Five Things

 (reflections after listening to Aubrey Marcus podcast # 175)

1. EXPERIENCE WHO YOU TRULY ARE: I’m a monkey-man (Homo Sapiens) of flesh and blood, fortunate (or unfortunate) enough to have a brain that generates an experience of self awareness.  We call this the mind.  But through the relentless and sometimes painful exploration of my own consciousness, I have come to believe something a bit different. 

We are also gods (Homo Deus) with amnesia.  We are born into this dimension of polarity we affectionately call ‘life’ forgetting our heritage, the truth of our existence.  We are told that we are solely our body and the identity that has formed around it, shaped by our personal history.  On one level, this isn’t wrong.  Our body is real, our identity is real enough as well.  But we are much more than that.  We are consciousness, life force, soul, divine self, or whatever your vocabulary permits you to call the eternal traveler that occupies this body in order to learn and experience from the schoolyard of physical manifestation. 

When you claim your true heritage it is an unbelievable feeling.  It is a feeling of connection, love, and the distinct absence of fear. 

So how do you experience yourself as a force of consciousness?  This is very individual and problems occur most often when one is affected ……. and after using drugs and alcohol

Aubrey says that it starts with just a moment where you can feel it. This might happen spontaneously, as some miraculous revelation or satori as it is called in Buddhism.  But typically you need a process.  For me, it has been my work with the great plant medicines and psychedelics.  Feeling my body and my identity stripped away to reveal myself as a being of consciousness--A force of Love as self awareness.  Since experiencing myself as who I am, albeit briefly, I try to do the things to find my way back-to claim a little bit more of my divine essence in my daily life.  Those things include meditation, yoga, ecstatic dance, nature, even sex!  Yes, sex.  Anyone who tries to tell you that sex and divinity should be separate is someone who probably doesn’t know much about either.  I was the person who believed all the talk about ‘spirit’ and the ‘soul’ was the biggest  lie ever peddled.  Then I felt it for the first time, on a vision quest in the mountains, on psilocybin mushrooms. 

IT SOUND LIKE SOME WOO WOO BULLSHIT, if you prefer to do this in a group of siens (Historically, they use drugs in some form). Therefore, I prefer AA programs.  Here I get it. I had no choice but to accept that my old paradigm needed some adjustments. And here I can feel a process. 

So how am I doing with the process of claiming who I am?  Well, some days I feel like I am getting closer, and some days I feel like I will never get there.  But then I remind myself that there is no ‘there’, there is just a now.  I can only be who I truly am now, I cannot be who I truly am in the past or the future.  So I stick with the process, doing my best not to judge myself when I indulge fear or ego, and when I totally forget that I am more than just a body. 

How I see at myself: In my last life, today a bit of it and tomorrow in balance, i hope; I could be manipulative, inspiring, hot, stimulating, disciplined, enthusiastic, opposing, dramatic, selfish and outward (both good and evil). Of course, I could usually adapt to different situations. But if I had drank alcohol, I usually strengthened the properties, and when the energy or curiosity was over, I became introverted. Changes in properties also occur over time and relationship and I am perceived as flexible and adaptable. In the last year, 2018, I have taken the step of helping a Relative from his alcohol problem. And I have come to an unconscious mind that I (myself) have been a risk user and alcoholic for over 50 years. However, I have not become "chemically dependent", did not make a big pussy, but on the other hand, I have been depressed because of an alcohol consumption of more than three liters a month. So after warning bells and insights it became a natural step for me to start attending aa meetings regularly; I do not long for meetings, but I feel very well psychologically after each meeting, which makes me move on. I feel that I have retained my earlier characteristics, but they seem better balanced. And the depression is getting smaller.

And I pray:  My Deus (my deep mind, my Soul, my God, my higher power etc.), . . .  grant me the Serenty to accept the things I can´t change, give me Courage to change the things I can, and let me have the Wisdom to know the difference.

