http://www.integralchicks.com/2010/08/what-do-integral-men-want-part-2/

Love is at the heart of every emotion that you embrace.

Practice (how it worked for me):

1. Accept the circumstances surrounding the emotion (there are many techniques to do this), so that all you have left is the energy of that emotion.
2. Feel that emotion (I feel most emotions, positive or negative, in my belly). Hold and embrace it.
3. Relax. Relax into the emotion and let it untwist and melt, naturally revealing itself.
4. Recognize that energy, that feeling as the same as when you feel love. It is the same energy.
5. Let the energy  fill your body and being. You are communing, loving and being loved.
6. If that burning energy still remains, recognize it as the burning desire to love and be loved.
7. Repeat 1-7 until you’ve let the tension unravel itself and you’ve surrendered to the love.
8. Take a moment to enjoy the simple pleasure of the sensations around you.

My first time reading over the book a couple years ago, I avoided the chapter on sex transmutation assuming that it would be a kind of moralistic tract that would try to convince me not to have sex. And I didn’t want to hear that, I wanted to have sex! But the truth of the text is deeper and more beautiful.

Finally reading this chapter on the subway just now was a quiet revelatory experience that I felt as it surged up my spine and bathed me in gentle, subtle energies that drew the gazes of a few who were subconsciously attuned to it as I walked through the bus terminal. It is amazing what simple text can do to inspire.

The Creative Impulse

Napoleon Hill states in so many words that sex energy is the source of all creativity, that can be put to either creative use or squandered. This is an amazing truth, but I think calling it sex energy confuses the concept with associations to its base physical expression.

Andrew Cohen speaks of the creative impulse (that I wrote about in my first post). I assume that this is the driving impetus of the Kosmos. The meaning of life! To grow and evolve through increasingly higher levels of expression.

I experienced the feeling of this evolutionary push at Integral Spiritual Experience recently in a breakaway session led by Craig Hamilton, one of Cohen’s students. He led us through a group meditation following the path of evolution from the Big Bang to human consciousness. We spoke, expressing the thoughts and feelings of the group. I felt a growing, surging creative force as we “evolved”. It was vastly powerful and constantly, urgently surging forward, infinitely pouring itself into expression. This is also a dangerous force, without direction it would veer off into destructive outlets just as easily as creative ones.

I believe this is the same force that Napoleon Hill speaks of. Sex energy. Creative energy. I will define “sex energy”, however, as being the physical expression of this force. It is, perhaps, the highest level of this force that our evolutionary ancestors and our animal cousins reached. Evolution through reproduction. But we are no longer limited to evolution through reproduction alone. We are potential masters of not only the evolution of mind, but of consciousness itself.

Sex and Attraction

Thus, sex without any other context than base animal desire, provides little or no spiritual or evolutionary value. Not that there’s anything wrong with that! It has its place, of course, but once you’ve fully indulged in that experience and have nothing more to learn from it, you are not growing and you are spending your creative energies. If you fixate on it and overindulge, you are in fact regressing and may even be engaging in self-destructive behavior. That is not to say that sex within other contexts is not spiritual. Sex with love is profound. And within some tantric traditions, spiritual practice through sexual intercourse, the manifest union of feminine and masculine, is the only way to reach the highest levels of consciousness.

Let’s take a look at attraction from this perspective. Men whose only form of creative expression is through base sex reduce their attractive potential to simply their physical traits. As humans, they have aspirations for creative expression, but they do not have a creative outlet for this energy and thus spend it only in sexual indulgence or other kinds of addiction. One of the fundamental reasons that video games are “fun” are they appeal to a man’s need to express himself through growing and evolving, “leveling up”.

Men who express their creative energy through artistic expression or business success are much more attractive. They are attractive at higher levels of expression. They have learned to cultivate this energy, so not only do they pursue higher levels of expression, they may have even more sexual energy for physical expression.

Men who are at the leading edge of consciousness not only ride the wave of evolution, but steer it. Kosmic kreative energy flows through them. They are manifest beings of creative energy. These are men who have presence that goes beyond simple sexual or romantic attractiveness.

(Here I’ve spoken mainly of men, but there are sure to be parallel levels of creative expression in women, it may just take different forms.)

Expression

Another insight from ISE for me was that negative emotion is often the result of blocked expression. Not choosing outlets for creative expression is unhealthy to say the least. At the same time it is, of course, perfectly natural. There is negative, so we can have positive. And opposites attract. If you desire to evolve and express yourself (and you probably do unless you’re dead), you can see your negative emotions and experiences as pointing out to you how you can evolve and where to express yourself. Indeed, greatest heights of insight and inspiration often follow from moments of greatest weakness and despair. All you need is the presence of heart to look up and see you are loved, oh but you are so loved.

