Cosmos Café [2019/10/01] – Ancient Philosophy and the Mystery of Our Senses

So Very True; like the Act of Turning Towards & Into the Skid on Black Ice,it needs to be done in every moment of Emotional Honesty,So Intense!,there’s that Gebser Intensity Thing again!

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I believe Kingsley would agree with both of you. I am reading his very short essay A Story Waiting to Pierce You in which he outlines the migration of seminal ideas from Mongolia to Greece as embodied in Pythagoras. This indigenous, shamanic tradition, created conditions for the first Axial Age. If I had not read this little book I would not have picked it up from the interview. Kingsley’s is a comparative approach, East and West and North and South are working out different dynamics but this is not ad hoc or unplanned. Each of us learns a language but no one knows how we do this. And we are transitioning to another kind of Being. What we need to do is refine our perceptual capacities. See, hear, feel more, much more, than what we are doing currently in our couch potato worlds, passively absorbing the bad vibes of a culture that has lost it’s way, glued to the small rectangle and grids of flat screens, destroying depth perception, rhythms, affective tones. Luckily, there are many ways of cleansing our perception.

I once was addicted to sunglasses. During the 80’s I was out late and didn’t get up till noon. This was very common in the bohemian, gay, East Village, where I lived. We were performers at night and we partied until dawn. Live fast, die young.

Then, one morning, out in the park, I took off my shades, and my shirt and was almost blinded by the light. I vowed to get rid of the shades and to moderate the day/night imbalance. It took about a week before my eyesight self corrected and my child-like love of color returned.

An exercise I use. Morning or afternoon, with closed eyes, face the sun, and give the eyes a gentle sun bath. Give soft attention to the space between the closed eyelids and the eye ball, and all of those rods and cones, that are stimulated. You may see flashes, or squiggles or odd shapes…do this for five minutes, then open eyes and look around your environment. What is happening to the optic nerve, which carries this stimulation to the rest of the bodymind…can return in visions and dreams.

I used lots of techniques for working with peripheral vision and for a time, a friend of mine, who wore glasses, worried that I was wasting my time, with all of this new age mumbo jumbo. The good news is that at 65 my muscle to fat ratio is excellent, I am drug free ( except for coffee and small amounts of red wine) and I have 20/20 vision. My skeptical friend’s eyesight has deteriorated further.

Recently, I read that Big Pharma is in trouble. They can’t produce a drug that outperforms placebos! So, perhaps we should throw away our Diagnostic Statistical Manual, flush the Xanax and Prozac down the toilet, and take off those dark shades. Cold showers, calisthenics, yoga and breath work, reciting poetry, drawing, can wake us up! We must learn how to vibrate that vagus nerve, and move into a Sunshine Society, that can love the light and the dark, the visionary and the mystical, with eyes open or closed.

My desired outcome, currently, is to balance Third Eye and Third Ear. I do this live, on the last call, with Marco. We are, in our dialogue, working with language and subtle senses.I hope we can continue in this direction.

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John from Empedocles: “if U press my words down unnderneath your sense-packed diaphram”…if U breathe “them into the belly”,then they stay with U & they will grow & they will change U…a description of words as seeds… Is how I ingest your words & others to the best of my Response-Ability.

This is the Other Third of Eye & Third Ear,the Poly Vagus Nerve might be the Third Gut…the include the binary & transcend so as to Participate in the ongoing Creation of the Cosmos Alive in the Eternal Orgasm.

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Looking forward to co-leading & Doodling on this Betwixt & Between moment of our Sixty -Five Years of Particitating in Cosmos this one & the One at Large.

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" Cultures are created and destroyed in ecstasy-and for every moment in between there is nothing that keeps the world alive aside from the breath of ecstatics." Peter Kinglsey

I want to explore ecstasy through somatic, perceptual, and cognitive dimensions. Perhaps, we can make contact with the Ancestors?

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Excellent John ,a skillful use of technology for Social Dreaming? This self (bodymind) named Michael is ready to Dance :dancer: & Sing!!!

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And I hope you will bring some crayons!

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Colored pencils & pad are layed out next to the computer…

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Been dwelling in a particular Tsalagee/Cherokee origin story…Alpha, if you will…but never thought to wonder if there is in the tradition any hint of an “Omega”, so to speak…

Yesterday I came across something roughly like this: you are on your way to what you always were, and will in your finite nature, though you keep coming closer, will neverquite get there. But in your infinite nature, you already are.

