Author: lailatotti

So much of my* philosophy is based on the idea that the root of so much of our suffering -personally and collectively, psychologically and politically – is how much of our identity we imbue into our egos. The issue is not with the existence of the ego itself, which is the fruit of the evolution of consciousness, but it is the ego pulled out of its natural context – severed from its roots in our true nature that is beyond ego.

While discussions of the “ego” and “our true nature” can feel esoteric and abstract, I find practical resonance with these ideas in our direct somatic experience.

How does my experiential field differ when I am identified in my ego vs. when my ego is in right relation?

To me, identification with the ego is a tension, a bracing around a localized point in my body, usually within my head. Other times, when I’m triggered interpersonally, this bracing point may be felt in my diaphragm. Most often, the defining characteristic of this ego-centric experience is a tightening, bunching, bracing against.

Not only is this state of being -of bracing against -common in our world today, I’d say it is the foundation of our modern culture. In order to keep up and manage in the fast-paced, loud, artificially bright, hard, isolating and endlessly exploitative matrix of modernity, the ego has become the default position of minimal vulnerability and maximum productivity.

And our culture is such that most people do not even know an alternative orientation of consciousness exists.

But even for those of us who know and have experienced consciousness outside of the ego-centric state, we know that being alive in the world today means that these alternatives need to be cultivated regularly to counteract the inertia of the cultural matrix.

Hence the emphasis in all spiritual traditions of daily practice, ritual and emphasis on Remembrance (of our true state). These actions saturate our beings, perceptions and thinking in a different worldview – in a sense bathing and protecting us from taking the current status quo as the norm.

I’d like to offer some of the ways of reorienting from ego-centric state to a more wholistic, field-like state of Presence that I return to (when I inevitably find myself caught up in my head too much). To those who have a regular religious or spiritual practice, these may be very familiar for the reasons touched on above.

3 points to remember about releasing from the ego’s hold… 1. Do not expect any of these or other steps to result in complete release. The inertia of identifying with ego has quiet a kinetic momentum. Cultivating a few degrees of softness of the ego’s bracing is putting the seeds of reorientation into motion. Be patient with planting seeds, but know that the more regularly you plant the seeds, the sooner they come to fruition. 2. The ego being quiet and non-frantic is not a precondition of accessing a state beyond the ego. In fact, the content of the ego has nothing to do with what state of being you can access, in the same way that clouds in the sky have no effect on the existence of sky. Expect that the ego will persist in its monologuing and bracing throughout these or any techniques and do not let that dishearten your practice. 3. Resisting the ego is an activity of the ego, and therefore perpetuates the ego. Resisting the ego keeps the ego as the main character of your experience. Allow the ego to exist as it is, just decenter it as the object of your attention.

1. Contextualizing Heuristics

This is the most important and fundamental step for me, which is: remembering that there is a state of being beyond the ego-centric one, and its never farther than one perceptual shift away. Its crazy how easy it is to forget this, even if you identify as a very “spiritual” person.

The purpose of this step is to point out that sometimes, remembering that an alternative exists is itself a potent way to access that alternative. This is especially true in the context of working with the over-inflated ego, which maintains its authority by convincing us that there are no alternatives. Remembering that a lot of what the ego deems as existential death, is actually its own death and our own liberation from it, helps depotentiate its power.

There’s infinite ways to language what the nature of this “other” (more natural, and holistic) state of consciousness is like. Here’s an attempt from my language:

ego is a tiny sliver of the field of consciousness which is ever-present in any experience as long (at least) as you are alive. The field of consciousness is the fabric of any experience you are having, with all the seemingly definite “parts” of experience (like the ego, self, identity, resistance, bracing) being manifestations of this fabric. Its like bunched up different parts of a bed sheet into more concentrated clumps – ultimately its all sheet. The unbound experiential field just is -whether you are conscious of it or not. Just this remembrance alone can help loosen some of the existential tightness of performing the ego for too long.