Integral Spiritual Experience Year 1

The Personal Spiritual Journey: Your Unique Self

Wednesday, December 30th

This conference was a profound experience for me. I wish to document it here to work through what I learned and felt.

3:00-6:00pm Registration

I’d spent a week with my sister and nephew in Hawaii, basking in the sun, eating delicious and recovering from a cold. The overnight flight landed me in SFO before 7am with only a few hours of sleep. I took the Monterey AirBus to Asilomar, thinking that I could check-in early and rest. No such luck. With 4 hours before check-in I fell asleep sitting up trying to read Neal Stephenson’s new novel Anathem until more and more people arrived around me crescendoing into a rush of activity.

I stepped into line to register for ISE, re-opening my book. A voice behind me, “You must have amazing concentration.” This was Thomas. A retired mailman who had made it big selling cell phone frequencies to large carriers. We engaged in light conversation. Gray (but not white)-haired and bearded, he was a masculine but friendly character, like a calm and caring shop teacher. He was a reassuring presence (not that reassurance was needed during this unique event) as I passed him from time to time over the next few days.

I checked in to my accommodations, something between a hotel and summer camp lodge. Mark burst in the door as soon as I’d settled in. He was immediately dialoging me in Integral Theory, throwing out jargon like a sailor spewing profanity. “This guy is a total integral nerd,” I remarked to myself, ignorant of the spiritual and emotional depth my soon-to-be friend was capable of.

Mark had mentioned his friend Wesley was right behind him, but minutes passed without sight or sound of this mysterious fellow. “I was looking for my key,” he said when he finally appeared. Yep, he’d lost his key before even getting to his room. Wesley was in many ways the complete opposite of his good friend Mark, The Organized, but he also brought a depth of knowledge and experience that would later surprise and educate me. We all headed to dinner, throwing out jokes as we got used to each other’s sense of humor.

Actually found a photo of me standing in line for registration (photo by Mathias Weitbrecht)

7:30-8:00 Keynote / Brother David Steindl-Rast

But Brother David was unable to attend the event. I was disappointed as I had been looking forward to hearing from him. Rabbi Marc Gafni filled in and gave a speech on showing up completely for this experience. I took it to heart and opened myself up to committing to the next few days despite my initial reservations about Rabbi Gafni’s speaking style which was strangely reminiscent of a Christian Televangelist. This guy’s a Rabbi?? I would soon come to respect him deeply, flamboyant presence included.

8:15-10:30 Kirtan / Krishna Das

Looking at the schedule before coming to ISE, I had started to have some reservations about the seemingly hippy-ish aspects of the conference, such as the chanting sessions that was about to begin (these reservations quickly dissipated as I realized the intelligence and the depth of this conference). These were led by Krishna Das, who, between the very long chant pieces, would recant these engaging, hilarious stories. He looked and sounded a little like Jeffrey Tambor (George Bluth, Sr. on Arrested Development).

Krishna Das and band

After two long chants of call and response, I figured I’d more or less gotten the point. However, I had promised myself I would commit to the whole experience and resisted leaving with the trickle of crowd that edged its way to the door. As the chants went on and on, the music got better and I relaxed more into the experience, letting it to take me over. I felt connected to my fellow chanters and began to let myself surrender to God in the 2nd person. By the time I found myself chanting “Hare Krishna”, I was completely free of the negative cultural associations I had for this particular chant (despite a Hare Krishna giving me a book when I was 13 being the impetus for me becoming a vege… err.. pescetarian) and was able to enjoy it simply for what it was.

When we got back to the room, we met our new roommate Jun. The four of us would soon become dear friends.

My reservations of what awaited me the next couple days was replaced with an excitement as if we were rounding the top of a hill, catching the first few glimpses of the luscious green of the valley about to explode into view.

]]> http://sungwonchoe.com/2010/01/integral-spiritual-experience-year-1-day-1/feed/ 1 http://sungwonchoe.com/2010/01/we-are-the-stories-we-tell-ourselves/ http://sungwonchoe.com/2010/01/we-are-the-stories-we-tell-ourselves/#comments Wed, 06 Jan 2010 04:20:25 +0000 sungwon http://sungwonchoe.com/?p=174

“I can’t dance.”

“I only date older men.”

“I can’t seem to wake up early these days.”

“I’m a morning person.”

“I can’t start my day until I’ve had my coffee.”

“I can’t sing.”

“I’m a visual person.”

“Life is unfair.”

“I’m just an amateur.”

“Why do girls always like assholes?”

“Life is an adventure.”

