Author: lailatotti

Everything makes sense to me

Everything makes sense

all the pieces are within their place

And i am insulated in understanding

even the inevitable gaps

are tiled over with an understanding that I can not fully understand

I am insulated

I feel insulated

but when my perfectly curated conceptual mosaic is confronted with a portal

to the expansive beyond

my vertiginous ego

grieves at the remembrance of its Ultimate state

suddenly I remember everything

-the ecstasy and the agony-

is immanent and potentially imminent

I also remember hints of the beauty

the nostalgia

the enriching juiciness and vitality

both course strongly through the veins of a humble animal fully awake to it’s aliveness

The greatest intellects do not restrict the breath of life as it flows through them

the conceptual mind is not a barrier but a bridge

but I’m not sure I’m ready to open up yet

its ok

we can allow the continuous flow of time and the warm light of nurturance to thaw us

slowly

slowly

slowly and gently

unfolding back into life

As a child and now adult who believes in magic, the interrelation of the mind & the world and the numinous power of thought, intrusive and obsessive thoughts got tangled up in my numinous world-view.

Conventional approaches to OCD, whether CBT, ERP or DBT, although based on a reorganization of perception, felt inadequate in engendering the actual transformation of perception (ie. initiation) that felt necessary to actually eradicate this neural wiring at the root. To re-iterate, the perviously mentioned therapeutic modalities may serve to be effective for many especially given their behavioral bent, but I think I intuitively felt there was a deeper gem to excavate – a potential insight for how to live a deeper and more real life- under the facade of OCD symptoms.

For sake of brevity and clarity of purpose, i’ll lay out the “presenting problem” of OCD as I experienced and framed it from the psycho-mechanical lens instead of a personal one, and then present the “transmuted” experience and framing, and the flips in perception that bridge the two:

Presenting Problem:

thoughts seemed like predators that can “attack”at any moment. Much of my mental and psychosomatic energy was spent resisting an intrusive thought from occurring because the name-of-the-game unconsciously became “keep the thought away”. A thought arising was the dreaded start to a cascade of perceptions that I fear would inevitably result in an inappropriate action. It would take so much energy to resist the inevitability of the compulsion.

Transmuted Experience:

thoughts are empty of inherent value. They can be dropped at any point into the default state of thought-less-ness. The medium of conceptual thought is seen as a purely constructed one based on biological, psychological and experiential predispositions that are created and shaped by choice. what thoughts arise is only a reflection of what thoughts we’ve most strongly engaged in before, consciously or unconsciously. we have free will to put certain patterns of thinking into motion, we have free will to phase out patterns of thinking. The “resonance” of a thought is the psycho-somatic charge of the energy behind it… which does not have to be correlated to the reality of the content of the thought. We can “click in” and “click out” of an entire paradigm of fear/thinking just by remembering the inherent emptiness of “thought” and that it is the energy of belief in it that fuels the reality perception of the thought. the perception of psycho-somatic charge/tension is an energetic state ripe for transmutation; if one is able to “hold the tension” without collapsing into unconscious entanglement with the content of the thought, one is able to integrate that energy and expand the width and depth of embodied consciousness.

Philosophical/existential insights:

–contextualize and discern instead of conflate: contextualizing the role of thoughts, instead of conflating their function, role and influence, allows for one’s relationship to them to naturally be one of lightness, flexibility and allowance. It is much harder to just let thoughts “be” if one’s implicit metaphysical and biological predisposition about the nature of thought is not examined and consciously evolved.

– learning to hold the tension of unintegrated psychosomatic tension/energy: if someone has developed an over-estimation of the power of thought, or if they are getting entangled with the content of the imaginal, it is likely there is a lack of grounding in the other direction… in the body. Shifting one’s focus to the psycho-somatic field at play, perceiving intrusive thoughts not from the lens of the conceptual content but rather from the felt energy that precedes the thought opens one up to the opportunity to re-familiarize oneself with one’s own body, and with it’s extraordinary capacity to create experiences of reality.

–understanding the psycho-mechanics of changing one’s mind (karma): the structures of the mind abide by the laws of cause and effect. habits change one intentional decision at a time and the more momentum one gets in practicing a habit, the easier it becomes. The arisal of undesirable thoughts becomes an impersonal natural phenomenon, the same way undesirable crops may grow in a field if that was what was previously planted. Do the work in tending to the quality of the soil, nourish the seeds you desire, no longer feed those that don’t without fear or impatience, and trust in the harvest of the season to come.

and how do they orient?

