“The Universe is saying: Allow me to flow through you unrestricted, and you will see the greatest magic you have ever seen.” –Klaus Joehle
You’ve probably heard the now common cliché, “Life begins at the end of your comfort zone.” How true it is. But it’s not enough to know it with your head. You need to understand it with your heart; with your mind, body, and soul, in order to create magic with it. You need to be proactive about it, in order for it to really have an impact in your life. Like Daniel Pinchbeck said, “Deep down, nobody wants a job to occupy his or her time. We want a mission that inspires us.”
This will probably require getting a little “crazy,” a little bit “nuts.” In order to make your life more magical, you may need to take a non-dogmatic leap of faith. Let yourself go mad. Let yourself be weird. Like Kurt Vonnegut said, “We are here on Earth to fart around, and don’t let anybody tell you any different.” Farting around is making a big stink, it’s laughing at the all-too-serious human condition, and it’s falling in love with impermanence.
You are a magical creature, even if you’re not consciously aware of it. Your inner-child wants desperately to come out and play, even if you have suppressed it; even if it has been oppressed by a sick society. Jump into the angry abyss with a smile on your face. This is how magic has always been created, from shamans to Shakespeare. Get out there and live! Look for the magic within things. Look for the magic within you. Like William Butler Yeats poetically articulated, “The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.”
Dreamer of Dreams
“Not to dream boldly may turn out to be irresponsible.” –George Leonard
Haters gonna hate, lovers gonna love. And the best place to start loving, is to start dreaming your love into being. Dream of cathartic thunder resonating between lonely hearts. Dream of lightening in a jar drank to the dregs by humorless men desperately trying to regain their sense of humor. Dream of chaotic empathy usurping orderly apathy. Dethrone the parochial by dreaming God and Satan are playing tennis, and no matter how much they play, the score is always love-love. Like George Bernard Shaw said, “You see things, and you say ‘Why?’ But I dream things that never were, and I say, ‘Why not?’”
Between wakefulness and dreams there is a third thing: metamorphosis. Dreams don’t stand still: they move; they change; they dissolve and crumble and coalesce and regroup. As a dreamer of dreams, you must do the same. And if your dreams are “flying south for the winter,” then that’s probably where you should be heading. Turn your dreams into a quest, into a journey of the most high. Whether it’s the quest for health, truth or love, “quest” is the key word, and the journey is always the thing.
Forget logic and reason for a time. Let unreason and magic shine. Then bring logic and reason back in for a little tidying up. Do it with high humor, and the magic that comes from being the dreamer of dreams will not elude you. Like Carl Jung said, “Reason and understanding must unite with unreason and magic.” Let them unite within you in perfectly imperfect recognition.
The Greek word Thumos is the desire for prestige. It is the dream of the perfect recognition, when all that is great within ourselves synergizes perfectly with all that is eternal in the cosmos in harmonic synchronicity.
The greatest magic is transmuting the passions. And nothing is as powerful, alchemically, at transmuting the passions than myth.
Joseph Campbell described mythology as having four basic functions:
The Mystical Function: experiencing the awe of the universe,
The Cosmological Function: explaining the shape of the universe,
The Sociological Function: supporting and validating a certain social order, and
The Pedagogical Function: how to live a human lifetime under any circumstances.
As far as being a myth-maker is concerned, the mystical and the pedagogical functions are the most important. This is because the primary method of myth is sensual, not verbal. Language is secondary, and only because it is the only way we have to communicate the mythic vision. But by relearning this, sensual, nonverbal language (what Derrick Jensen calls “a language older than words”), we open ourselves up to the majesty of the cosmos and allow for the inner-workings of nature to rethread herself through us.
Our tool is myth. Our goal becomes, as Thomas Berry said, “to move the human community from its destructive presence on the planet to a benign or mutually enhancing presence on the planet.” The myths we harbor can work for or against us. Our current myth is a violent, exploitative, dog-eat-dog system. Unfortunately, we’ve swallowed this myth: hook, line, and sinker. Our duty, if we have the courage, is to update this outdated, unsustainable myth by becoming mythmakers who have the audacity to create a contemporary, sustainable system that meets violence with laughter, exploitation with expiation, and the dog-eat-dog system with a human-support-human system.