“I must be getting old.”

“I’ve always been lucky.”

“I can eat whatever I want and never gain weight.”

“I’m addicted to chocolate.”

We all tell little stories about ourselves, to ourselves and to others. Sometimes we don’t even really “know” something about ourselves until we say it out loud. Usually, we tell these stories when we notice a pattern of experience. We might test out an observation in conversation or thought.

“Hmm, girls with family problems seem attracted to and comfortable around me.”

Then we draw a conclusion from it.

“Spiritual practice must be paying off for me. Chicks must be sensing my peaceful vibe. [pats self on back]“

This in turn, can shape how you experience reality.

“I must be more attractive now to girls who are seeking masculine calm and stability. See? If I smile at this girl, she smiles back.”

Beliefs Form Experience Form Beliefs

We form beliefs derived from observing our own experiences in the environment. This is another interpretation of our individual => socio-cultural environment feedback loop. For our purposes here, let’s think of it as the belief => experience feedback loop.

Now the experiences we observe and the patterns we draw from them are largely colored by our emotional state and deeply held core beliefs about ourselves and reality in general. There’s rarely anything objective about it. Our individual experiences are decidedly not a good representation of the experiences of the population at large.

For example, I go to a restaurant twice in a row and happen to get bad service both times. “Oh, that place sucks,” I tell my friends. But of course, my experience is not statistically significant in the least (you’d need a sample of certain number of people, at least 30 or so, I think). We cannot yet say with any reasonable degree of certainty if any other person there would be more or less likely to experience good service (this is a scientific 3rd person perspective). I also cannot say whether this your reality without asking you (2nd person).

Note that it doesn’t mean my experience is not valid. Far from it, it colors my unique perspective of reality. To me, that the restaurant offers bad service is near-fact in my unique vision of reality. But we must not confuse this 1st perspective reality by generalizing it to then say it is true for 2nd and 3rd person perspectives as well.

Stories Color Our Reality

To look at the first example again, I could just as easily interpret my meeting girls with family problems in a different way if I was in a more negative mood and had core beliefs consistent with lower self-worth or a more cynical outlook.

“Man, why do I always meet psychos with family problems?”

I would then have expectations of the next girl I meet to have some kind of emotional problems, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy as I look for them. (Note even the more positive conclusions drawn above are generalizations based more on my beliefs than a rational understanding of my experiences.)

Of course, we can never have perfect information (it might not even exist! that would mean there was an objective, i.e. trans-perspective not 3rd person, reality and I really ain’t sure about that). We must necessarily draw hasty and illogical conclusions formed into our stories to get on with our lives, hell, even to have personalities!

Then why should we care about the beliefs about and colors of our experiences? Well, there’s no reason to care if you’re content with the experiences you have. But becoming aware of these stories we tell ourselves, we can become masters of our own fates, directing our own narrative rather than having it direct us.

A master storyteller creates her own reality.

“I create my own reality.”

I like that story.

Beautifully done.

Lyrics:

[Sagan]
If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch
You must first invent the universe

Space is filled with a network of wormholes
You might emerge somewhere else in space
Some when-else in time

The sky calls to us
If we do not destroy ourselves
We will one day venture to the stars

A still more glorious dawn awaits
Not a sunrise, but a galaxy rise
A morning filled with 400 billion suns
The rising of the milky way

The Cosmos is full beyond measure of elegant truths
Of exquisite interrelationships
Of the awesome machinery of nature

I believe our future depends powerfully
On how well we understand this cosmos
In which we float like a mote of dust
In the morning sky

But the brain does much more than just recollect
It inter-compares, it synthesizes, it analyzes
it generates abstractions

The simplest thought like the concept of the number one
Has an elaborate logical underpinning
The brain has it’s own language
For testing the structure and consistency of the world

[Hawking]
For thousands of years
People have wondered about the universe
Did it stretch out forever
Or was there a limit

From the big bang to black holes
From dark matter to a possible big crunch
Our image of the universe today
Is full of strange sounding ideas

[Sagan]
How lucky we are to live in this time
The first moment in human history
When we are in fact visiting other worlds

The surface of the earth is the shore of the cosmic ocean
Recently we’ve waded a little way out
And the water seems inviting

Why Is This Still Happening To Me?

In a previous article, I talked about the need to develop a new perspective in order to move beyond your current set of experiences and enjoy a new reality. Easier said than done, right? In this article, I’ll introduce a belief system that acts as a powerful spiritual guide for your own development, enabling you to continuously develop through new perspectives and personal realities.

