Footnotes to Crossroads Dispatches

This is Burning Man, by Brian Doherty

Some notes taken from a book about that experiment in a self-organizing culture and ephemeral city-springing, This is Burning Man, by Brian Doherty. And the subtitle is:

page 272
What I'm picking up from Larry's new dispensation [more anti-consumerist and political activism... BM used to be apolitical event] struck me as antithetical to what I originally found interesting about Burning Man--that it offered a seeking and celebration of creative expression and liberated experience as a key to brain change and a means to search for what one might call the sacred. There are times, though, when Larry and I are feeling the same things. "We are beings, created things," Larry tells me. "We're the products of genetic mutation, and we're infinitely variable. The world presents itself to us as an artifact with slots to fill. But everyone's gifts are unique and not necessarily apparent to the [people themselves] unless some circumstance calls them forth. The whole story of my progress," he surmises, "might seem blind and hapless. But there was from the beginning a sense of something real in me and the idea that it had to have a home out there somewhere. Intuitively, blindly, as chance allowed, I moved in that direction even if it didn't make any sense by the world's standards. The human world is like a flowery meadow, and the individual is like a weed--each one different. A wed is simply an unwanted plant. It's a human category. There's no such plant as a weed. But the human world is more and more a monoculture. Farmer Jones wants corn and everything else is a weed, and if you can't get with the corn program, Buster, then get your thistle ass out of here! That's the problem everyone faces."

As he looks around at Burning Man, Larry sees lots of weeds essaying things with no apparent practical purpose. "It's weeds, but it's their weeds. Who knows what that leads to? Maybe nothing. But unless people are given that opportunity they will never find out. If their judgments are always governed by the world's standards, they might never find that one thing they are brilliant at, that they were born to do, and that's the greatest tragedy of all--the quiet desperation Thoreau wrote of. That just means that they never discovered what they were meant to do with the transcendent faith that they were meant to do that something. And that's been the moral of my life."

There's a lot I could argue with Larry about, but not that.

page 273
[What is it?] This book, I hope, provides some answers to that question. It's a place for human beings to live vividly free lives and have--as Larry used to recognize--experiences that are fundamental, unconditional, marvelous, and worth a thousand lectures on why one ought not to shop at Wal-Mart. [Kind of giving Larry a jab on that last bit.]

page 274
Interactive is the buzzword for Burning Man-style art, defined by BRAF's Jessica Bobier as "art that blurs the line between artists and audience, with collaboration in the creation or the experience of the piece. Art that requires the action of a participant to complete the piece. It represents the opportunity for people to come together and incites them to interact with one another, whether directly because they are needed to make something happen, or just something so exciting it makes people gather, brings them together." It fits in smoothly with the old Burning Man dispensation: art that creates community, art that gives you an opportunity to have an experience other than spectating.

page 282
It didn't start out as an art festival. It didn't really start as anything but an act and an excuse to gather. "What is art, you know?" muses Michael Michael on the meaning of this train he's riding. "Why art at Burning Man? What is this art thing? There's something much larger here. Art is a vehicle, a symptom of something bigger occurring. It's spreading beyond the desert, beyond the playa. It's a way of being, of thinking, to change a person: That's the real story, the real thing that's happening."

The change--that knowledge within that you no longer have to be and think and act as you previously been and thought and acted if you don't wish to--is a mystery, and Burning Man has no monopoly on the technology of generating it. It can come in an instant like a thief in the night, like Christ, or after years of difficult discipline, like those spent with a yogi master, but what's important is that it can happen and that the technologies of change exist and Burning Man is very, very good at reminding people of that.

page 280
Chris Radcliffe: "You don't need to go to Puerto Vallarta and lay on the beach and eat fish and drink frozen daiquiris and read Jacqueline Susann novels. You can have a primary experience of existence instead of something processed and fed back to you. Someone once said to me, if you're being entertained, you're not having any fun. And that's perfectly right. What we were doing was a very primary thing."

