To put everything in balance is good, to put everything in harmony is better.” ~ Victor Hugo
Wilderness immersion is perhaps the most primary technology of transformation and transcendence. This is because it grounds us. It reveals that the flower of the inner self has always been connected to the roots of the outer self. Indeed. Our inner wilderness is a reflection of outer wilderness, and vice versa.
Solitude in the wild, away from the things of man, can trigger archetypal responses. It leverages our soul in the eternal, helping us relocate the creative energies of the ancient past with the updated present, where past-present-future are merely different faces of a single reality. It’s what Jean Gebser described as an “ever-present origin.”
Out there, immersed in the wild, a kind of ego-melting occurs that dissolves boundaries and reveals the infinite horizon between inner and outer experience. Small-picture belief expands into big-picture perception.
Answers become ashes through the fire of interconnected introspection, giving birth to transcendent questions that reorient the self. Indeed. Wilderness immersion will transform the self-as-ego into the self-as-cosmos.
Transform the Self with Fasting:
“Impermanence is more than an idea. It is a practice to help us touch reality.” ~ Thich Nhat Hanh
Fasting is a healthy transcendent practice overlooked by most people. It helps sharpen the edge of our awareness by launching us out of the unhealthy quick fix and instant gratification of our hyperreal consumerist lifestyles.
It is a potent act of cleansing. It empties the body of food so that the mind and soul can feed. The natural rhythms of the body are given the chance to melt into the natural rhythms of the interconnected cosmos, thus transforming perspective.
The absence of food, the loss of rigid mealtimes and the upset cycle of feeding, leads our mind and soul in search of sustenance elsewhere. We become open to next-level consumption, to higher forms of nourishment. Our stomachs turn outward, searching for the sacred. Lacking food, we hunger for a panacea, a magic elixir, a liquid ambrosia to quench our soul’s thirst.
Without the usual omnipresent feeding mode to occupy our time, we are given precious moments of inner reflection that can deepen our awareness of a hunger greater than our own—the sacred hunger of the Earth’s need for harmony.
Transform the Self with Drumming meditation:
“Life is at its best when it’s shaken and stirred.” ~ F. Paul Pacult
Nothing shakes and stirs the self like a good drumming meditation. Especially in combination with Grandfather Fire.
Drumming meditation initiates a trance experience, a fantastic journey to an invisible but vitally real and important encounter with extraordinary states of awareness — altered, non-ordinary, and expansive. We are able to step outside of our ego-defined body and experience cosmic ecstasy. Joseph Campbell called this dimension, “the inner reaches of outer space.”
The deep rhythm of the drum acts like a boundary-crossing medium, or bridge, between worlds. From within the vibrations emerges the structure of self-reflective consciousness. It ignites our imagination.
A larger, more compelling reality comes into focus, illuminating a vastly expanded yet ultimately mysterious soul-centric reality that dwarfs the tiny ego-centric reality of Plato’s Cave (the codependent comfort zone that came before).
Rising on the higher cosmic frequencies of a drumming meditation, we experience the life-enhancing, game-changing, life-hacking harmony of the numinous. After which, we feel healed, reinvigorated, and reprogrammed.
Utterly shaken by the revelations we have experienced, life becomes silhouetted by a harmony of interconnectedness and a deeper sense of purpose emerges. This purpose compels us to create more meaning in our lives.
Transform the Self with Entheogenic tools
“Life lived in the absence of the psychedelic experience that primordial shamanism is based on is life trivialized, life denied, life enslaved to the ego.” ~ Terence McKenna
Hallucinogens, psychedelics, and other entheogenic tools constitute “hard” transcendence. They are “hard” because they shatter egoic predisposition and initiate an instant launch out of our comfort zone. They break apart our rigid understanding of the universe and open us up to the fountainhead of heightened states of awareness.
The world unhinges and then rehinges itself, revealing that we were always overly hinged (that is, contingent upon a single consideration). We transcend one-dimensionality and embrace multi-dimensionality. Or, as the Fang Tribe of the Gabon say, we “break open the head,” revealing Infinity to our otherwise finite-biased minds.
Entheogens have a huge advantage over the softer technologies of transformation and transcendence in that they produce profound dramatic effects on cue, every time. Where the softer technologies are a slog toward the numinous, the harder technologies are a guaranteed rush straight into the numinous.
From LSD to mescaline, from ayahuasca to shrooms, the entheogenic experience is extraordinary, launching us through the “hoop” of ourselves, propelling us over the hump of our ego’s fortified walls, catapulting us out of the rigid cannon of our indoctrinated canon. Where we are free to explore worlds literally beyond our dreams.
These tools create a telescope of the psyche, where we can gaze deeply into Campbell’s “inner reaches of outer space” and experience the outer reaches of inner-space, the profound union of the yin-yang self, merging and reemerging within and out of itself in an alchemical prima materia.
Thus, revealing the Great Mystery (mystereum magnum) of the captive world-soul—the “egg” of the self, from which emerges the mighty Phoenix of the liberated soul.
Image Source
Transformation by Maciej Wierzbicki
Masoud Kibwana – Synced Rhythm 2
Metamorphosis: Can One Really Love a Soul?