Individual and Environment

There is a mutually influential feedback loop between an individual and her environment (see Individual and Socio-Cultural Environment in Synergy). The structure of the socio-cultural environment provides a set of beliefs and values (the culture) that shape the thoughts and feelings of an individual. The thoughts and feelings of an individual causes her to take action in her environment, effecting change within it and so on.

The individual shapes the environment and vice versa.

Which of these has the more powerful influence on the other, the individual or her environment? Most of us adopt the belief that we are victims of circumstance, shaped and shat upon by our environment. The question “Why is this happening to me” itself takes this stance; that one is powerless in the face of the overwhelming reality of one’s socio-economic circumstances, looks, skills or just plain luck. So, what can you do to change your life with this belief? Not very much. Wait to be “discovered”. Play the lottery. Hope your boss will give you a raise. Hope that girl over there makes eye contact with you. Good luck with that.

Complete Responsibility

Now, the opposite belief of being a victim of circumstance is that you are in control. You effect change in your environment. Take this to the extreme: You are completely responsible for everything you experience. Yeah. Everything. It is an incredibly empowering belief. Imagine, if you have created your entire meaningless and pitiful existence, then you have the power to create an entirely new, meaningful and exhilarating existence. Your life can be a work of beauty, with you as the artist. (This belief system also has the added benefit that it seems to be closest to the truth.)

There are also dark and difficult implications of this belief system, however. How can you be responsible if you are a victim of war, rape, torture? I’ve struggled to understand this and I’m afraid I have found no satisfying answer. But intuitively I believe that everything, every horrible thing imaginable, has a place in the Kosmos, otherwise it would not exist. Allowing the universe its dark mysteries, we employ this belief system not to blame victims, but to empower them to move beyond victimhood.

Everything has a place in the Kosmos, maybe even you!

Beliefs

So we are completely responsible for our reality. But what are our tools? How do we shape our brave new world? The same way we created our current reality: with our thoughts and beliefs. Our beliefs are the single most powerful way we understand reality. We literally cannot perceive anything that does not exist within our belief systems. Another way to look at it is that we create our reality through our beliefs. (For more on how are beliefs shape our reality, see The Nature of Personal Reality)

You’re lazy because you believe you are lazy. You’re a night person because you believe you’re a night person. You’re fat because you believe you’re fat. You’re not creative because you believe you’re not creative. You’re sick because you believe you’re sick. And so on. Then to grow, we Just need to throw out limiting beliefs and adopt empowering ones. It really is that simple. But it’s not always so easy, is it?

Present Reality Reinforces Old Beliefs

Any self-development program or deep practice you embark on starts with the belief that you can grow or change. But then, after a few weeks you’re off your diet, back to your smokes, your daily dream journal gathering dust, whatever it is. Why does this always happen, huh? Because your environment provides more negative reinforcement than the power of positive thinking that got you started. And you believe more in your environment and your limiting beliefs than your empowering ones.

Your current reality is continually reinforced by your environment (it’s hard to Think and Grow Rich when you’re surrounded by reminders of your poverty), your friends and family (they have expectations of you to be consistent with your past behavior), and most of all your own patterns of thoughts and beliefs.

Two Months

Actor Vincent Regan (the Captain) during his 1st week of training for 300 at Gym Jones

As a friend in the pick-up community once related to me, it takes two months of practice or work (on your mind or body) before you see results. So the body and mind you have now is the result of what you were doing two months ago. Conversely, whatever you are doing now shapes who you’ll be in a couple months.

Vincent after 8 weeks of training for 300 at Gym Jones

Identity-Level Change

Have you ever worked on changing yourself or starting a new practice for more than two months? When you do, you start to identify with your new practice, it becomes part of you. After more than two years of training, I now strongly identify myself with the martial art that I do, Gicheonmun. I invariably mention it when new acquaintances ask about my work and play. This identification keeps me strongly motivated to continue training at least a few times a week, even when I’d rather just sit on my ass.

Your Whole Self

Now wouldn’t it be great if you could harness the motivation of identity-level change before you’d even changed? Why yes, yes it would. This is exactly what creating the belief in your Whole Self gives you.

Your Whole Self is you beyond space and time. Your spiritual energy as it is manifested at any point in space-time up until its ultimate perfection (or wholeness). Your Whole Self is your spiritual guide. It shows you slices of your potential future selves (and all possibilities are open).

To effect change in yourself now, you simply awaken your imagination to who you want to be at some point in the future. Your Whole Self will tell you what you need to do now to realize that future self as you imagine it. Your Whole Self speaks to you through your intuition and you tell it what you want through your imagination.

As your body and your circumstances now are the result of your past actions, so too are your present actions manifested in the future. Your Whole Self tells you what actions to take to manifest the future self that you want. If you are in touch with your Whole Self, you will always know what to do (”right action”, as the sages call it) to stay on the right path.

