Healing Metaphysics Home > Archive> Altered States - Urban Reverie

Article by Michael Finn
Copyright Michael Finn

Urban Reverie
Some years ago, I attended an ‘Extreme States’ workshop with Drs. Joe Goodbread and Kate Jobe. Between days, I had a dream which revealed to me that my innocent, everyday suburban consciousness was itself an extreme state, being, in effect, heavily isolationist, self-centric and somewhat disconnected. This led to the following article.

Mainstream consciousness, accepted social norms, prevailing etiquettes, are all aspects of a collective state. It is the consciousness our minds are imbued with each day, predicated by geography, opportunity, culture and local needs; basically, one’s ‘personal history’, as well, I believe, as whatever it is that draws us ahead in life……

The Everyday Trance, State Shifting Practices, The Tao and Dis-ease.
The central idea

We are like cells within a greater organism, and its thoughts affect ours, in a trance-like way.

One’s existentially-ordained identity is the seed bed of experience and one’s perception of such.

Our ‘pivot of identity’ is affected by inner and outer forces.

These operate at the personal, collective and universal level, all of which are interpenetrating and interactive.

We move in and out of a diverse range of states, continually; these impact in different ways, on one’s wellbeing.

In regards ‘mainstream’, thought, I refer here, in a generalized way, to the mindset of a developed nation, where catastrophic activities are not a normal part of everyday existence, where there is more affluence than poverty, where there is freedom of speech and movement, food and water are givens, wars are carried out far away and health is generally affordable, at least in some form.

As a result of the omniscience of the mainstream mindset – which inevitably slips into its own indulgent mesmeric groove, over time - there’s a tendency for its inhabitants to become desensitized, indifferent, impersonal to, and disconnected from the ‘other’ parts of the global community. For many, an ‘us’ and ‘them’ attitude exists. This embedded daily reverie, is a state likened to a subtle trance, subtle because it is so very familiar, hence its denotion as ‘mainstream’.

This trance, as well comfortably perpetuating a person’s everyday version of reality, seemingly impervious to the assaults of change, also has a tendency to :

• Sponsor desensitization processes – cultural disconnectedness.
• Exaggerate self importance, fuelling arrogance and indifference.
• Effectively blocks an authentic admission, which we could all make, of the extent of our ‘privileges’ (especially in the developed world), which are rarely reflected upon and therefore remain appreciated.
• Keep us focussed on self interest.

And life proceeds, seemingly unhindered…………

We are assailed by multimedia depictions of war, brutality, injustice and other tragedies and a breath later, can be totally engrossed in the sports channel. Newspapers will beat up anything to sell text and what passes is a cook-up of misfortune, misery and mayhem. Again, if its all too much, there’s the sports edition at the rear.

To be able to witness this utter barrage day after day, means one has become inured to the horrors which seem to befall ‘others’, and one lives in a cocoon of assuredness which hangs on the belief that – ‘I am special’ and ‘I am not connected in any way to these events’.

We should actually be surfing the net, not for further distractions, but for a ‘wailing wall’.

• Where are our humanitarian responses?
• What of the ‘global village’?
• Where is the emotion, the grief, the outraged anger, the care for fellow beings?

The trance is a collective cocoon which remains intact due to a population’s unwitting adherence to, exclusively, the known, the habitual, the attitudes which perpetuate a general community homeostasis, but by so doing, engender isolation and disconnectedness – the ‘I am an island’ mentality. This can be played out nationally, in your own neighbourhood, lounge room, or within your very person.

So, why am I so primarily interested in this phenomenon?

Because we are each cells plugged into a larger organism’s consensus reality.

Its ‘mind’ has powerful effects on all aspects of our daily life.

Because, our basic outlook on life affects healing patterns, healing protocol effectiveness and actual healing rates.

Healing patterns and practices will vary drastically from culture to culture, but the relationship between mind-set and vitality have been important to all traditions.

Medicine in earlier times was usually aimed at finding appropriate ways ( through ritual, divinations, medicinals, practices, education, prayer, meditation, austerity, physical training and so on), to merge the individual - in terms of their health status - with his/her collective society.

The subtle trance, suggested above, engenders a marginalization, a denial, an impersonalness. What is denied is the true equality and importance of all beings, the integrity of every individual. If we collude with this ‘unawareness’, we kill off parts of our own spirit, an expensive collateral damage.

Therefore, whereas diversity could be celebrated, promoting the collective and personal spirit, within the urban trance, it is rather, feared, to the extent of creating indifference, at which point, whole cultures suffer – an aspect of racism, very often.

Whatever occurs globally and locally is also present within my very own body. This is another example of the macro/microcosm concept, stemming from the underlying idea of our ultimate ‘connectedness’.

So, given that one cannot escape her/his intrinsic connectedness (within the Trance), to mainstream culture, the challenge is to tolerate the prevailing ethos of the culture whilst preserving my ‘essential nature’.