Well they’re carbonly-embodied life forms but they’ve evolved to operate primarily through the medium of conceptuality. They are still in the Dark Ages of consciousness but are on the verge of breaking through.

What is their Story?

Many of them try to follow a singular book that contains their Story. Although they have several competing books which results in much conflict.

what are these books?

Many are believed to be channeled from Source by a singular person who lived a millennium ago. Consciousness looks very different today though than it did at that time.

but they allow these stories to evolve through time right?

They try not to. They believe they are absolute.

But you said they are primarily conceptual beings. Surely they are aware of the fully relative nature of conceptuality and language?

Not in the Dark Age stage… they are breaking through quickly though.

How so?

They are questioning staticity. Their conceptual matrix is liquifying. morality, gender, politics, sexuality, philosophy, work, materialist determinism of the brain… to name a few. 

What is causing this change?

Their virtual communication methods are evolving and thus, so is their perception of the solidity of a singular vantage point on reality. Individual nodes of space-time are becoming more enmeshed with information from alternate points in space-time. A dissolving of a solid self is always coupled with a dissolving of a solid reality.

What is the stage after liquification in the evolution of a species? 

Extraction of essence through distillation. 

What can we do as midwives of evolution to facilitate this process with the least suffering?

Be an embodiment of stability through the phase change of the dissolution of norms and staticity. Embody what ideally could be after the process.

But how are we to be able to embody this authentically?

By evolving through this process internally. We become nodes receptive for this collective future to be born through us and our relations. 

ok. Thank you.

And we close this portal.

Films, especially animated ones, can often be understood as potent dreams of the collective consciousness, filled with symbolism and rich meaning-making. In recent years in particular, it seems that animated films are consciously engaging with the deepest existential and emotional dilemmas at the heart of the human experience; from grappling with intergenerational trauma through Encanto or Seeing Red, to illustrating complex empathy-driven frameworks regarding the nature of the afterlife in Coco or Soul.

In Puss & Boots, we confront the deepest anxiety many spend their entire lives running away from… death and mortality. Other key topics that are explored include panic attacks, ptsd, shadow work and Jungian archetypes.

In the beginning of the movie we’re introduced to a prideful, arrogant, “fearless” Puss in Boots. After becoming aware of the fact that he is on the last of his 9 lives, he’s visited by the wolf of death… an experience that leaves him traumatized and willing to finally hang up his identity of adventure and notoriety for a life of safety and complacency at a “home” for domestic cats. However, once he hears of a secret wish-fulfilling star that could grant him immortality, he is motivated once again on an adventure to find it. The path to the star requires a journey through “the dark forest”, a magical dreamworld that shifts according to the wounds each journeyer must confront in themselves. Throughout the movie, Puss is followed by flashbacks to his earlier encounter with death… an eery reminder that death is always following him.

On this journey with him are friends and foes… each representing a different complex in the human psyche. The complexes can best be understood in relation to the fundamental “wish” that motivates their drives; Jack Horner, the greedy, bloated and emotionally-stunted man-child (inflated ego) is motivated by his wish for ultimate power over others, Goldilocks, the ruthless orphan accompanied by her family of rough and rugged bears (id, or mammalian nature), is motivated by her wish for ultimate belonging, and Puss -the hero on his journey – is motivated by his desire to escape death. Also accompanying Puss is Kitty Soft paws, representing the Jungian anima (the inner feminine principle within every man), who is motivated by her desire for someone to trust.

Through their journey through the shadow forest – which exteriorizes their deepest fears and beliefs – each character either realizes that their wishes have already been answered or resolves the desire for that wish at the root (besides Jack Horner – ie. the complex that wishes for complete control and power- who ultimately is destroyed by the power of the star). Goldilocks realizes the family and sense of belonging she always wanted has been the very bears who were ready to risk everything to aid her in her quest, Softpaws realizes her wish for a partner she could trust through going on this treacherous journey with Puss and Perito, and Puss ultimately confronts death.

