I have been following the interesting conversation that has evolved from Scene
7 regarding the question of inner and outer reality. John’s response to the
scene and focus on liquefaction or >luidity of reality as a result of the
breakdown of the concepts underlying it, as well as the sense of >ixity and
certainty that they serve to establish, is striking. He says that the way to
navigate this situation is “to >low with the words” and that “>low is the new
reality - the point of the breakdown of the old reality.” This leaves me
wondering if it is a necessary step in order to return to the “living energy” that
John has referred to in the past. Someone once told me that sur>ing involved
moving through a medium that was itself moving.
Along the way of the Fex & Coo narrative, this collapse of reality as we know it
has led to discussions about new words that are evolving out of the current
upheaval. “Neologisms” is the word that Paco has coined for the current
experience and future evolution of language and a new reality.
Tony asks the question, “What if the inner and outer reality are not separate?”
He goes on to describe the biological processes of cellular activity and how it
is a “seamless continuity” of phases that are “connected and balanced” in the
activity of living, dying and regeneration. We also see these processes in
Nature (or at least we used to) where the cyclical movement contains within it
these same phases.
Overall, it seems that humans experience the inner and outer reality as
separate because the rational mind has separated them conceptually and this
has led to the experience of duality. The interface between quantum physics
and some Eastern spiritual perspectives address the issue of transcending this
split in order to experience the interconnectedness of the inner and outer as a
whole living reality, which contains different dimensions within it.
Similar to Paco’s response to the ongoing conversation, a memory also
surfaced for me as I read the comments. My own experience related to the
question of inner and outer reality occurred at a >ive day Zen meditation
retreat (sesshin) I attended many years ago. Somehow, I managed to hurt my
knees after sitting for several hours the >irst day. I spent the next two days in
pain during sitting meditation (walking helped ease the pain) and mentally
struggled with it, hatching a plan to leave midway through the retreat. The
retreat was held at a house which had an aviary full of birds. Everyday at 4:00
p.m., the birds would break out in song. One bird in particular, a sparrow, sang
a beautiful song as its voice went higher and higher up to a certain point. The
day I had hatched my plan, while still struggling with the pain, the sparrow
began its song in the afternoon. As I listened to its song going higher, it got to
its usual stopping point. I didn’t think it could go much higher but it did and
when it did, as if breaking through it’s own sound barrier, something shifted in
me and I felt myself relax and let go into the pain and move through it. I then
found myself in a new space - a deeper state of mind - where the bird was no
longer outside of me but rather within me. I felt its song as though it were my
own - in other words, there was no separation between the sparrow and me.
After this experience, I was able to settle into the sitting meditation with my
mind open to what was occurring in the moment and experienced a profound
sense of aliveness and vibrating energy. I was still hobbling along physically
but not in pain. Something had shifted and left me in a deep state of openness,
clarity and vibrancy. The release or shift of energy that occurred from this
experience remained with me for some time and led to making some
important life changes.
As I thought about this experience and its relationship to Scene 7 regarding
the nature of reality, I realized that what had shifted in me was the sense of
separation between the inner and outer so that there was no boundary
between them. When Russ wrote, “. . . when things become more >luid, the
boundaries baring the full >lood of memory begin to breakdown,” it seemed to
re>lect in some way what I was sensing about the meditation experience.
Something shifts and then there is no boundary. The spaciousness of reality
opens up. The deeper mind that is spoken of in Zen teachings, I believe,
relates to this expansive reality that we are a part of and not apart from.
Estela’s New Post on “Inner and Outer”
6 Responses to “Estela’s New Post on “Inner and Outer””
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Estela, as I followed the flow of your words, I felt a movement start up in my heart again. I say “again” because lately, my heart has taken a battering. According to Jung’s admonition to wander the halls and streets of the world in order to know the psyche, I have over the decades lived this way and found that the darkness I encounter has now reached appalling, heart-crushing proportions. I go into areas such as the MMA world to listen to the rhetoric that is used against other human beings—appalling! And now I am having to deal with a neighbour who has also sunk into this black viscous morass of sub-human language that seeks to destroy the soul dignity of others. He is not available for any other kind of discourse. Flow has almost ceased. It’s safe to say that a sizeable proportion of humanity now crawls and slithers in this sub-human linguistic world. Dante shows us who we are most likely to meet at the deepest place where all flow stops.
