IT'S ALL AN ILLUSION

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I have a notion that human beings from earlier times were more intelligent than we are. We have this idea of 'primitive' cultures, and that flatters us. We are more 'advanced' because of our technological superiority. But that technological superiority has been driven by say .1% of the population. The rest of us just have to sit back and enjoy it. And enjoy the reduction in effort - the reduction in day-to-day creativities - that the machines, which many of us now serve, give us. So many of us need not concern ourselves too much with enough food on the table and shelter and danger any more. That has been one of the main drivers of this technological civilisation - to take us away from that edge of existence that demands we are creative.

Perhaps the first defining step in this process was the invention of agriculture. At that point we began to move away from nature as a benign force that provided the conditions for life, and in which we were embedded, into an 'other' that had to be worked and manipulated to provide what we needed. So the alienation from ourselves as an integral part of the natural world began.

And it began metaphysically with the fierce God of the Middle East, who allowed no other gods, and who cast us out of Eden, that natural balance with nature. I don't mean to suggest it was a bed of roses - far from it, the human ego and suffering has always been there. But we knew how to restore the balance when it was lost.

And with farming came an abundance of food, and with that came large societies. These communities could no longer be governed by human relationships, but required impersonal laws and remote authoritarian figures. And we are still subject to that.

This slight ramble came out of the idea that we are no longer as intelligent as we were. Apart from the lack of day-to-day creativity, our memories are no longer what they were. An Irish bard would have to remember hundreds of stories. We know bits and pieces at best. And with that came a coherence and a culture within a person that now we find instead spread among books - another technological 'advance'.

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I offer Shamanic consultations, usually by skype, in which we can talk over anything you want to talk over. I may use the Medicine Wheel, Journeying, Astrology, Tarot or anything that works. And it centres around listening to ourselves in a deep way. I work on a donation basis, and I am happy with whatever is easy for you: I love this work. Contact: BWGoddard1@aol.co.uk 
 

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I'll try and come back to my original starting point, which is that I was reading a review of a book on neuroplasticity, which is roughly the idea that our brains are far more flexible and adaptable than we think. Read 'My Stroke of Insight' by Jille Bolte Taylor (or watch her TED talk). Brain scientist has her left brain taken out by a stroke, experiences oceanic right brain consciousness that fundamentally changes her, and a few years later, after a mighty sustained effort, has created new pathways in her brain that give her a new left brain.

And the big simple truth that can be so hard to get is that it is the brain that continually dreams this 'objective reality' into being, that gives form and space and time and left and right to experience and then we naively assume it's real and not just an interpretation. It is blindingly obvious that this world is a construction of the brain, and that what is really going on is the biggest and most shocking mystery that you could think of - think Matrix - but I still meet otherwise intelligent people who think that the physical world is the real reality. The metaphysical naivety of much of humanity has to be seen to be believed. 

And back to where I started, yet again :) Neuroplasticity shows to me that the world we experience can be continually re-dreamed, it is an enormous power once you grasp it. It is what prayer and ceremony are about: the attempt to re-dream the world. And the best sort of prayer and ceremony also involve an alignment with the bigger dream of the universe, which is an even greater and more awe-inspiring mystery. Neuroplasticity isn't just about getting back to where we were before an injury. It is about the powers the brain has to create an entirely different reality for ourselves, that is aligned with how things are, as conceived by the much greater reality that surrounds our tiny human consciousness. Ordinary, conventional reality is a profound illusion. If you can start to get that, you have a bit of wisdom. A bit.