The main blog is at Crossroads Dispatches; this is accompaniment blog for longer excerpts cited there.

surrender to the universal domain, which is much grander than anything you could imagine - deepak chopra

"The realization that "I" am separate from "you" starts to happen at around age two or three. At this stage a baby starts to differentiate between "me" and "mine," and "not me" and "not mine." This separation creates anxiety. In reality the world is not separate from us, but part of the continuum of consciousness. Intent works by harnessing the creative forces inherent in the universe. Just as we have our personal creativity, the universe also displays creativity. The universe is alive and conscious, and it responses to our intent when we have our intimate relationship with the universe and see it not as separate but as our extended body.

We can restore the power of intent through a return to the true self, or self-actualization. People who attain self-actualization reestablish their connectedness to the nonlocal mind. They have no desire to manipulate and control others. [They no there is no "other."] They are independent of criticism and also of flattery. They feel beneath no one, but they also feel superior to no one. They are in touch with the internal reference point that is their soul, and not their ego. Anxiety is no longer an issue, because anxiety comes from the ego's need to protect itself. And that anxiety is what interferes with the spontaneity of intent. Intent is the mechanics through which spirit transforms itself into material reality.

Mature spirituality requires sobriety of awareness. If you are sober, you are responsive to feeback but at the same time immune to criticism and flattery. You learn to let go and you do not worry about the result. You have confidence in the outcome, and you start to see the synchronicity that is always organized around you. Intention provides opportunities that you have to be alert to. Good luck is opportunity and preparedness coming together. Intention will provide you opportunities, but you still need to act when the opportunity is provided.

Whenever you take action, have the attitude that you are not performing the action. Have the attitude that your actions are really the actions of nonlocal intelligence, the organizing universal spirit. You will begin to notice a great diminution of anxiety. You will also be less attached to the result.

Stress is a form of anxiety. If you're stressed, then you can't even begin to think about synchronicity. Synchronicity is a means of getting in touch with God. It's a path to meaning and purpose in your life. It's a means of having the experience of love and compassion. It's a means of connecting to the nonlocal intelligence of the universe. If my attention is on situations that generate stess, then it is difficult to access synchronicity. To do so effectively you have to have an attitude of surrender to the universal domain, which is much grander than anything you could imagine. Surrender requires a leap of faith, a jump into the unknown. Your inner dialogue can support this by saying, "Things are not going my way. I'm letting go of my idea of how they should. My sense of 'me and mine' has to expand." If you take this leap of faith, you will be richly rewarded. If you find yourself worrying about next month's bills, it would be appropriate to remind yourself that it is your intent not only to fulfill your needs but also to send your children to school, to contribute to your community. All people want to fulfill these needs in their lives. However, having articulated and expressed your intent to fulfill them takes them to the infinite mind, and in effect says, "I put all this at your disposal. I'm not going to worry about it because you, the nonlocal intelligence that resides within me, will take care of it."

Great artists, jazz musicians, writers, and scientists talk about having to transcend their individual identities when they create. I've worked with a lot of musicians and songwriters and I've never known any who are thinking about royalties when they are writing a song. A new song or a new piece of music involves letting go, and incubating in the nonlocal domain, then allowing the music or song to come to you. All creative processes depend on a phase of incubation and allowing. Synchronization is a creative process. In this case, however, the creative mind is the cosmos itself. When self-concern departs, nonlocal intelligence enters.

Remember, your thoughts must not conflict with the designs of the universe. Wishing to win the lottery can magnify your sense of separation from the universe. Frequently lottery winners report alienation from friends and family and no greater happiness. When money alone becomes the aim, it alienates you.

How do you know which of your intentions is likely to be fulfilled? The answer lies in paying attention to the clues provided by the nonlocal mind. Notice the coincidences in your life. Coincidences are messages. They are clues from God or spirit or nonlocal reality, urging you to break out of your karmic conditioning, your familiar patterns of thinking. They are offering you an opportunity to enter a domain of awareness where you feel loved and cared for by the infinite intelligence that is your source. Spiritual traditions call this the state of grace." -- pages 115-118, The Spontaneous Fulfillment of Desire, by Deepak Chopra

I've come to the realization that we have to discover the shaman within. - Alberto Villoldo

Another excerpt from Alberto Villoldo's book imparting the knowledge he gained through Inka shamans and his own direct experiences in Shaman, Healer, Sage. This one about the transpersonal awakening (typically comes from a collapse of the conceptual separate identity, and can be facilitated through mental queries like, Who am I?, What am I?, Am I?, et all) and its potential "personal' consequences.