2. OVERCOME YOUR FEAR OF DEATH,  Aubrey Marcus reasoning and reflection ……….

”We are all going to die.  But we have our understanding of death all wrong.  Death is a transition out of this dimension, an opportunity to hit the reset button on the momentum of our identity.  As Rumi said, that which strikes the shell, does not harm the pearl.  Our body is the shell, our spirit is the pearl.  We shed this body, but remain entirely intact, free from physical pain, suffering and fear.  But there is a lot about the world that we will miss.  There is no physical love in the dimensions that are not physical.    But guess what?  The more we remain in fear of our own death, the harder it is to enjoy physical love.  We will spend all of our time in the futile effort to bail the water of time from our boat, when inevitably we are all going to sink into the great ocean of Love.  So, we might as well sail, and fish, and feel the wind in our hair, even as each strand turns from brown to gray.     So, how does one overcome the fear of death?  It goes back to number one, you have to experience yourself beyond death.  You have to experience the timeless part of yourself, and trust that this timeless part is actually who you are.  Once you have experienced yourself as pure consciousness, all the way through to your bones, death might be a shame (especially if it comes painfully or unpredictably), but it is not anything that needs to be feared.       For myself, the first time I experienced the release of my fear of death was during my first session with Ayahuasca.  You can read about the experience here.           THERE IS NO RAIN ON THE SKIN, THERE IS NO EMBRACE OF YOUR LOVER, NO SMELL OF COOKIES BAKING IN THE OVEN, NO HOT COFFEE BLENDED WITH FRESH BUTTER, NO FEELING YOUR MUSCLES WORKING UNDER A HEAVY LOAD.”

You can find these thoughts in Buddhism, Ayeverda, seeks and other religions. But I find them as insecure cards and try to live in the present one day at a time! But it can happen at me now and then, out of curiosity, trying to teachings .  .  .  .

3. LOVE SOMETHING MORE THAN YOUR LIFE:        In the 1990s, I received the following advice from a psychologist (I even translated them into Serbian in English letters);

1. Speak truth (Govi ​​istinu)

2. Ask for what you want (Pitaj za ono sto zelis)

3. Be Attentive (Budi pozljiv)

4. Take responsibility for your experiences (Preuziti soptvenu odgovornost za tvoje dozivljaj)

5. Keep your agreements (Drzati sporazum)

Only now, twenty years after, I think I can live up to this (because I speak the truth to myself!). Life is a trial and constant learning! But five advice will soon be 42 . . .

Aubrey says: ”If you have never been willing to die for anything, you haven’t truly lived.  It is a feeling of love so powerful that it recalibrates every cell in your being.  It is the moment that we cry in every epic movie, because inside us is a hero that would gladly lay down their life for a world or a person that they love more than their own life.  It is the greatest virtue of the hero and the deepest expression of Love.   So, I ask you my friends, what would you be willing to die for?  Maybe it’s your children.  Your lover.  Whatever it is, find that person, that idea, that thing, and you will have as the cornerstone upon which you build the remainder of your identity.”  And then he go in himself …….

 In the Twelv Steps of AA We admitted we were powerless over alcohol and drugs, came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity and made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves. We were entirely ready to have ”a Power higher than myself” remove all these defects of character and humbly asked to remove our shortcomings. We continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it. Having had a mindfulness awakening as the result of the twelv steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.     This does not work at once, perhaps after a few year. It will allways be hidden there for the rest of your life. The best drug is to go to the meeting and take a day to day.

Be curious about the world and help your fellow human being! In paragraphs four and five, I fully agree with Aubrey.

4: ‘KNOW’ THE WORLD

When I say ‘know’ the world, I mean it in the way the Greek’s used the word gnosis--the definition is something akin to having sex.  This means all the expressions of physical love, including but not limited to sex with another human.  What does it feel like to sit in a mud  bath or a hot spring?

When we leave this world, it is physical love that we will miss.  So soak it up, enjoy everything we have to offer.  Don’t leave this video game without pressing all the buttons.  Who knows how long Earth will be a viable world to experience, so make sure that you really live it. 

5: SHARE YOUR MEDICINE  (This is what Step 12 is about). Neutral feeling is the worst feeling

We all have a gift to give.  I call this ‘medicine’.  It starts with being and manifesting who we truly are.  Then the gift will come naturally.  It is the final stage of the hero’s journey that is called ‘returning with the elixir’.  The medicine could be purely your presence, or how you make others laugh.  It could be song, or speech, or dance, or simply loving a child into existence or easing the suffering of an animal.

That is what I am trying to do here.  That is the reason for every podcast, every blog post, every book that I write.  So thank you for being a part of this journey with me, I wouldn’t do it without you.

Live well !

Take it easy, make it easy, one thing at a time, the most important first, think one day at a time and live and let live well.