Your Whole Self is your self existing throughout space-time, whole and perfect (cover art to Cynic's Focus album by Robert Venosa)

A Taste

I discovered my Whole Self while meditating last week. While doing the meditation exercise my master had given me, I became aware of the physical character of my thoughts, and the thought-like character of my actions, all intertwined. I realized I could project my own reality, my future self, to guide me. Since then, I often imagine a future self walking within me or in front of me. A real potential being present as energy. Me, but more confident and vibrant, taller and more fit, completely healthy and wearing a nicer outfit ( ). He laughs with me, remembering the silly mistakes he made along the way that I’m making now, and is incredibly patient and compassionate. Knowing that there already is a “you” who has accomplished what you want to accomplish, and is what you want to become, is incredibly liberating and empowering. You need but follow the path of “right action”.

This article is a taste meant to introduce the Whole Self. I’m sure I’ll probably be writing a lot more about the Whole Self as I come to understand more about it.

"That's my niece Diane, and she's going to Hell... Why? Because she dances."

While reading an early (1981) Ken Wilber book called Up From Eden, I was struck by the depiction of the Devil’s place in Wilber’s model of the evolution of consciousness (a model of human development derived from the great philosophers and mystics from both the East and West) and immediately related it back to my love of devilish music. I believe this model provides a good framework for explaining the Devil’s manifestation in popular music and in Heavy Metal in particular.

Here, then, we must digress into the evolutionary model of human development laid out in Up From Eden to provide our theoretical background. I will paraphrase liberally from this book throughout this article.

The Great Chain of Being

There are a multitude of ways to divide up the evolution of consciousness into hierarchical stages. Perhaps the simplest way to do so is with the 3 stages subconscious, self-conscious and superconscious. Note that in our culture the distinction between subconscious and self-conscious is generally understood thanks to Freud et. al. However, there is deep confusion between the pre-personal subconscious and the trans-personal superconscious. This confusion is what gives you feel queasy when you hear new age babble that just doesn’t sit quite right. A lot of so-called spiritual paths and literature lead downwards into regression. A truly trans-personal understanding comes not only from being able to feel and experience directly, but also to interpret that experience in a meaningful intellectual way. The trans-personal transcends the mind and ego, but also includes it. The pre-personal simply abandons the mind to sensation alone.

In Up From Eden, Wilber further divides these 3 basic stages of the Great Chain of Being into the following 8 levels: Nature (uroboric, reptilian), Body (typhonic, magical), Early Mind (membership, mythical), Advanced Mind (rational, mental-egoic), Psychic, Subtle, Causal and Ultimate. We can see the first 7 levels of the Great Chain of Being represented in the Chakras of Kundalini Yoga as well as in the Caduceus.

Caduceus with corresponding Chakras (root, sacral, solar plexus, heart, throat, third eye, crown)

It is no simple coincidence that the evolution of levels of consciousness have parallels in biological evolution (from matter/nature to life/body to mind) . It is also important to note that each level of consciousness transcends the previous level but also includes it in the unconscious. Thus, we, with our average level of consciousness at the mental-egoic level, have within our unconscious access to all the previous levels. This is easily seen in our unconscious dream life where the relationship between and to dream images is often understood symbolically (i.e. magically or mythically). This also manifests in psychoses. Suppose a child at an Early Mind level of development is traumatized by a woman in a red dress. As an adult, this may take the form of an irrational fear of the color red. At a rational level, he knows this is completely silly, but in terms of a magical understanding of the world, it makes perfect sense. Voodoo works along similar principles.

Repression and Indulgence

At each level of consciousness, Spirit (God or Godhead) is understood in different forms. For Body consciousness, it is the Typhon. For Early Mind consciousness, it is the Great Mother.

The Sorcerer of Trois Freres: A typhonic half-man, half-beast

Healthy development from one level to another involves both transcending and including the previous level. With the rise of the mental/egoic consciousness in the West, this did not happen and the body-level consciousness associated with the Typhon and Great Mother became disassociated from the modern psyche. With the exception of the Communion ritual (transcending and including the body by eating and drinking the body and blood of Christ), this body/mind split is clearly embodied by the dominant Western religious tradition, Christianity. Major sins are involved with indulging in the pleasures of the flesh: food, drink, sex, even dance and music. The feminine along with the Great Mother was also repressed in favor of the masculine Sun/Father God. While this disassociation between mind and body has historically taken the form of repression, more recently it has taken the form of over-indulgence. Yeah, Sex, Drugs and Rock ‘n Roll!