Puss’ final confrontation with death exemplifies a new level of consciousness – a maturity that comes through the balance of perseverance and humility. In Jungian psychology, this process is called holding the tension between the opposites. Consciousness expands through one’s capacity to hold often times competing and seemingly opposite truths at once. Often times, people swing on the pendulum between these binaries. For Puss, his lives had previously been defined by his irreverence towards death in his sense of invincibility, but when confronted with death himself, he becomes so shaken that he resigns to a life of numb complacency on the other end of the spectrum. By the end, however, Puss demonstrates his new capacity to hold both his fearless perseverance to defend life with the spiritual humility of knowing death is ultimately inevitable. It is through this tension that Puss integrates his integrity into wholeness.

Whether the multiverse is a metaphysical reality or fantastical hypothesis, it’s implications as a psycho-emotional truth are all too pressingly felt in our day to day lives.

As humans, our defining characteristic is our immense ability to project hypotheticals onto the past and the future. This leaves us with the emotional toils of having to dispense with a myriad number of possibilities about how things could go & comparing them to an idealized should— an existential burden exacerbated by the infinite proximal lives we are exposed to through media and the internet. Thats why Everything Everywhere all at Once has such a timely resonance with our age. The zany, wild and absurd sci-fi backdrop is potent ground on which to explore the existential ideas that -to varying degrees- pester us all.

One of the most profound insights the movie illustrates is how the most destructive and chaotic force across the multiverse, is ultimately fueled by its own existential desire for a companion to sympathize with the terrifying realization that they are alone in the unique void that arises from absolute everything-ness. Ultimately, is this not the ultimate drive at the root of all relationships? The heart-wrenching desire to be seen, to have a companion in this vast completely absurd world, who can sit next to us in a silent mutual recognition that this whole life thing is utterly and terrifyingly meaningless. 

This movie is so resonant with our times because it exposes nihilism – the (lack of) heart at the core of an increasingly exploitative and fragmented machine of modern materialism – and offers an alternative. What happens when we sit with the terror that nihilism evokes? We see it for what it is… a deep grief at the tragedy inherent in time — that everything we love and derive meaning from is fated to phase out of existence in a relative moment, that our desires and tragedys and stories and dreams are a blip in the infinity of the (perhaps multi) cosmos.

In the end, Everything Everywhere All at Once takes this grief – personified in teenage angst – and wraps it in the insistent arms of a mother who says “ I see you, I see you’re pain, I’ve seen the tragic meaningless-ness at the center of the cosmos, and I still choose to be here -even at the expense of inevitable heartbreak and pain -with you” thereby illustrating that – even after entering the mouth of the black hole of nihilism – unlike any other element of our existence: matter, logic, time, meaning –  the force of love endures.  

Everything Everywhere all at once shows what happens when we factor love into a theory of Everything – as only a story between a mother and daughter traversing the multiverse can do. 

When it comes to “objective” metaphysics, our starting point must be one devoid of assumptions and orientationless. orientationless because the myth of epistemological certainty becomes dispelled when we consider the logical fact that any epistemological certainty requires a set of presuppositions about the nature of verification — presuppositions that are usually based upon the limitations of the tools of inquiry that are available and possible . in this way we start in a metaphorical pitch-black room with no frames of reference.

But, in my opinion, the true kind of metaphysics comes, not from theorizing, but from moving around the black room and observing what happens. Is there resitance here? A pleasant sensation there? Does a certain spot have the same effect on a specific aspect of our perception? No matter how intimate we become with the contents of the black room, we can never verify what there actually exists in the room (or can we? if we take our bias towards the sense of sight away from our notions of confirmation). But we can feel them, and through feeling the objects, we can come to construct tentative interpretations that streamline our interactions with the contents in a functional way. We can label a certain interaction as a “fire” because it is hot and burns when it is touched. We can label another a “dog” because it moves, barks and feels furry. These labels, however, would more accurately be called “metaphors” than “labels”, since the truth of the label can never be verified in a totally objective way. in this way our labels- concepts, ideas, words- are metaphors for different ways of interacting with specific manifestations of the Unknown. 

The validity of a label comes down to the usefulness of the way it orients us to engage with the phenomenon. 

If an object that was apparently inert and pointy was labeled a river, this metaphor would not be an apt label because it would orient our behavior in a dysfunctional way. “dysfunctional” and “functional” are relative, but within any given context there are appropriate and inappropriate (ie. functional and dysfunctional) applications of a label. 