Mythology is an ever-present, ever-receding horizon mediated through the creative imagination of individuals and cultures and venerated through art and cosmology. As Louis G. Herman wrote, “The retelling of mythology helps access the creative energy of the ancient past within the present. In this understanding, past, present, and future become separate faces of a single reality,” or, as Jean Gebser put it, an “ever-present origin.”
If we can step back every once in a while and think like an outsider. If we can let go of the “story,” and release the myth. If we can think past it, around it, inside and out of it. If we can accept it for what it is, and then let our imagination run rampant all over it. If we can take the frame of our yester-life and reshape it, widen it, rebuild it out of rubber-bands, or weaponry turned livingry, or desertification turned greenery. If we can break it, if need be. If we can do that, then we can prevent the frame from ever becoming a locked safe. And if it ever happens to become a locked safe, it’s never too late. We know the combination. And if for any reason we should lose that combination, then we must have the courage to shatter the lock. Like Tony Robbins said, “Passion is the genesis of genius.” Being a mythmaker is having the passion to shatter outdated locks with updated sledgehammers.
We create our own magical reality as we go.
Jokester of Jokes
“Life should be lived to the point of tears.” –Albert Camus
Nature loves audacious courage. Commit to nature and she responds by removing obstacles from your path. This is how magic is done. This is the art of chewing life up and spitting it out. This is the shamanic dance in the abyss.
One of the most amazing things that courageous people discover on their journey is how fulfilling the self-made path is, especially when they don’t know where it might lead. The awesome realization that if the path were clear, and everything ahead of us were known, it simply would not be fulfilling. Even if we cannot admit it to ourselves, we yearn for astonishment. We long to be surprised, to be in awe, to be taken aback by the majesty of the Great Mystery.
It is within the labyrinth of our own journey, with its twists and turns, ups and downs, hidden demons and thrashing thresholds, where we find true fulfillment. Not on the clear path of others, with their wide-open and clearly forecasted ways, their all-too-noticeable signs, their spoon-fed morsels of already-lived life, and their parochial paradigms handed down piecemeal from shrunken comfort zones. In the adventure of our own labyrinth, there is no such thing as dead ends. There is only the illusion of dead ends. On the already-lived-path-of-others there are always dead ends, especially if you don’t do things as “they” did, or as authority commands.
This is not to say that we should not stand upon the shoulders of giants. We definitely should. But we ought to make such standing a part of our journey rather than an end to it. If we can allow ourselves to be individuated voyeurs, peeking in on the paths of others, borrowing the magic that works and discarding that which insults our soul, all while using it to see further than they could, then we make our journey our own while learning from those who came before us. And the best part is we don’t get stuck, because we’re simply borrowing an egg or two (of knowledge) from their baskets, rather than placing all our eggs into any single basket.
By living the self-made labyrinth of our own journey, we turn the tables upon the cosmic joke itself. Instead of being the butt-end of the joke, we become the almighty jokester, the personified trickster, transcending seriousness with a humor of the most high. We become the one who laughs instead of the one who is laughed at. We liberate ourselves to laugh at it all, to poke holes in makeshift ideologies (especially our own), and to usurp outdated thrones with updated humor.
The paths that came before us pale in comparison to the paths that lay within us. Similarly, the dogmatic seriousness that came before us pales in comparison to the humorous sincerity that lies within us. Their old magic is no match for our new magic. I beseech you, you who would live a magical life of adventure and self-discovery, your path begins at the perceived limits of your comfort zone. Authentic love begins with genuine humor. Dream the dream forward. Dream the myth forward. Dream the joke forward. Laugh, and laugh hard, especially at stagnate dreams, outdated myths, and parochial gods. The world doesn’t need more obedient followers, sycophants, and bootlickers. It desperately needs more disobedient dreamers, mythmakers, and jokesters.
“In conclusion, there is no conclusion. Things will go on as they always have, getting weirder all the time.” –Robert Anton Wilson
At some point during your journey through life you start to become quieter inside.
For me, coming in contact with this inner stillness and embracing it was the moment that changed everything.
Up until that point, life had felt like a busy marketplace full of the loud, stimulating noises and harsh, continual clashes of energy. I not only felt lonely – it was worse than that – I felt the paradoxical isolation of an Outsider; lonely while surrounded by a crowd of people.