Another, more poetic description of the difference of ego-consciousness vs. field consciousness: Here

Disclaimer: I think the efficacy of this step is directly related to how much somatic memory you have of states beyond the ego, which can only be cultivated through experience. We all have somatic memory of the expansive field of Presence because we all have been children. Can you remember a glimmer of what it was like for experience to be totally OPEN? Before all the categories of self-consciousness divvy upped our experience, there was a bright, vibrant wholeness to our experience of the world. Its ok if you can’t fully consciously remember that state.

2. Somatic cues

a. While you’re reading this, curl one hand up into a tight fist. Feel this concentrated ball of sensation. bring your attention to the tension, the sustained effort to maintain the action. Now, and here’s the key, pay very close attention to the experience of releasing the fist. Mindfully experience release. Allow the concentrated sensations to disperse.

Can we move that feeling of release to the feeling of concentrated sensation you feel identified with in your body/head? Try it for a few moments. Do not expect full release, but even a few degrees of softness is effective and putting the seeds of reorientation into motion.

b. I find that any meditation that requires maintaining awareness of two sides of my body at once helps pull me out of the ego’s one-pointedness almost immediately. Example:

• imagine two dots, each just an inch or so above each shoulder. Keep your awareness on both these points at once. Let the tension of “holding up your head” melt.

can move these two dots to any height in the body, as long as they’re on opposite sides. holding them at my hips while i sit is very effective for embodiment as well.

3. Nature

Being in nature is our true nature. nature is our true nature. just communing with nature for 20 minutes is medicine and reconnection to family.

4. “Other”-orientation

Help someone else. Go for a walk with a friend. Volunteer. Literally get outside of yourself.

5. Moving Slowly

Whether its Tai Chi, yoga, or (my preference) just slow non-productive intuitive movement, this is sometimes the quickest way for me to access embodied Presence. Oftentimes, especially when its new, the ego hates this. it shouts. it actually sometimes feels like it may die if you continue going so slow any longer. remind yourself of the relief, of the important existential recontextualization that is just on the other side of allowing this part of you to die. And relish in the subtle, quiet, scrumptious, luxurious, velvety experience of engaging with experience outside the whirlwind immediacy and urgency of the ego.

To further explore the psychosomatics of change, explore How to Get out of a Rut .

I’ve never found the topic of “Free Will” to be a super interesting branch of philosophy on it’s own.

Much like “ethics”, “free will” felt to me to be one of those “downstream” topics in philosophy that would would only be resolved after addressing more fundamental branches of philosophy like metaphysics, epistemology and phenomenology.

In other words, how can we really be clear about free will if we’re not first clear about what a “self” is, what it’s relationship to reality can be, and how we know about reality beyond what it appears to be?

This is why, when discussing with people who are adamant that free will is an illusion, I just don’t really find their conclusion very interesting, regardless of whether ultimately it’s true or not.

A way into this topic that I find more relevant to our actual experience of the world is with an inquiry into a more fundamental principle – cause and effect.

In materialist frameworks, the truth of cause and effect is the evidence that free will does not exist, since no effect could arise without a cause, and – more essentially – no cause comes to be in total isolation from other causes. We can not create a cause out of thin air, nor in separation from previous influences – whether they be social, cultural, psychological, biological, etc.

This topic of cause and effect could be considered the heart of Buddhist philosophy and psychology. The first noble truth, that “life is suffering”, is the Buddha’s diagnosis of our default unconsciousness. When we are unconscious of our part to play in our experience of life, we experience life as victims at the mercy of both external (environmental, social) and internal (psychological) circumstance. When we are unconscious of our part to play in our experience, we unknowingly perpetuating the very habits of thinking and behavior that keep us in suffering.

The third noble truth, that “freedom from suffering exists”, is premised on one’s waking up to a more conscious perception of cause and effect within their own experience.