Paleolithic Venus: a Great Mother figure

Rock ‘n Roll: Indulging in the Senses

Rock music is very much a product of the 20th Century. Plainly, the amplification and sound technology had not existed before to create such walls of sound that embraced the listener with a kind of sonic physicality. But also new media (radio, tv, records) was available to unite the ambition and rebellion of a previously disconnected new youth culture and market freed from labor and poverty by the burgeoning wealth of the United States. Rebellion is naturally attracted to the repressed, the taboo. Foremost among such repressed desires was sexuality (what’s a clitoris??). Rock music incited youth to dance in obscene ways to the driving rhythm, mimicry of the sex act itself (see Dirty Dancing). Elvis Presley was infamously not televised below the waist for the obscene gyrations of his pelvis.

By the’ 60s, men were getting in touch with their repressed inner feminine, growing their hair long and “dropping out” of pursuing traditional social roles. For rock musicians, having long hair became almost a requirement (as it still is in the otherwise testosterone-dominated metal scene). The Great Mother was being unearthed into the consciousness of the counter-culture, from the Feminist movement to a deep desire to heal humanity’s estranged relationship with nature. Much of the counter-culture regressed back into sub-conscious indulgence in sensation (e.g. the drug culture), but sometimes you have to go backwards before you can go forward, right?

In the ’70s, bands like Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath lay down not only heavy metal’s powerful sound, but also it’s fascination with the epic, darkness and the occult. KISS donned ritualistic costume and makeup echoing pagan ritual (Gene Simmon’s character was in fact named the Demon). Heavy metal surfaced in the ’80s and ’90s, offering not only repressed sexuality, but also the repressed aggression and blood of bodily violence (embodied by the mosh pit). The music itself, loud and powerful, has a physical quality that reverberates throughout the body.

Metal and the Typhon

Popular music presents a cultural space where we may indulge in bodily senses of lower levels of consciousness that had been disassociated and repressed during the past few hundred years of Western culture (raves and dance clubs, for example, are modern send-ups of pagan rituals with the imbibing of mind-altering substances, the courtship between youth and the expression of the body moving to the driving rhythm). As these lower levels are only now beginning to be reintegrated into our cultural consciousness, most of us overindulge in physical pleasures: food, drugs, sex, alcohol. In Heavy Metal, this indulgence is made explicit and clear and is often celebrated. Our lusts come out of a place of darkness (the subconscious). A close relationship between metal and the master of indulgence, Satan, is only natural.

Album artwork for Symphonic Black/Death Metal band Dimmu Borgir's In Sorte Diaboli

The album artwork for Dimmu Borgir’s In Sorte Diaboli album features a classic depiction of the Devil that is almost exactly identical to figure 24 in Up From Eden. From the caption to that figure:

[T]he god(s) or sacred images of one stage of development become the demons, devils, demiurges, or disparaged gods of the next stage of evolution…What is natural and appropriate at one stage becomes archaic, regressive and infantile at the next.. the lower stage–which was once worshipped and revered–is now looked upon as something to struggle against, to subdue, even to scorn…

[The Devil as depicted] is clearly typhonic, half man, half animal…In fact, it is strikingly reminiscent of the Sorcerer of Trois Freres [see Sorcerer image above]. That Sorcerer, which was the supreme god to the typhonic hunters, is now the supreme demon to the mental-ego… Second, this figure also shows the serpent-uroboros, and it is correctly portrayed as having evolved only through the lower three chakras–food, sex, and power [or root, sacral and solar plexus, see Caduceus image above]—which is perfect typhonicism. And third. it is hermaphroditic or Great Mother infused…

Only in the West, then where the disassociation of ego-mind and body-typhon was often severe, did the typhon (now cut off form conscious participation) assume truly menacing proportions (as Satan) and appear to take on an ultimately and absolutely evil significance….”Give the Devil its due” really means that the typhon serves an appropriate if limited function, and when exercised in an appropriate if non-obsessive fashion, serves the reproduction of the pranic level of the human compound individual. The typhon disocciated, however, shows up in obsessive overindulgence, on the one hand, and repressive puritanism and life blockage, on the other…Psychologically it manifests itself, on the one hand, in hedonism, obsessive genital-sexuality and the perversions, exclusive aestheticism, dominance of the pleasure principle, degenerate emotionalism; and on the other hand, in hyper-intellectualism, schizoid mentality, arid abstractionism, history divorced from nature, ego terrified of body.