So, Estela, when I hear your bird song, your story of the sparrow, “I felt its song as though it were my own”. My heart opened up again and I felt lighter. I felt a flowing spaciousness in your words and I can breathe once more. Thank you!
Estela, thank you so much for sharing such a deeply felt experience. The coalescing of the outer and inner realities that you describe swept me up, and for a moment I could hear that bird and feel your serenity. And that was a true gift. But what terrifies me is that our culture appears to be moving in the opposite direction to that which you propose – i.e., towards the wholesale denial that the inner and outer realities should ever be brought into close proximity or merged into a new consciousness. One clear manifestation of this trajectory is the fanatical march towards using a cornucopia of psychoactive drugs to quell any irruption of one’s inner visions, voices, and dreams. The percentage of people that are on one or more such drugs is frightening. Clearly, society’s unjustified fear that breaking down the ‘duality,’ as you call it, will send us down the slippery slope to madness and antisocial behavior is quickly deepening the chasm separating our inner and outer realities. The irony, of course, is that truly living with and for this ‘duality’ is very much a healing process as you so vividly experienced. But for me, the most important insight that I gleaned from your eloquent post is that a person doesn’t simply travel along one particular path from point A to point B but along all possible paths simultaneously. And the trick is to not feel like you have lost all orientation cues and are spinning hopelessly out of control, but that all those paths contain the totality of the living experience. And by accepting that experience, nothing is ever lost that cannot be found and that the artificial separation between inner and outer is not only unnecessary but harmful, a message that you, John, Russ, and Paco have spoken about so often.
Estela,
That was a beautiful, sparkling synopsis of your findings. Your account of the epiphany with the little sparrow and its song, especially, was deeply moving, as you already know. You know from your own experience of the moment, of course, and the easing of the pain-burden you’d been experiencing; but you also know because of John’s and Tony’s fulsome responses. And now, mine.
It doesn’t require a prophet to see that your beautiful story will be helpful to many. Equally so, your deft erasure of the dividing line between inner and outer.
You’ve reminded me of one of my most powerful bird synchronicities. I think it’s worth telling, though it begins within a grim-yet-natural context. My beloved partner, Laura, died of leukemia over seven years ago. I know that to speak openly about death in any remotely intimate way—rather than the distancing, statistical, medical way—is unusual in our “death-phobic” culture. Some might consider it morbid. I won’t go into detail. Let’s just say the “process” lasted a year, and we knew from the moment of diagnosis that there was “no cure.” So, when the end came it was no surprise. That doesn’t mean it was easy. But I was fortunate in being able to spend that entire year with her.
Still, it was shocking how fast the disease progressed during the last week or so. By that point, she was undergoing a virtually non-stop delirium. Meds—palliative or otherwise—were of little to no help. At around midnight of the last night, we were both exhausted. She was scarcely able to breathe, despite oxygen supply-tubes, yet she began trying to speak. I listened closely. Her eyes were closed. I could tell she was not talking to me. It seemed like she was trying to answer questions being put to her by someone whom I could not see.
She said haltingly: “I … don’t know … anything.” There was a pause. Then she said it again, still gasping: “I … don’t know … anything.” And again, a third time.
After another, longer pause, she spoke one last time, and, once again she struggled to say it three times. This time she said, as if in capitulation: “OK. OK. OK.” After those last utterances, she was quiet.
For the first time in months, she was at peace. We both slept.
I awoke at 5:30 AM and could feel her arm resting on mine. It was cold. I knew it was over.
So, I moved through the morning slowly, like a deep-sea diver, the bulbous copper-helmet with its little window and dangling air-hose on my head, and lead-weights on my feet. Since I did not know exactly what to do, I just followed my nose, doing whatever needed to be done. An hour or so later, I was downstairs, slowly washing dishes, looking out the kitchen window behind the sink. The view looked directly onto a tree with bird-feeders, next to the detached garage. An 8 ft.-long stucco wall ran diagonally between house and garage, and disappeared from view, at the very bottom-left corner of the plate-glass window.
As I washed and rinsed, gazing out the window, I noticed a bird had landed on the wall at precisely that spot where the wall disappeared from the window’s field-of-view. Another inch or two toward the house, and the bird would not have been visible to me. It was liminal—on the threshold of visibility.
Ordinarily, whenever birds land on that wall, it’s only for a brief pause, to make sure it’s safe to proceed. Touch-n-go. Then they leap into the air again and fly into the tree to gobble up their seeds-of-choice.