Although we all vary in levels of Introversion and Extroversion, everyone can benefit from finding quiet moments to stop, be still, and rediscover the solace of their own company.
Rediscovering the Power of Solitude
Everyone experiences loneliness to some degree – it appears to be a natural and inescapable condition that humans have experienced all throughout the ages.
For most of us loneliness is a product of the toxic connections that we've formed with ourselves, with others and with nature. How many times have you constantly been surrounded by friends, family members, coworkers, neighbors and acquaintances ... and yet still felt a sense of disconnection and isolation deep inside? This happens because we've been taught to arrange everything so that it remains separate; we've been taught to possess, to use, to compete and to fear others. Thankfully, through inner silence we can learn to encounter, to communicate and to love again.
It is only by coming to terms with your solitude that you can truly be free to relate with others from a place of inner groundedness.
One of the most startling discoveries that I made while cultivating inner quietness was that we're all alone deep at our very core. We are born alone, we die alone, and although we like to fool ourselves through superficial appearances, we live our lives alone as well. We can try to forget it, we can try not to be alone by making friends, having a lover or mixing in with the crowd. Occasionally what we do on the surface touches our very roots; a lover that reaches our soul, a friend that understands our being – but if that friend is lost, if that lover is gone, those solitary roots will still remain.
To those who rely on the outer world for happiness and fulfillment, this realization is a cause for profound despair. But when you encounter this realization from a place of inner quiet, this truth is full of joy, peace and possibility.
Redefining Quiet
From an external perspective loneliness and solitude look very similar: they both share the quality of physical aloneness. The similarities end there.
Internally the experience is drastically different. A lonely person is miserable, anxious, incomplete, restless, off-center and dependent on others. It is only through finding the depths of inner quiet that they become comfortable in their solitude, and it is only through redefining what it means to be "quiet" that they can feel happy in their own skin, fulfilled in pursuing their authentic dreams and free from the weight of other's expectations.
Some people claim that being quiet and solitary is the ultimate state of independence, but to me being quiet and solitary is more of a state of interdependence.
When I watch a sunset with a loved one, I know that I could also enjoy it equally as much alone – I don't depend on the person's company for my satisfaction. A lonely person however, is more concerned with sharing the experience with the person next to them who is filling their inner void, rather than enjoying the sunset from a grounded place of quiet inner space. Two people who share an experience from a place of inner neediness taint the experience with hidden fears and agendas, however, two people who share an experience from a place of inner wholeness embellish the experience with joy and a purity of intention.
You'd be surprised how much this feeling of loneliness affects us. We mold our entire lives around avoiding isolation and trying to find a way of "removing" it. We study subjects and get jobs that others expect from us. We worry about how to dress, what to pretend to like and what others will think about it. We enter relationships as needy conditional individuals asking the other, "How should I behave and act to make you like me so you don't leave me with this horrible feeling of loneliness?"
Perhaps the best way to illustrate this lifelong escape is by comparing lonely people to beggars who seek anyone's company to mask their inner voids. Solitude, on the other hand, means feeling like a King or Queen. Redefining quiet means being happy with ourselves and being capable of choosing someone's company not because we need them due to an inner feeling of emptiness, but because we want to be with them, from an inner place of wealth.
Cultivating that inner place of wealth requires two things, Quietness and Courage.
Becoming a Quiet Warrior
To be quiet and solitary requires the courage of a lone wolf, a Quiet Warrior.
Only sheep, full of fear and afraid to be alone, live in a crowd and move in a crowd. You've never heard of a lone sheep have you? If you've ever seen a herd of sheep move you'll notice that their bodies are in a continuous friction with one another and there is barely any space at all between them. This feels warm and comforting, and it provides a certain protection to think "I am not alone. There are hundreds of others with me." Very soon you learn to lose yourself in a crowd.
But the amazing thing about this Quiet Warrior journey is the paradoxical solution to our deepest problem: only by becoming comfortable in our solitude can we finally realize that we are never truly alone.
This realization of never being truly alone can be compared to feeling yourself as part of a large, cosmic puzzle; you begin to feel composed of a myriad of forms and colors, with trees and animals of all types, rivers, clouds, oceans, deserts, jungles, stars, lakes and mountains. You are alone but you are never lonely; you are part of something infinitely vaster than yourself that can only be encountered in those moments of stillness in between thoughts, those moments of quietness in between emotions.