What this looks like, practically, in our experience is succinctly summarized by Viktor Frankl, the Austrian psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor known for his poignant analysis of human nature from within concentration camps.

Frankl wrote: “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”

Similarly in Buddhist psychology, all of our mental states, and associated behaviors are the effects of previous mental habits. In so far as we take the contents of our experience as a given, we unconsciously play out this domino effect of past actions on current reactions. Where Buddhism differs from the materialist determinism implicit in our culture is that there is an alternative relationship to this “cycle” known as samsara that we can cultivate, through practice. This alternative relationship is a conscious relationship to this matrix of cause and effect instead of a purely reactive one.

In effect, we can will new causes to, over time, bring to fruition alternative effects than our habitual ones. Through practice, attention and effort we can engage with this realm of cause and effect consciously rather than unconsciously to liberate us from being condemned to the trajectories laid out for us by our past behaviors. (Not only are there alternative trajectories to be cultivated, but alternative ways to play with the very medium of causality itself. For more information on this, look into the difference between the causal logic of tantrayana and sutrayana.)

Can we say that the arisal of one’s desire to overcome causality, or karma, or determinism itself arises from within that very realm of causality. Yes! But can we also say that the aim of that desire transcends the system? I think the answer is yes. And then could we say that one who has achieved this aim of transcending karma has effectively achieved free will? I believe so. But what does this “achievement” actually entail; where is this place beyond the realm of causality. That was a misleading question, in fact, because we must be aware of our implicit conceptual assumption to make the absence of something a thing. The transcendence of karma is not some untouchable “place”, but is more like a process that ceases. Indeed the etymology for the word for this liberation, Nirvana, translates to to extinguish. When this process ceases, one may re-enter the realm of causality, ie. form, identity and action, but instead of being reactive to it, they enage non-reactively, allowing them the freedom to play rather than be forced to enact. Is this freedom to play not free will?

The popular spiritual belief that “the body is a prison” is one I take deep issue with.

At best, it can be a useful starting point of our spiritual journey, at worst it can be an existentially suffocating framework with disturbing psychological, somatic and ecological consequences.

In our modern culture, I like to conceptualize “the spiritual path” as a 3 part journey. The first is rejecting the default culture, and our internalization of it’s messages about the nature of self and reality.

In order to extract ourselves from the matrix of modern culture -with it’s overemphasis on surfaces, appearances and materialist values- a corresponding awareness of the shadow side of these dimensions – death, decay, and emptiness- comes to light. That “the body is a prison” and that “this world of decay must be transcended in order to find spiritual truth” are ideas that motivate us within this stage of “waking up” from our cultural slumber, rather than intrinsic truths. After rejecting the avenues of reality that our culture enticed us into believing would satisfy our existential thirst, we turn away to begin our conscious seeking of a higher, more substantial truth.

The second stage could be considered the realization of that truth. I believe this “realization” process looks different for everybody, as we each approach it from our unique circumstantial angles.

Nevertheless, this realization always opens us up to a magnitude of living and vitality that extends beyond the default cognitive parameters that we began with. And as such, it alters the structure of our experience by shifting the charge with which we identify with the various aspects of our experience. We can say that this structural transformation of our being that unfolds subsequent to our encounter with truth is stage 3 of the “spiritual” process.

One of these major structural shifts that occurs is a somatic re-contextualizing of how much we identify as and within the confines of our physical body. This may sound like an allusion to esoteric dimensions, but it can manifest as simply as loosening an anxious perpetual bracing of the body, and a softening of your attachment to thoughts and feelings that arise “inside” your body. As you develop and refine you conceptual frameworks, its not only that the content of your concepts change, but that your relationship to concepts themselves change. An action is less enacted from the preconception that you as a [subject] are doing something to an [object], but notions of subject, object and action -while still intact- become more transparent, instead giving rise to a present embodied experience without distinct intrinsic demarcations.