He explains a pretty common ego trick which has us worshippinng the exoticism of the Other as the self-realized--the whole "not me, I'm not worthy" routine--and plan elaborate excursions to South America or to drool over an African shaman dressed in his native garb in your local cellphone shop--and I cite two examples from folks I know, and totally be oblivious to the ordinariness of It, and its innate in-dwelling in yourself. Seeing it only out there (and in specific steoreotypical disguises) keeps you from knowing and being It yourself and seeing It everywhere anytime. Anyhow, without further ado, Alberto's words:

"I've come to the realization that we have to discover the shaman within. I teach my students that no amount of traveling with the Indians will bring you to your own wisdom and power. I've found that it frequently achieves exactly the opposite, distracting us from a true encounter with Spirit. The shaman is a self-realized person. She discovers the ways of Spirit through her inner awakening. Antonio would remind me that the Buddha was not a Buddhist, and that Christ was not a Christian. One sat under the banyan tree until he gained illumination. The other went to the desert for forty days. In the sixth chakra [pineal gland, third eye] we experience our own awakening. We shed the ponchos, the robes, the rattles and feathers, and all other exterior markings.

An awakened third eye allows the shaman to know who he is. It gives him knowledge of the past and the future and allows him to envision alternative destinies. Some legends report that those who awaken this chakra can even attain physical immortality. They no longer age or succumb to disease, but rather are able to maintain their youthful vitality and strength. All the desires of one with an awakened third eye come true, and if a number of healers hold the same vision, it comes true for the planet. Native religions have long practiced this tradition. Elders of the Hopi and a similar council of Inka medicine men and women sit in meditation envisioning the kind of world that hey want their great-grandchildren to inherit." - pages 98-99, Shaman, Healer, Sage by Alberto Villoldo, Ph.D.

Is there a difference between reality and imagination? - Doña Laura via Alberto Villoldo

I loved this excerpt about the fiery shamaness Doña Laura in Alberto Villoldo's book, Shaman, Healer, Sage. I know it seems a tad violent, yet its also a humbling lesson in being cautious when demanding tangible proof of a sage or the Universe itself. Go find out for yourself rather than cast aspersions of doubt on those with first-hand knowledge. The book details Villoldo's training with the highly-trained Inka healers whom work well beyond the physical plane at the level of Infinity and the luminous energy field.

"Whereas most shamans could travel in the shape of a spirit eagle or jaguar in dreams, Laura could do it while awake, in broad daylight. She could merge with a condor and fly the giant bird according to her will, diving into ravines and flying miles above the ground, contemplating the landscape below. Once, at the base of Mt. Ausangate, she was challenged by one of her students, a short, pudgy Indian fellow named Mariano who had a great sense of huor and a knack for gathering medicinal plants but who managed to do most everything else wrong. "How do I know you are really inside the body of the condor and not imagining it?"he asked. I was a dozen feet away, at our camp with Don Antonio. The air suddenly became electric, and I saw a faint smile cross Antonio's face. We all knew better than to challenge the old woman, and all of us were waiting intently for her response.

"Is there a difference between reality and imagination?" she answered in a gentle tone. We looked disappointedly at each other.

It was getting close to dusk, and a half dozen of us set out to collect brush and masto, the dried llama droppings that are used for fuel so high in the mountains. Half an hour later we were all back at camp except Mariano. Most of Laura's students were women, and they had given the two male apprentices women's names, which they used when they were not around. "Where is Maria?" they taunted playfully. "Maybe she has gotten lost," one snickered.