I encourage you to re-encounter and reexamine the connection that unites us with existence; our lost "umbilical cord." Spending 20 minutes alone with yourself in silence everyday is all it can take. Getting in touch with your inner quiet is getting in touch with yourself; it's an inexhaustible presence that can make you feel at home, anywhere, all the time.
When we become comfortable in our solitude, we realize we are never really alone.
I read a few years ago somewhere that a hallmark of a genius is being able to hold opposites together and transcend duality. This stuck with me and over time I tried to make sense of it, because at first it was a very confusing concept. With some luck this concept began to make sense thanks to a random assortment of other things I read over the years following my discovery of this tidbit.
This train of thought has now become one of my favorite things to ponder. I feel it has taught me the dangers of holding onto apparent absolutes. Once you believe in something as an absolute, you are automatically precluding yourself from believing in the opposite, which means that in some ways a part of your freedom of thought as a human being is forfeited as a result. A good example of rising above these conventional kind of thoughts constructed with absolutes is the Wave-particle duality. I love this example because it is somewhat recent and shows the possible errors in absolutes and how they can prevent you from thinking “outside the box” so to speak.
Wave-particle duality is the concept that all matter and energy exhibits both wave-like and particle-like properties. Physicists argued for a long time whether light was a wave or a particle, and their insistence on their present beliefs prevented them from realizing the possibility that light could be both at the same time. While this is a very specific example, even using abstract thought experiments seems to work as well. Take these two opposites for example:
You are nothing. You are everything.
They both hold some truth and meaning. We can say you are everything because at any given point in time you are in contact with everything in the universe. It is impossible to escape both the tangible and intangible elements of the universe, they are constantly in contact with your being in a multitude of ways. A few examples are the atoms directly touching your skin as you sit, magnetic waves and invisible light waves from the sun passing through you, etc. Through this phenomena nothing can truly separate itself from all of existence. At the same time, we are nothing. Being part of everything in some ways means you are truly nothing as an individual. The idea that we are separate from the universe is more or less a really persistent delusion that we have somehow acquired. And even if we were separate…the amount of matter that you consist of in relative scope to what an infinite universe might contain is mathematically zero.
Now I’d like to tie this line of thinking into another one….the concept and realization of knowing nothing, yet knowing everything. The Way of the Samurai calls this the trackless road, where infinite secrets appear. Once we realize how truly we are lacking we only have everything to gain. Holding onto this thought can remove all sense of both pride and humility. Without knowing anything there is nothing to be proud of, and at the same time we no longer need to feel humiliated because we have come to terms with our shortcomings. Even while we know nothing, we can know everything because the truth of every situation exists in our being.
You know nothing, You know everything.
This is why always being open to being wrong can be so powerful. You create a dynamic persona that cannot show weakness because when you truly let go of yourself, you open yourself to the universe instilling you with the most powerful type of truth. You become a fluid force that adapts to everything and anything on a whim, because your ego and preconceptions don’t get in the way. Having an ego makes people fall hard, stops them from learning the errors of their ways and stops them from shifting the next constructively critical opportunity into a new, more powerful and improved version of their being. Being overly confident with your knowledge makes us vulnerable to clinging onto something false.
Bruce Lee believed this as a core part of his fighting philosophy. I love it because I think it applies far beyond martial arts: “Be formless… shapeless, like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle; it becomes the bottle. You put it into a teapot; it becomes the teapot. Water can flow, or it can crash. Be water, my friend..”
https://youtu.be/VqHSbMR_udo
Knowing nothing lets us flow into everything. I’ve been in martial arts just long enough to finally allow myself to know nothing, while simultaneously using everything I know. When someone throws an attack, a completely relaxed, open and trained mind will automatically show you the paths you can take to success, all you must do is let yourself flow through these paths. In this sense the only person you are overcoming is yourself. This is where the power of rising above opposites come into play. If we know nothing, we can know everything. Whatever true knowledge we have acquired already exists outside of our being, all we need to do is let it apply itself, let it fill the void like water. Such are many things in life, letting go of some of your beliefs can set you free and give you the ability to rise above the rest. “It’s only once you’ve lost everything that you are free to do anything” Tyler, Fight Club
Take your beliefs and preconceptions, consider the opposite. Hold them both, rise above them. Transcend duality.