Death Metal: Nightmares Made Flesh

Thematic material for extreme forms of metal clearly land on the side of hedonism and perversion. Death Metal, rather being “terrified of the body”, revels in its base, material nature, a celebratory orgy of blood and gore. Most Death Metal subject matter revolves around three main themes: death, Satan or otherwise anti-Christian themes, and gore. This is readily evident from skimming over band names alone: Cannibal Corpse, Morbid Angel, Carcass, Deicide, Decapitation, Vital Remains, Bloodbath, Death and so on. 

Black Metal: Digging Into the Grave of The Subconscious

While the lower level themes are well-represented in Death and other genres of Heavy Metal, they are not as clearly differentiated as they are in the sub-genres of Black Metal. The thematic progression (or regression) of Black Metal beginning in the 90s Scandinavian scene in particular, offers a fascinating depiction of the unearthing of subconscious levels of the Great Chain of Being.

Many bands then delved deeper into their mythological past, creating sub-genres of Viking Metal (Enslaved, Thyrfing among others) and Folk Metal (Finntroll, Ensiferum, Korpiklaani).

Other bands then branched further back into paganism, expressing a fascination with nature (Neofolk bands like Tenhi, Nest and Agalloch).

This progression of thematic interest is strikingly similar to exploring the Great Chain of Being backwards from Advanced Mind (Satanic individualism) to Nature.

Spiritual Metal

As a side note, not all metal bands are thematically linked to lower levels of the Great Chain of Being. Cynic and Aghora are both excellent bands that lyrically explore themes of higher levels of consciousness over their hybrid genre of Extreme (i.e. Death and Thrash) Metal and Jazz Fusion.

Scratching the Surface

I have essayed to show that Heavy Metal and popular music in general is representative in the cultural consciousness of the over-indulgence/repression of the Great Chain of Being’s lower levels. However, there are many more unanswered questions than insights raised in this cursory overview. Of particular interest to me are the following. Why is Heavy Metal so overwhelmingly masculine in both style and participation? Where are the feminine aspects of the Great Mother (or are they simply manifest as obsession with sexuality and the female body as celebrated by mainstream pop music)? Why did Japanese Visual Rock bands reach back thematically not to their own ethnic past, like the Scandinavian metal bands or even Korean Black Metal bands Oathean and Sad Legend, but to 17th and 18th Century Europe? Is their feminized look representative of their cultural emasculation? Perhaps the most intriguing question is what popular musical culture would be like in a healthy, integrated cultural consciousness.

To put it bluntly, you’re not ready for change. You’re not ready to change. You’re used to and comfortable with things the way they are. One way to look at it is that you haven’t learned what you’re “supposed” to have learned from a particular level of experience, so you can’t move on. You’re doomed to repeat it. Everyday is Groundhog Day (imdb | amazon).

Bill Murray and friend in Groundhog Day

What? Does the universe really conspire to provide you with experiences that are valuable lessons? Are you really the center of the universe, a special snowflake? Yes and no. It’s simply that whatever level of consciousness, emotional development or morality you’re at is how you’ll experience pretty much everything. For the purposes of self-development, reality is absolutely (haha) subjective. Your understanding of every experience you have is filtered through your own unique perspective. Hell, even if you are capable of being aware of having a certain experience is based on your interpretative framework, your ability to be aware of it in the first place. The universe doesn’t have to prepare a conspiracy of lesson plans for you. The way you perceive any experience is itself the teaching. (But you are a special snowflake! Who’s a special snowflake? Yes, you are! Daddy’s wittle fluffy-wuffy special snowflake!)

You're a special snowflake! =^.^=

Thus you do not change because your understanding of reality remains fixed. If you always interpret a similar experience in the same way, you will always have the same experience. If you always respond with the same action, you’ll always get the same result.

So how do you break out of your current reality? If you want to experience something new, if you want to change, you have to develop a new understanding, a new perspective, and then respond accordingly. Or you can do it the other way around and change your behavior first, see what happens, and then develop a new interpretive framework.

Developing a New Perspective

For social relationships, the easiest way to gain a new perspective is to take that of the person with whom you are in relationship with.

For example, how could she do that to me? I don’t know, that’s a good question, isn’t it? Let’s actually try to answer it.

Adopt her perspective for a moment with compassion. Have you ever done something like that? Could you ever do something like that? Once you have developed some compassion for her perspective, it looks less and less like she’s wronged you. You may have simply expected more from her than she’s ready to give. Maybe she doesn’t express her affection in ways that you need (some respond more to words, others deeds, still others physical affection). Can you still be upset at her when you can empathize with her perspective? Well, yeah, I guess you could, but you’d start to feel silly about it after a while.