Another thing. This time the bird—a robin—not only remained on the wall, but it was not facing the tree, with its seed-feeders. This robin was facing the house. In fact, this robin was facing the kitchen window and was looking directly at me.
As I stared at the robin, I realized that we had “locked eyes” and were having a moment of “eyeball to eyeball contact.” That was strange, because 99% of the birds who visit here will fly off immediately, if they see any human movement inside the house. Well, I was human, and I was moving—but the robin was not flying away. It took me a few seconds to realize that this was undoubtedly a synchronistic event, connected to Laura’s death sometime during the night.
Before seeing that robin outside the kitchen window, I had called Laura’s daughter, Lisa, to tell her the news. She already knew. She said she felt it during the night. She had awakened at the exact time the medical examiner, later in the day, had estimated the time of death. When I told her about seeing the robin, she said, “That’s funny, I just had a conversation with a robin, on my way here.”
She told me about it. As she was walking to her car a half-hour earlier, she had heard a bird. It was on the parapet directly above her, looking down at her, chattering. But all of her trees and bird-feeders were on the opposite side of the house. She looked up, said hello to the robin, and they talked for a while; then both went their separate ways.
The combination of (1) Laura’s last words the night before she died, and (2) these two synchronistic robins visiting me and her daughter the next morning, were potent clues about a possible interplay between life-and-death, somehow. I’m still not “over” Laura’s death. I still feel the grief, which sometimes still catches me by surprise. Does that mean I am “weak”? Maybe, but not necessarily. Nor does anyone need to remind me of my faults, my shadow, etc. Rather, I think about the surprising number of dreams I had for the first two or so years after her death, dreams in which Laura appeared. Way more dreams than I expected. The last thing I will say, is that, in every one of those dreams, the situations were always un-dreamlike, that is to say, they were “normal”—not in any way “immoderate” or “dreamy” or “jazzed up.” The only odd thing was this: the Laura I was talking to and interacting with, in all those dreams, was officially “dead.”
I know it might seem like a strange thing to say, but I must admit that, to me, that’s a good sign.
John & Tony:
Thank you for your very touching and thoughtful comments.
John, when you said “my heart opened up again and I felt lighter,” your words brought up the following memory for me regarding the sparrow song experience. Not long after the retreat occurred I saw my doctor for an annual checkup. After listening to my heart, the doctor said it sounded musical. Not only was that intriguing but somehow I felt that it was related to the experience of the sparrow’s song. I had completely forgotten about this memory until you spoke about being uplifted by the sparrow story. Like you, I also feel the heaviness of the oppressive darkness that surrounds us at present. It is striking to me that the sparrow and its beautiful song story still has the energy and power to lift us above the abysmal darkness. Perhaps it says something about the interplay between the light and the dark.
Tony, you spoke about the pervasive use of psychoactive drugs that are used to control and prevent the upsurge of the inner psychic states of individuals, which occur in visions, dreams, etc., and how these experiences, if allowed, could instead contribute to the healing of the inner and outer split of reality. You say that we don’t “simply travel along one particular path (in a linear way from one point to another) but along all possible paths simultaneously,” and that “…all those paths contain the totality of the living experience.” These words seem to resonate with the experience I had at the retreat – when our field of consciousness opens up beyond our limited ego perspective, we experience the vast living consciousness that we are a part of and which includes a multitude of dimensions.
It’s interesting that the sparrow’s song resonates in each of us in some significant way. Birds live in a state of nonduality, as far as we know, and the clarity of their being seems to connect us to our essential nature in some way, helping us to remember who we are.
Paco:
I was deeply moved by your recounting of the loss of your beloved partner through her physical death. It seems, however, that your deep bond with her continued on the spiritual level. When you spoke about the appearance of the robin after her passing, I felt quite strongly that it was connected to her spirit in some profound way. Somehow you were able to remain connected to her essence of being through this encounter and in the dream world. You also spoke about her daughter feeling her mother’s departure at the exact moment she expired despite the geographical distance between them at the time, and her own interesting experience with a robin.
Both of the encounters you describe are similar to what I experienced when my mother passed on. I had been informed that her death was imminent and when it occurred, even though we were thousands of miles apart at the time, I felt her in my heart as she left. A few minutes later, I received the call telling me she had passed on. Later that morning as I was walking along the water’s edge at a nearby beach, I felt and then saw a blue heron flying very low over my head and experienced a sense of freedom in its flight. Somehow this made me feel that my mother was free from a physical body that was no longer functioning well. That realization helped to ease my grief somewhat. She was in her 90’s so she had a long life.