The Grandmother Spider creation story is (briefly) about her bringing a piece of the sun to all the relations, a live bit of the sun in a clay bowl which she makes from earth and water…a beautiful ray of the sun for light, colors, beauty, warmth, growth, pleasure…and completion of their natures. Now it seems some of our human relations are stealing particles of that sun-nugget for themselves and their selfish purposes, leaving the rest of us relations out in the cold, all our futures are looking dark and cold…
I’ll have to listen for, to dream on, what Spider might do in such a case as this…where, that is, the Story(her’s, our’s) might go from here…

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Thank you for this reminder, Maia! It is a good one. Thanks also for your observations re: sunglasses. I have taken to wearing sunglasses rather often for a variety of reasons—but today I deliberately left them home for my morning walk, and lo, all the colors, everything, was so much brighter!

It’s the most obvious things that can be a revelation sometimes.

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“the most obvious things…can be a revelation” is the kind of wisdom that comes to us the more (undistracted, offline) time we spend outside in the company of sunlight, air, earth, water…from avian singers toward whom our ears were tuned by evolution (not human speech or machine sound) to nearly invisible moss and lichen wildernesses…which make Earth so much more than merely habitable but, wondrous!
Howe reminds us that now, just as it seems that time is running out (personally, planetarily) is the time to reimagine Time itself, which can be wild or tamed, if we are fresh enough in our senses to perceive the differences. “Wherever I step I am stepping into a place that was just finished at the moment I arrived.” Fannie Howe, poet-philosopher, going on 80 years old.

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Is there a relationship between the mind of Joni Mitchell and of William Shakespeare and of you and I? I enjoyed today as we listened to the poets riff on cloudscapes

Both Sides Now by Joni Mitchell

Rows and flows of angel hair
And ice cream castles in the air
And feather canyons everywhere
I’ve looked at clouds that way

But now they only block the sun
They rain and snow on everyone
So many things I would have done
But clouds got in my way

I’ve looked at clouds from both sides now
From up and down and still somehow
It’s cloud’s illusions I recall
I really don’t know clouds at all

Moons and Junes and ferries wheels
The dizzy dancing way you feel
As every fairy tale comes real
I’ve looked at love that way

But now it’s just another show
You leave 'em laughing when you go
And if you care, don’t let them know
Don’t give yourself away

I’ve looked at love from both sides now
From give and take and still somehow
It’s love’s illusions I recall
I really don’t know love at all

MARK ANTONY

Eros, thou yet behold'st me?

EROS

Ay, noble lord.

MARK ANTONY

Sometimes we see a cloud that's dragonish;
A vapour sometime like a bear or lion,
A tower'd citadel, a pendent rock,
A forked mountain, or blue promontory
With trees upon't, that nod unto the world,
And mock our eyes with air: thou hast seen
these signs;
They are black vesper's pageants.

EROS

Ay, my lord,

MARK ANTONY

That which is now a horse, even with a thought
The rack dislimns, and makes it indistinct,
As water is in water.

EROS

It does, my lord.

MARK ANTONY

My good knave Eros, now thy captain is
Even such a body: here I am Antony:
Yet cannot hold this visible shape, my knave.
I made these wars for Egypt: and the queen,--
Whose heart I thought I had, for she had mine;
Which whilst it was mine had annex'd unto't
A million more, now lost,--she, Eros, has
Pack'd cards with Caesar, and false-play'd my glory
Unto an enemy's triumph.
Nay, weep not, gentle Eros; there is left us
Ourselves to end ourselves.
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Wayfaring Stranger is another song I love to play/sing, especially when I am wandering in the blue ranges…somehow singing sadness with all my bodymind often works the magic (I rarely believe it can beforehand) of shifting me into ultra-violet warm (pardoxically) with gold…

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and when shifting into ultra-violet warm( paradoxically) with gold…is there anything else about paradoxically?

And what happens to the wandering in blue?

You are offering examples, I believe, of synesthesia, which we “touched” upon briefly.

And that old song reminds me of the Gnostic yearning for liberation through direct knowing.

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" I know dark clouds will gather round me/I know my way is rough and steep/ but golden fields lie all around me… "

When we are in grief, as we are so often, it’s strangely healing to be met, to begin to move with music which matches exactly where we are…and yet…we are more whole at the end of the journey.
I love the singer’s voice in this version…I can hear his spirit, it feels like, in each syllable/note.
Thank you.

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