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Continuing conversation with Tim K. on Morris Berman’s Wandering God: A Study in Nomadic Spirituality.
Part One: The Empty Hand of Karate (0 – 20 mins)
Politics of power, delayed return & immediate return societies, surpluses & the loss of egalitarianism, nomadism as a natural leveller, a life on the move, power as coercion, the invisibility of other forms of power, the empty hand of karate, a biological basis to egalitarianism, the Dumbar number.
Part Two: The Destruction of Trust (20 mins – 52 mins)
Brian Hayden & the accumulators, the big man’s love substitute, the origin of evil, the Marxist view, Christian doctrine, the cooperation between God & the Serpent, trauma & the family unit, the destruction of trust, a tendency to contract, a failed prototype, the temptation of alienation, the original projection, an aggrandizer-created society, finding one’s tribe, monastic life, living in paradox, family patterns, the drive of dissatisfaction.
Part Three: The Fallacy of the Archaic revival, (52 mins – 1 hr 25 mins)
Disengaging from culture, Jasun’s travels, seeking secret knowledge, a quest for alienation, an alternative to suicide, fission & fusion, unitive trance, religion & straying from the natural, the song-lines, wandering as original harmony, when the human race sat down, shamanic dabbling, non-causative rituals, a seizing of credit, the garbage-man, thrift store shamanism, shamanism & charlatanism in Guatemala, sitting vs. walking meditation, Dave Oshana on meditation, thoughts as off-gassing, life in the womb, submerged in existence, unhealthy mother bonds, the cord to animal alertness, group think, enter the demagogue.
Part Four: When Knowledge Becomes Instinct (1 hr 25 – end)
A life in philosophy, selective reading, Wittgenstein, problematology, sharpening the bullshit detector, evading gurus, the worship of knowledge, the original sin, synthesizing knowledge, caution with the occult, Castaneda, living without certainty, an instinct & knowledge continuum, the burden of knowledge, seeking satiety, developing mastery, the lens of learning, working on mystery, tacit knowledge.
Dark Ages America (Morris Berman’s site).
Songs: “Pirates” by Entertainment for the Braindead; “Sugar” by Big Blood; “Let Your Hammer Ring” by Monkey Warhol; “Changes” by Short Hand.
There seems to me a danger with taking on more and more concepts, ideas, different reality goggles/lenses, etc that they end up clogging us up (/keeping us asleep and/or weighed down) and reinforcing a way of interfacing with reality through the head space/homunculus. — of course there are practical reasons for holding on to the concepts etc required for the state of focused awareness insisted upon by our culture, economic system, etc. But is there a way of continuing to refine our ideas, understanding, etc at the same time as purging enough of our un-needed concepts to remain light, open and sensitive and thereby more inclined to slip into unfocused awareness.. bringing it back to nomadism the thing that’s worked for me in the past is big changes in my circumstances, e.g. breaking up with a long-term girlfriend and travelling to a different continent… is there something about putting down roots which naturally encourages us more into our head?
Hey Bonce,
Aren’t you splitting up your whole being into separate parts if you reject your head? Why reject the head – ability to reason and discern? In so called enlightenment the head (thinking) does not go away never to be seen again. The ability to discern – decide based on moral reasoning – is what makes you a human soul.
Sure that makes total sense — but I’m not rejecting the head as such… the idea is that the awareness has the potential to in-corporate the head (left and right brain in balance), rest of the body along with the soul/imaginal (which seems to receive and communicate with the earth’s / universe’s transmission as well) but at present the awareness has (at least when not asleep) narrowed down to something like 70% left brain, 25% right brain, 3% body and 2% soul/imaginal on an average day — in such a climate I’m wondering whether taking on more and more ideas and concepts (having a focus on those things) could actually be unhelpful in our attempt to expand our awareness beyond our heads… the problem is the labyrinth is so addictively fascinating…
“the awareness has the potential to in-corporate the head (left and right brain in balance), rest of the body along with the soul/imaginal”
Not only does it have the potential, it is actually being that right now for everyone. You would not be aware of those things you listed if awareness wasn’t aware of them. The problem is people get lost in their imagination, usually in imaginary scenarios of how they are, or will, appear to others.
That’s pretty much it in a nutshell. All self-reflection is imaginary. If you are self-conscious, you are lost in your imagination. That’s why it is good to get out of yourself – not think about yourself for awhile, if it’s possible. We are pretty addicted to thinking about ourselves, mostly along the lines of how we appear to others, or want to appear to others. When the truth is we are formless awareness misidentifying with the forms within awareness. Formless awareness is what we are all being right now. Enlightenment is the recognition of this fact and that’s all it is – a recognition. Recog-nizing the facts of our identity. Then, thinking is used for what it is good for, like math, getting the groceries, basically everything you did before, just without the incessant self-reflecting due to misidentification with forms. You can’t know formless awareness because it is not a form, but you can know when you are being it.
There’s nothing wrong with focused awareness, as opposed to unfocused awareness. In fact, what usually gets in the way of focused awareness is self-reflection, which leads to the unfocused awareness of dissociation.
I wonder if part of the answer might be to re-conceive concepts, etc. (Including this one) In such a way that would encourage us not to reify them but rather seen them as being relational, pliable resonances, expressions and/or agreements as opposed to something that has a fixed and/or concrete and/or independent reality — that alone won’t be enough to release the narrowed awareness but to remind ourselves of it could help breath space into the head and prevent it from becoming too clogged??
Slightly late to this discussion. Recent Joe Rogan podcast with Brian Muraresku & Graham Hancock seems relevant, even more so in relation to “The Power of Ritual in Prehistory: Secret Societies and Origins of Social Complexity”:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gzAQ7SklDxo