As you say, we tend to avoid talking about death in our general culture. It’s a subject that is considered taboo perhaps because it’s too scary to contemplate what seems to be the unfathomable darkness of death. We see it as a finality. But even though it may be death on a physical level, it seems that some aspect of our being continues on as reflected in the experiences we’ve had with our loved ones. I am reminded of Lorca’s words that you posted not long ago:
“The duende only approaches when death is near.”
Comment from Merrilee:
Reply to Estela’s post, “Inner & Outer”:
John, the darkness you mention in your reply Estela’s post hurts my heart, too. It’s so true, many seem to have loss all sense of human decency and how to be with one another. And these kinds of people seem to have the power to capture and drain our energy. Those exposed to Jung’s concepts realize that no one becomes a villain by themselves — and yet it seems obvious that we can’t redeem the very real damage such people do with their “vicious morass of subhuman language” seeking to “destroy the soul dignity of others”. There is a plethora of scenarios regarding the possible destruction of humanity (from asteroids to solar flares to nuclear holocausts to raging fires to surging/warming oceans, etc.) but to “slither into a sub-human linguistic world” is definitely another one.
Talbino, your statement that what terrifies you is that our culture seems to be “moving in the opposite direction of cohering our outer and inner realities into a new consciousness” certainly describes our current crisis. It’s true that we see this in our “cornucopia of psychoactive drugs to QUELL any irruption of inner visions, voices, and dreams”. Society does fear the breaking down of reality as a slippery slope to madness.
But there are also movements out there working to cohere the inner and outer, like using psychedelics as therapy. I have a good friend who is helping to start a program here at the U. of Iowa as a psychedelic medicine psychotherapist. These “patients” don’t need multiple doses to achieve a powerful and long-lasting effect. People who participate in the studies say the experience is among the most meaningful of their lives, on a par with the the birth of a child, or the death of a parent. Many report feeing a sense of oneness with the universe. They, as well as Near Death survivors, describe their experiences as “realer than real” or “more real than everyday experience”.
Another unexplained experience is “terminal lucidity” or “paradoxical lucidity” in which someone who’s had an irreversible brain disease for years, like Alzheimer’s, and can’t speak to or recognize family anymore — suddenly becomes mentally clear again. They not only recognize family members but carry on meaningful conversations with them and show appropriate emotions. This usually happens shortly before the person dies. It’s rare but it happens, and neuroscientists don’t know what to do with it.
What’s more, LSD and psilocybin, along with Near Death experiences, doesn’t occur when a person’s brain activity increases. It occurs when brain activity decreases or even flatlines, especially in the prefrontal cortex. This is what permits access to their profound experiences. As some people say, we are conscious not because of the brain, but in spite of it.
It’s true, as Talbino points out, that our society is dominated by the left hemisphere which is capable of traveling along one particular path from point A to point B. While the right hemisphere, as Jil Taylor Bolt and others testify, is about traveling those paths simultaneously. Our society is now dominated by the left brain, yet the right brain is breaking through more and more. We see it happening with Russ and Paco’s experiment, John Woodward’s essays, people having Near Death experiences, along with those taking part in guided psychedelic studies, and more.
Reality is far more illusory and magical than the left brain can comprehend or will allow. Life is seen as duality when perceived by the left hemisphere. But in the right hemisphere life becomes very fluid, multidimensional, interchangeable, holographic, without separation. What if we proceed from there! The real real is far more poignant and magical than we realize. Synchronicities and dreams and the voices of nature offer us the magic of spaciousness and the falling away of boundaries — like Paco’s sparrow singing higher and higher until it breaks its own sound barrier and shifts him enough so he can really relax, let go into his pain, and move through it! Or the visitation of the two different robins as a consolamentum to Paco and Lisa after Laura’s death. The birds are still coming to us (despite our destruction of their ecosystems) in our hour of need to console and encourage us.
The morning after a dear friend of ours, Brugh Joy, died, my husband and I were driving not far from our house when a hawk with a live squirrel in its claws flew across the road. We stopped the car (there was no traffic) to allow it to go past us. It flew slowly because of the weight of the squirrel — and low enough to pass directly in front our windshield less than a foot away. Then it flew into a park. We both felt a surge of exhilaration, as if our friend were saying, “YOU’RE ALIVE! LIVE LIFE FULLY WHILE YOU HAVE IT!”