What does the black room image show us? It inspires more conceptual humility in us, asking of us to be more flexible and creative with our interpretations and to no longer take them as static reflectors of reality. It is a categorical error to assume that a word or concept is a reflection of a perception-independent reality… since the very fabric of meaning is a network of associations to perception and convention.

I once heard a writer speak about how she felt as if when she typed words on her computer, the sensitivity with which she typed it in some ways transferred to the word itself.

This remark set off a series of beautiful insights in my mind.

Does the intention and energy with which a word was written change the objective form of the word?

No.

Does it alter the experience of the reader in and of itself?

Probably not.

But how does it effect the process of the writer? 

Perhaps typing with more sensitivity lends itself to a more nuanced engagement with the ideas being written, and in so doing leads the writer to subsequently follow a different train of thought and feeling for the remainder of the sentence. 

Would this not then effectively alter the initial word, whose existence serves a different function now in relation to the new words following it – retroactively changing the word – given the different nuances of meaning highlighted by its relation to the subsequent words – even if the objective form did not change? 

I feel that this dynamic demonstrates a profound dynamic at the root of our understanding of the world.

Is this a logical framework of manifestation – wherein the intention with which an objective act is done eventually leads to a change in behavior?

Is this not an optimistic political insight?

Is this not a beautiful description of the interplay between subjective and objective realities?

The objectivity of the form – although untouched in and of itself – occupies a different space in the objective value of the sentence, and is done through an initially undetectable change in subjectivity which leads to a subsequent creation of a new trajectory of objective facts.

The infinity of intellect seems to clog the pipes of creativity 

When the entirety of understanding is attempted to be born all at once

A living breathing organism is born into life

The way it is born into time

gradually

Limb by limb

Breath by breath

Becoming intimately familiarly

With the ways in which the waters of Time flows 

through and around creation

with loving warmth

and nourishing embrace

saying “slowly… your time will come”

“spirituality is about getting in touch with reality”

science is a mode of conceptualizing the nature of the world and spirituality is the means by which we live in relation to the truth. One is grasped with our minds and the other is integrated into our way of being.

in other words, science is a language of clearly examining how the observable universe works, Spirituality is the practice of integrating our being in accordance with that universe of self-less interrelation. 

When considering the ways in which science describes “truth” to us, we often expect a definitive “answer” or secret revelation through which science can reveal to us the unseen truths behind the facade of appearances. In reality, the most simple dynamics that science has helped us conceptualize regarding the nature of life can be some of the most informative in helping us live according to “truth”, such as the following:

-that life is interdependent and interrelated

-that reality transcends the scope of the individual

these two statements are so self-evident when looking at the world that we take them for granted… however if we were able to move our understanding of this down from our heads and into our embodied sense of living, this -i’d argue- is the essence of sprituality.

in conventional terms, spirituality is often ascribed to modes of thinking and being that open us up to larger and more expansive notions of experience that transcend our attachment to our isolated self-senses.

This means expanding our consciousness beyond our narratives and, ultimately, beyond our temporary experience of our bodies on this earth.

I once had a physics professor who, despite not identifying as spiritual, to me embodied this definition of spirituality. His decades spent as a physicist studying both the largest and smallest scales known to man led him to engage with the world with wonder, awe and humility and a deep understanding of our interconnected nature with all living beings with a concordant awareness of our individual temporality.

To me, this is spirituality… not to get caught up within a “higher” level of stories and narratives about the way the world is, but to allow our knowledge of the expanse of the universe that we live and participate within to inform our actions, values and sense of space, time and ourselves.

At every opportunity

Where reality offers me an easeful invitation

Into the level of upper knowlege I aspire to,

Or to the creative wave I wish to ride,

I feel resistence

Feeling the threat of suffocation 

Of perfect understanding

Or a creative life realized 

Even insulated by all I desire

I feel sad to leave behind the unsustainability & transience

Of unfulfilled potential

I feel closest to God

When my views and gifts are a secret between Them and I 

Not yet ready to invite the world into my sacred circle

I promise to extract that nameless, placeless thing I crave from being formless

And then surrender myself fully through the door of realization

Next time…