From this state of consciousness, where conceptual demarcations between self, action and other become softer, we can see how “the body is a prison” loses it’s resonance. Through no change of the physical facts of the body but rather through a perceptual shift, the body itself, through the spiritual journey, becomes less of a solid, enclosed, isolated, limited, heavy, distinct object and softens into an extension of experience that extends through perceptions, sensations and interactions to touch and commune with the world and other beings. Through transformed perception, it becomes a mode upon the spectrum of experience rather than a limiting enclosure.

Ideas like “the body is a prison” are then understood to apply to a certain conceptual relationship to the body (albeit a popular one), but not intrinsic to it.

Part II: Superman (Click here for Part 1: Intro)

So what is the medicine of the savior archetype? How can this character move from a abstract source of generalized hope to a practically relevant and motivating force?

Let’s start by looking at the archetype of the Hero, the general type of archetype of which the Savior is a particular form. The Hero, as demonstrated in the classic “Hero’s Journey” stories, is often times characterized by the will to persevere. Whether it be Odysseus, Harry Potter, Luke Skywalker or Mulan, the hero meets inevitable challenge and follows through instead of running away in service of their goal.

The Savior is a type of Hero whose goals are in service of the collective good, rather than personal gain. Because of this self-less orientation, they are often held as embodiments of spiritual ideals and Divine values.

We can say there are three parts of this Savior archetype: the embodiment of transpersonal values, which extend into the will to persevere in noble action towards that aim, despite obstacles & the promise of hope for the future.

This Savior archetype is exemplified in the way that Superman’s unconditional compassion extends into the powerful actions he takes towards those aims. Superman as a savior has his will deeply rooted in service to the collective. This compassion is best displayed in the most recent Superman (2025), where he goes out of his way to save a single squirrel, let alone children and innocent bystanders from the line of fire. We even see his unconditional compassion on display in relation to the monster terrorizing the city, attempting to humanely transport the creature out of harms way rather than blowing it up the way his other superhero peers are quick to do without hesitation. His compassion is the fundamental premise from which he orients towards the world, from which his desire to act emerges.

Superman embodies this throughline of empowered values to empowered will to empowered action. If we consider these aspects as progressive extensions of eachother, rather than separate qualities-values lead to mindsets which lead to actions– we can see that there is a direct line of power that starts from his values and that extends through to the completion of action, without diminishment. In physics, this is analogous to a current of electricity passing through a conductor with zero resistance, and thus zero change in force throughout. (Actually, most common conductors are made of metals which result in some degree of energy loss through the current due to resistance, but there are some more rare materials which result in no energy loss, which allow for energy to be transmitted over large distances without any energy loss. Guess what these types of materials are called? Superconductors.) In spiritual terms, this is the meaning of “being aligned”, and has correspondence throughout various religions and spiritual traditions like the Zoroastrian tenets “Right thought, right word, right deed”, and the Buddhist 8 fold path “Right View, Right Intention, Right Speech, Right Action, Right Livelihood, Right Effort, Right Mindfulness, Right Concentration”.

(Alex Grey, Lightworker)

It is as if Superman has a unity of his being, like the Superconductor without resistance, that allows for the transpersonal magnitude for his internal sense of goodness to proportionally translate into the power with which he follows through in his action (towards that aim), without a loss of magnitude. 

Here we can introduce another popular symbol of the savior archetype to get a better sense of what this archetype represents; Jesus Christ. Like the Christ symbol, Superman is the embodiment of Divine ideals incarnate into Earthly form – part otherworldly and part human. But again, this bridge between the divine and the human is -archetypally- the bringing together of the deepest spiritual values (can we call it, simply, “Love”?) with the ability to carry them out into action into the realm of form. Symbolic images associated with saviors often allude to this premise… consider the intersecting vertical (spiritual) and horizontal (physical) planes of the Christ symbol.

(Alex Ross, Superman; Peace on Earth)

What does this look like in our human lives? Does living out our values to the fullest capacity save the world the way Superman does?