A Gist of the Metamorphosis
Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis, begins with a young man, Gregor Samsa, in bed waking up as a bug, unable to get out of bed as he lies on his back. Thinking it will all disappear he goes back to bed only to wake up late for work and yet still a bug.
What seems to begin with a mediocre story line turns into a gripping story based on human relationships in families and society. You see Gregor was the sole earning member of his family, who was staying in a job he hated to repay the debt of his father and hoping to give his sister a better life.
But then now as a bug he becomes dependent on his family, from being the provider he now has to be taken care of. Given food, his space has to be cleaned and most of all he has to be hidden because the very sight of him is repulsive.
How the dynamics change, with his father who wanted to get rid of him, his sister who from caring for him initial begins to hate him and his mother who wants to show him her affection but has a tough time showing it because she cannot stand the look of him.
The story ends with the family finally begins to enjoy life far more than when Samsa was providing for them after his death.
“He thought back on his family with deep emotion and love. His conviction that he would have to disappear was, if possible, even firmer than his sister’s. He remained in this state of empty and peaceful reflection until the tower clock struck three in the morning. He still saw that outside the window everything was beginning to grow light. Then, without his consent, his head sank down to the floor, and from his nostrils streamed his last weak breath.”
~ Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis
What is the meaning of Metamorphosis?
I would like to start with a very interesting fact, at the time of publishing, The Metamorphosis, Kafka ensured that the cover of the book would not have any representation of Gregor becoming an insect.
Franz Kafka wrote a letter that stated, “The insect itself is not to be drawn. It is not even to be seen from a distance.”
This made me wonder why would he not want to actually show the insect? It’s pretty obvious that the insect is a metaphor, but from the cover of the first published book, it looks like Gregor is having a break down.
While some say he did not transform physically and its more about Samsa’s mental state , its evident that Kafka’s story revolves around Gregor’s relationships before and after the transformation.
Metamorphosis, struck multiple chords for me, how lonely it can get when times are tough, how those who consider close to you and can also be family can end up being ungrateful.
I think there’s a special message here for selfless givers, Gregor kept giving selflessly, he gave up on his own dreams to make life comfortable for his parents and sister. Yet when he is incapable of supporting them, those who he hoped would take care of him ended up hating and abusing him.
Gregor on the other hand keeps wanting to provide for his family, when he finally accepts that he cannot be of value to them, he accepts that his death as his family wishes for will be of most use to the others and gives him no reason to live.
“We can’t carry on like this. Maybe you can’t see it, but I can. I don’t want to call this monster my brother, all I can say is: we have to try and get rid of it.”
~ Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis
You can say that Gregor experiences multiple deaths, through loneliness, through ostracization and finally his physical death. It’s hard to imagine that a book of under 100 pages can pack so much emotion, depth and insight into it. Here’s a little video that can help you get a feel of it.
Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis illustrated
Other metaphorical meanings of Metamorphosis
Since Kafka himself hasn’t given us an interpretation of The Metamorphosis, everyone who has read the book will probably have. Here’s few other meanings of Metamorphosis that are floating around the internet.
Metamorphosis was Anti-Capitalist
“What a fate: to be condemned to work for a firm where the slightest negligence at once gave rise to the gravest suspicion! Were all the employees nothing but a bunch of scoundrels, was there not among them one single loyal devoted man who, had he wasted only an hour or so of the firm’s time in the morning, was so tormented by conscience as to be driven out of his mind and actually incapable of leaving his bed?”
~ Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis
Gregor’s boss keeps knocking on the door, suspecting that he suddenly got lazy and doesn’t want to work any more. While Gregor himself hates his job and is waiting to exit it to follow his dreams.
His employer washes his hands off and doesn’t show up again after he sees him after his transformation. Could the Metamorphosis hold an anti-capatalist message, for someone who wants to see it that way, why not?
The book speaks about a lack of self-esteem or self-value
Although the book itself never speaks about why or how Gregor’s transformation takes place, Gregor has put his own life on pause to help his family. He puts his dream on hold as he saves up money for his sister to live her dream.
After his transformation he finds no reason to live because he only found his self-worth by giving, the moment he couldn’t provide any longer he ends up spending most of his time in a little corner in his room. Yet again another possibility!
Other theories explaining the meaning of Metamorphosis
There’s so much one can interpret when it comes to the human elements in the book, is it a metophor for aging. Is it picking on the industrial revolution taking place. Was it how he felt as he waited for return letters from his lover or was it a way to put forth details about his relationship with his father?
Revel in the fact that we will never know what really went on in Kafka’s mind when he wrote this book. All I can say its a phenomenal read and as a treat you can read the metamorphosis for free online.
“He thought back on his family with deep emotion and love. His conviction that he would have to disappear was, if possible, even firmer than his sister’s. He remained in this state of empty and peaceful reflection until the tower clock struck three in the morning. He still saw that outside the window everything was beginning to grow light. Then, without his consent, his head sank down to the floor, and from his nostrils streamed his last weak breath.”
~ Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis
Image Source:
Metamorphosis by Chryssalis
Metamorphosis cover design