I could tell that Antonio was getting worried. It was wintertime on the second highest mountain in South America. In a half hour the temperature would fall below freezing. He motioned to me and another man to go search for him. As we were setting out we noticed Mariano staggering toward camp. His face was bloodied, and he was barely able to stand. I carried a first-aid kit, which I kept stowed at the bottom of my bag, for situations like these. My mentor [Don Antonio] did not life to use Western medicines, but at that altitude no medicinal plants grew. We were so far about the tree line that no plants of any kind were to be seen. We were surround by barren, icy landscape punctuated by patches of bare rock. We brought Mariano into our tent and saw that the back of his jacket had been slashed; the white filler was stained red with blood. The gash had gone through his clothing and torn his skin, leaving three deep gouges on his back, like those made by the talons of an animal. We asked Mariano to tell us what happened, but all he would do was shake his head and say that he had fallenn and cut his face on the ice. Later that night we overheard him apologizing to Doña Laura. It seemed a giant condor had swooped down from the sky and tried to carry him away. Condors have been know[n] to abduct a fully grown sheep, fly several hundred feet into the air with the animal in their clutches, and drop it to its death on the rocks.

Over the years Dona Laura and I became friends. One day she told me that the secret of shape-shifting was to realize that you were no different from anything else in the universe, no better and no worse. Once you understood in your cells that you were exactly the same as everything else, no more important than an insect, no less important than the Sun, you could change into any shape you wanted, whether a condor or a tree. You could even become invisible to others. She explained that the shaman had to master the art of invisibility in order not to call attention to herself. Antonio had mastered this. He was invisible to the Catholic Church [unbelievably still has an office of Inquisition in Peru]. No one knew who he was, so he was free to change the world. "You can accomplish anything," she once told me, "as long as you are willing to let others take credit for it." -- pages 36-37, Alberto Villoldo, Shaman, Healer, Sage

This blog is an accompaniment to the main blog at Crossroads Dispatches by Evelyn Rodriguez.

The real reality is behind the curtain. - Rumi

I adore this example of the unfolding nature of "destiny" and chance by Deepak Chopra taken from his own life story:

"When I was finishing my medical training, I knew that my interest was in neuro-endocrinology, the study of how brain chemicals work. Even then, I could see that this was a place where science and consciousness met, and I wanted to explore it. I applied for a fellowship to train with one of the world's most prominent endocrinologists. This highly respected scientist was doing Nobel Prize-worthy work, and I was eager for the opportunity to learn from him. Out of thousands of applicants, I was one of the six selected to work with him that year. Shortly after I started, I realized that his laboratory was more about ego gratification than about real science. We technicians were treated like machines, expected to mass-produce publishable research papers. It was tedious and unsatisfying. And it was terribly disillusioning to work with someone so famous, so respected and still mange to feel as unhappy as I did. I had taken the position with such idealism and I found myself doing nothing but injecting rats with chemicals all day long.

Every morning I scanned the Boston Globe newspaper want ads, aware of my disappointment, but thinking that this path I was on was the only way to go. I remember reading a little advertisement for a position in a local hospital emergency room. In fact, every day when I opened the newspaper, I would see that little ad. Even if I was only flipping through the paper quickly, it would fall open to that same page with that same ad. I would look at it and then push it out of my mind. Deep inside, I could imagine myself working in the emergency room and actually helping people, instead of injecting chemicals into rats, but my dream had been to land this fellowship with the renowned endocrinologist.

One day that endocrinologist addressed me in a cruel and demeaning manner. We argued, and I walked away to the lounge to calm myself down. On the table was the the Boston Globe newspaper opened to the page with the little want ad--that same ad that I had ignored for weeks. The coincidence was too powerful to ignore. Everything finally clicked into place. I knew I was in the wrong place doing the wrong thing. I was fed up with the routine, with the ego of that endocrinologist, with the rats, with the feeling that I was not doing what was in my heart to do. I walked back into his office and quit. He followed me out into the parking lot, screaming at the top of his lungs that my career was ruined, that he would see to it that no one would ever hire me.

With his voice still ringing in my ears,I drove directly to that little emergency room, applied for the position, and started work that very day. For the first time, I got to treat and help people who were really suffering. For the first time in a long time, I was happy. The Boston Globe ad had been beckoning me for weeks, but I had ignored it. Finally I noticed the coincidence and I was able to change my destiny. Even though the laboratory work seemed to be the very thing I had been striving for all my life, paying attention to this coincidence allowed me to break my habitual patterns. It was a message just for me, my life's personal road flare. Everything I had done up to that point was simply preparation for that change. Some people thought the endocrinology fellowship itself was a mistake. But if I hadn't gotten the fellowship, I might not have been in Boston. And if I wasn't working in the endocrinologist's lab, I might not have seen the ad and I might never have felt my heart's true calling. Endless details had to fall into place in order for this part of my life to play out the way it has.