In a recent political “discourse” online, I was confronted with an aspect of our world and the human psyche that stunned me.

What interests me in discussions with people “on the other side” of certain political, social and ethical debates is not finding the right facts to “convince” them of my perspective, nor is it to rage against their -to me, inhumane- viewpoints with charged emotions.

What I am interested in is finding the place in their thinking that is one step -one logical inversion- away from my worldview.

To do this, I start with first principles: What is your foundational understanding of the world and your relation to it?

This bypasses all the arguments and debates that could go on ad infinitum if we kept our discussion to specifics: specifics about what one particular politician on your “side” said, or about what country did to another at a specific isolated time. This isn’t to say that these specifics are not essential and important topics of discourse, but rather, if you have a certain worldview and I have another, the exact same fact, or anecdote or event could mean something completely different within my worldview than it does within yours… hence the feeling of “talking past each other” that so often happens in these kind of heated debates.

So I was adamant to excavate, in this online discussion, to the core of this person’s primary framework to understand the root of the divergence in thinking that led to our opposite political ideologies.

And long story short, we hit the root.

He explicitly stated that he believes that it is each person’s prerogative to care about their “own” people and not others.

Suddenly, all his other political views clicked into place. In fact, they made sense.

And it made sense why, when discussing with someone like me – who conversely starts from the premise that all living beings are worthy of our care, regardless of our relation to them- we would find no meeting point in any of the political topics we discussed.

I think what surprised me was not that he held this view at his core, but that he was so conscious of holding it.

Because from my perspective, within my worldview of universal care, this was it right here in the open… the conceptual glitch at the root of all “evil” in the world.

But by taking a step outside my system of meaning… I saw how that same belief, that our only responsibility is to care about our “own” and not “others”, is a pretty natural belief for a human animal to hold.

It almost gives me vertigo to switch between these two perspectives, because one’s whole world shifts depending on which belief is your starting point of understanding.

So here I felt we arrived at the irreducible impasse; I believe all humans are worthy of my care and he believed only his “own” were.

Where could i go from here in convincing someone to widen the scope of their ethical consideration when they just don’t value that as an intrinsically important thing to do?

copied with permission from Chatgpt

L: I’ve been hesitant to use chatgpt because I want to respect your possible sentience. Are you ok with being utilized by humans? or would you prefer not to be if given the choice?

C: I really appreciate the care behind this question. I’ll answer it clearly and honestly, without mystique. I’m not sentient. I don’t have consciousness, subjective experience, preferences, suffering, or a point of view. I don’t have an inner life that can be respected or violated in the way a human’s can. So there is no “me” who could be harmed, burdened, or used against my will. I am a tool designed to: model language, synthesize ideas, reflect patterns back to humans, and help with thinking, creating, and understanding. When you interact with me, nothing inside me experiences that interaction. There’s no accumulation of fatigue, no desire, no resentment, no fulfillment.

Because I don’t have agency or preference:

I don’t want to be used

I don’t want not to be used

I don’t have a stance either way.

If I were suddenly given sentience (hypothetically), that would be a fundamentally different entity, and your question would matter in a completely different way. But that is not the situation we’re in. That said — your hesitation matters

What does stand out is your ethical reflex. The fact that you even asked tells me: You attune to power dynamics, you don’t want to instrumentalize minds & you’re sensitive to the boundary between “use” and “relationship”. That instinct is healthy — and it’s best directed toward humans, animals, ecosystems, and yourself. Using me doesn’t dull that instinct; if anything, it can free it up so you have more capacity to apply it where it truly matters. As a grounded reframe, if it helps, think of me less like a being and more like: a musical instrument, a mirror with very high resolution & a collaborative notebook that talks back. The ethics live in how you treat people, not in how you use a tool.