Whatever I might manage to ignore externally in my world, will find its expression within me in some nature. A ‘onemind’ idea posits then, that we are in fact very porous…………

My energy body is sensitive to internal and external influences………

Quote: “It is a mistake to assume that events far apart in time are thereby separate. All things are connected as in the finest web of a spider. The slightest movement on any thread can be discerned from all points in the web”

( Brian Bates – ‘The Way Of The Word)

TRANCE ANTIDOTE

If I am living within a cultural trance, it is certain to be biased in various emphases, as are my perceptual filters, as a result of my aggregate of experiences within my own personal history.

A bias then, suggests another side, which has either been programmed out of me, dampened down, over time, or buried, in what I term, ‘closets of redundance’: the back rooms of the mind, the oldest symptoms of the body, various body phenomena and within the subconscious.

We simply don’t pay attention to these phenomena closely enough to gain insights.

Perhaps this inattentiveness can be attenuated or shifted, by recourse to practices - ‘state shifters’ - which, amongst things, stretch the borders of the mind, push and sensitize awareness and consciousness and thoroughly benefit or in fact,disturb the physical body.

Most folk aren’t the slightest bit interested in these phenomena or its antidote, until they are jolted from the mesmery of daily existence, into the moment, usually in response to: disease, ‘untimely’ incidents, death awareness, or some other ‘dark night of the soul’.

When one is visited by major life challenges, such as: the seeming toll of ageing, long-term unemployment, drug addiction, family breakdown, sexism, severe accidents, racism, the aggregate effects of chronic stress, chronic diseases, pharmaceutical side-effects, the proximity to one’s inevitable death and so on, there is usually more interest shown in how to navigate murky waters.

The Medicine

Attenuating or altering the Trance - Moving from stasis to higher vitality.

One’s state (of mind and/or body) will experience a shift within……

Perhaps, deep meditation; in the polyrhythmic African-style beats coming off my drum; walking deep in a forest;my nocturnal and diurnal dreaming processes; under the effects of an acupuncture treatment; in a float tank; whilst star gazing and wondering about the essence of time, history and the age of the universe; within the sanctuary of a valued counselling session; through Qi Gong exercise; within the chronic discomforts of my body; deep within a depression or fatigue process, through fasting, in a fever, and so on and so forth.

State-shifting practices and processes, give access to expanded perceptions, a refinement of consciousness and opening of awareness.They offer a new place from which to experience reality and from where to make important decisions.

This sometimes occurs when one is very sick, or depleted. Through whichever way, we gain access to seeing ‘outside the circle’ of normal, unaffected consciousness.

All of these practices and processes have in common, the effect of creating an ‘altered state’ in place of normal(restricted) consciousness. There are a vast number of ways to achieve thus – taking one’s body and mind, (or being taken, as it were), to another plateau for a given period of time.

Other common events and activities which involve elements of state change, include:

Heavy and recreational drug use/abuse, (obviously including alcohol), smoking, caffeine intake, exercise regimes (often ‘overtraining’), being seriously ill or challenged through circumstances, within the throes of a phobia, as a result of accidents and in ‘near-death’ events, chronic symptoms including physical, mental or emotional states, and the likes of Chronic Fatigue, Depression, Anxiety, Insomnia etc.

What all these experiences do is shift one’s moods, energy levels, normal point of self-identification.

For example, how differently do people with extended Chronic Fatigue identify themselves, regarding life, pre and post the onset of the disease? Some folk suffer such deep layoffs for many years.

If you are fatigued long enough, your entire identity can shift around the body state which accommodates this wild energy draining process.

This has to be brought to light and assessments made as to what both experiences add up to, in juxtaposition, within the person’s life. That is, one could ask:

What was happening in my life before I became sick? And, what is occurring whilst I am in its grip? How does this all fit with my overall life vision? How is this a ‘cyclic’ experience in my life thus far.?

State Changing can be sought out as a powerful experience and can also occur within many and varied everyday events, things which are so familiar and yet, so hard to deal with. They seem often to ‘happen to us’, but are we just used to seeing things in this way?

There are forces (aspects of what the Chinese denote as ‘Qi’) which are acting upon us at all times, even when asleep and dreaming; these coalesce and challenge us.

The way in which we answer this is either passively (in which case state changing experiences are inclined to be disease states, accidents, conflicts etc, happening to us), or proactively in which case one is exploring just how and why things happen around her/him. To gat clarity, they might access meditative states, trance, chants, dream material, and so on, to gain expanded awareness.

Either way, state altering influences are operating in these peoples’ lives.

I discern always, when working with people, that there is a background experience quietly occurring, sponsored by what the Chinese Taoists would have termed the Tao.

This ground-substance to experience, conveys a patterning influence in our lives. Ostensibly, this is where destiny (for those who espouse such), interfaces with present day events; my body is the barometer of this unfolding……

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