Taking another perspective like this allows you to take back control over the situation. You can not easily control another person (at least not without being a major dick). You can not easily force them to change (most of us aren’t ready to, right?). But you can control how you interpret the situation and how you respond. Since reality is subjective anyhow, changing your perspective of the situation will actually change the situation. That doesn’t mean you always get what you want; it means you can control whether not getting what you want will upset you or not. (It might, however, help you stop looking for what you want in the wrong places…)

(Note that the Integral 3-2-1 process describes a similar, more detailed way of using perspectives to work through your own psyche. It’s an excellent technique for dealing with your Shadow.)

New Action: Outside the Comfort Zone

Changing your behavior entails taking new action. You can tell when you’re taking new action when you’re outside your comfort zone. So if you want to take new action that will lead to growth, you have to do something you’re afraid of (not mortally, of course, don’t go skinny dipping in piranha-infested waters because you misunderstood me). Tim Ferris even argues that defining your fears may be more important than defining your goals. Generally, facing your fears will change your reality fairly automatically. You’ll be doing things you never imagined that you could do. You gain confidence. Your sense of self expands.

Note that while moving outside of your comfort zone when you’re ready leads to growth, being forced too far outside your comfort zone leads to trauma. A 13-year old needs to begin getting away from his parent’s authority and care to learn to assert his independence. A 3-year old who is taken away from caring parents can be psychologically scarred.

Under the Blanket: Inside the Comfort Zone

Oh wait, so there’s a comfort zone? Yeah, which means if you’re not changing, you’re in it! And that’s perfectly fine. You don’t need to be changing all the time, just know that if you’re all comfy under the covers, you’re not growing. You change when you’re ready (which would probably be about when you’re complaining about your life, if you needed a hint). When you want to move on to the next set of experiences, you know what you have to do.

We are among the first generations for whom self-actualization is a real possibility. We have the opportunity to choose where we live, even becoming global nomads  if we wish. For the first time in history, all the world’s knowledge, it’s sciences, philosophies and religions are open to us. We have now the opportunity and means for deciding our own social roles. We can choose what kind and how many loving relationships we want. We can choose meaningful and fulfilling work. We can enjoy searching for and living our individual life purpose. Even our parents never had such freedom. We are near Gods, creators of our own destinies.

At the same time, the world is coming apart at the seams, offering up monolithic and fearful challenges that threaten life as we know it. This is the inherent danger that lurks at every increasing level of societal development. As we know from Spiral Dynamics, each new level of collective consciousness solves problems of the previous level and also creates new ones.

With the emergence of each new level, not all of human society progresses to the next level. Only those societies and indivduals at the cutting edge. The increasing complexity of cultural conflicts comes as a result that we have people and societies living at -all- levels of consciousness, but with access to the technologies and ideologies of all the other levels. Thus ethnocentrically-centered political and religious leaders with weapons of mass destruction. The distance between the lower and higher levels of consciousness grow. Each level brings greater opportunities for freedom and expanding consciousness, but also greater dangers for fucking it all up on horrific scales. The stakes get ever higher.

We privileged are extremely few. The daily reality for much of the world is brutal. Most live in horrifying poverty, in the midst of war or at the mercy of overt and severe political and religious oppression. As we elite enjoy more freedom and more opportunity, those below experience even more poverty. For poverty exists as the distance between what some have and some do not. The more we have, the more impoverished those without. A moral responsibility lies on us all to close this gap.

There are two ways in which we can meet these challenges, both in the present and in the future. In the now, we must seek out direct solutions through community activism, non-profits and other such initiatives. We use these tools now available to us to express our compassion.

Unfortunately, these short-term solutions are not enough. Most of them do not address the root cause of humanity’s problems, which is a narrow view of self. Lower levels of moral consciousness focus on what is good for the self as individual, one’s family, one’s clan. Most of us do not extend our compassion and understanding beyond an ethnocentric or nationalistic frame. The average level of consciousness is simply not great enough to overcome this selfish self.

Pursuits like self-development and spirituality are critical in raising the average level of global consciousness. It seems selfish to work on oneself when there is so much altruistic work to be done in the here and now (and indeed it must be done, we can’t all leave a man bleeding to death in the street to chase down his killer), but lasting solutions to our 1st-tier (see Spiral Dynamics) problems will only come when a critical mass of us have reached 2nd-tier levels of consciousness. Otherwise we’ll always just be cleaning up after own bloody mess.

For you and I, heaven on earth is within reach for a pittance of blood, sweat and tears. Yet most of us are barely even aware of the opportunities that are laid at our feet. We subconsciously inherit the social structures and values of our cultures, instead of consciously choosing our own and becoming our own personal anarcho-utopian islands of free and full individual men and women.

For the good of all, it is necessary to pursue your own passions and grow into your own true self. Increasing freedom for you is increasing freedom for us all.