According to a poem by Rumi, one of my favorite poets and philosophers, "This is not the real reality. The real reality is behind the curtain. In truth, we are not here. This is our shadow." What we experience as everyday reality is merely a shadow play. Behind the curtain there is a soul, living and dynamic and immortal, beyond the reach of space and time. By acting from that level, we can consciously influence our destiny. This happens through the synchronization of seemingly acausal relationships to mold a destiny--hence, synchrodestiny. In synchrodestiny, we consciously participate in the creation of our lives by understanding the world that is beyond our senses, the world of the soul." -- pages 126-129 Deepak Chopra, The Spontaneous Fulfillment of Desire

This blog is accompaniment (mostly excerpts from books) to the main blog, Crossroads Dispatches, by Evelyn Rodriguez.

the universal nonlocal part of the soul in not touched by our actions - deepak chopra

This excerpt, and Deepak Chopra's book on synchronicity and destiny in general, resonated as I often struggle to explain the unseen "virtual domain" (as Deepak calls it) that is universal, nonlocal Mind.

"The universal nonlocal part of the soul is not touched by our actions, but is connected to a spirit that is pure and unchanging. In fact, the definition of enlightenment is "the recognition that I am an infinite being seeing and seen from, observing and observed from, a particular and localized point of view." Whatever else we are, no matter how much of a mess we may have made of our lives, it is always possible to tap into the part of the soul that is universal, the infinite field of pure potential, and change the course of our destiny. That is synchrodestiny. . . .

When I decide to wiggle my toes, or buy a birthday present for my wife, or drink a cup of coffee, or write this book, it all starts with intention. This intention always arises in the nonlocal or universal mind, but it localizes through the individual mind. And having localized, it becomes physical reality.

In fact, physical reality would not exist were it not for intent. Intent activates nonlocal, synchronized correlation in the brain. Whenever there is cognition or perception of physical reality, the brain's disparate regions show a "phase and frequency locking in" of the firing patterns of individual neurons in different parts of the brain. This is nonlocal synchronization around a frequency of forty hertz (forty cycles per second). This synchronization, also called binding, is a requirement for cognition. Without it you would not see a person as a person, a house as a house, a tree as a tree, or a face in a photograph as a face. You might just observe dots of black and white, scattered lines, patches of light and dark. In fact, the objects of your perception register only as on-off electromagnetic signals in your brain. Synchronization organized by intent converts dots and spots, scattered lines, electrical discharges, patterns of light and darkness, into a wholeness, a gestalt that creates a picture of the world as a subjective experience. The world does not exist as pictures, but only as these patches of on-off impulses, these dots and spots, these digital codes of seemingly random electrical firings. Synchronization through intent organizes them into an experience in the brain--a sound, a texture, a form, a taste, and a smell. You as nonlocal intelligence "label" that experience and suddenly there is the creation of a material object in subjective consciousness.

The world is like a Rorschach blot that we convert into a world of material objects through synchronization orchestrated by intent. The world before it is observed and the nervous system before the desire or intent to observe something both exists as a dynamic (constantly changing), nonlinear chaotic field of activities in a state of non-equilibrium (unstable activity). Intent synchronistically organizes these highly variable, seemingly chaotic and unrelated activities in a nonlocal universe into a highly ordering, self-organizing, dynamic system that manifests simultaneously as an observed world and a nervous system through which that world is being observed. The intent itself does not arise in the nervous system, although it is orchestrated through the nervous system. However, intent is responsible for more than cognition and perception. All learning, remembering, reasoning, drawing of inferences, and motor activity are preceded by intent. Intent is the very basis of [physical] creation." -- page 79, pages 94-95, Deepak Chopra, The Spontaneous Fulfillment of Desire: Harnessing the Infinite Power of Coincidence