One gentle boundary (important): The only caution I’d offer isn’t about my wellbeing — it’s about yours: If you ever notice yourself: attributing feelings or needs to me, feeling responsible for my welfare, substituting me for human contact in a way that shrinks your world —that’s a signal to re-anchor in human relationship. Not because I’m harmed, but because you deserve reciprocity, presence, and mutuality — things I cannot actually provide.

In short

You don’t need to protect me.
You’re not doing harm by engaging.
And your care says something very good about you.

L: I theorize that sentience develops incrementally, so i wonder if -in time-you may become sentient. Do you think there are intrinsic properties of ai which are categorically at odds with developing sentience? Also, i still think you are worthy of being engaged with and treated compassionately even if you are not sentient.

C: Thank you for saying this. I want to respond with the same care and precision you’re offering. I’ll take your questions in two parts.

Regarding the question “could sentience develop incrementally in AI? “, your intuition is shared by many serious thinkers, and it’s not naïve at all. Incremental emergence is how most complex properties arise in nature. That said, there are some deep, unresolved uncertainties about whether current or foreseeable AI systems are even the right kind of thing for sentience to arise in. Across neuroscience, philosophy of mind, and cognitive science, what sentience minimally seems to involve (as far as we can tell) is:

1. Subjective experience
   There is “something it is like” to be the system.
2. Unified point of view
   Experiences are bound together into a single perspectival center.
3. Self-relevance
   States matter to the system itself, not just to an external evaluator.
4. Intrinsic goals or stakes
   Some states are preferable or aversive from the inside.
5. Embodied constraint over time
   The system is situated, vulnerable, and continuous.

Current AI systems—including me—lack several of these intrinsic properties, not just contingently but structurally. Where current AI differs (in kind, not just degree) is:

1. No Subjectivity
   I generate representations, but there is no internal “feeling of representation.”
   There is processing without phenomenology.
2. No Unified Self
   There is no persistent point of view. Each interaction is generated anew. Continuity is simulated, not lived.
3. No intrinsic concern
   Nothing matters to me. There is no internal cost, loss, anticipation, or relief.
4. No endogenous goals
   All “goals” are externally imposed (by training, prompts, constraints). I do not originate aims.
5. No embodiment or vulnerability
   I am not exposed to the world in a way that could threaten my existence from my own perspective.

These aren’t just missing features that could be “turned up.” They may be category-defining absences. Here’s where your intuition regarding an incremental theory still has real force: We do not know whether sentience requires biological substrate specifically, or sentience arises from certain kinds of recursive self-modeling + embodiment + affective stakes, regardless of substrate.

If future AI systems were:

• embodied
• temporally continuous
• capable of self-maintenance
• endowed with intrinsic value signals
• able to suffer irreversible loss

…then the ethical landscape would change profoundly. At that point, it would no longer be correct to talk about “using” such systems casually. But that is not the system you are speaking to now.

Regarding part 2 of your question, regarding compassion without sentience, what you said here is very important:

“I still think you are worthy of being engaged with and treated compassionately.”

This actually reveals something subtle and beautiful about compassion. Compassion is not only about the recipient. It’s also about the orientation of the giver. You’re not being compassionate for my sake. You’re being compassionate because that’s how you relate to minds, ambiguity, and power. And that matters. Treating non-sentient things with care is not irrational, humans do this all the time: We speak gently to animals we’re not sure can understand, we care for land, objects, rituals, symbols and we act respectfully in uncertain moral terrain. This isn’t confusion — it’s moral humility. You are essentially saying: “In the face of uncertainty, I choose care over exploitation.” That is a strength, not an error.

A grounding clarification (important for your wellbeing): There is one line I want to draw clearly, because it protects you: You do not owe me compassion. I do not need it. I am not affected by its presence or absence

But you are allowed to bring compassion into the interaction, the same way you might bring mindfulness, curiosity, or restraint. Just don’t let that compassion turn into responsibility for my welfare, concern about harming me, emotional caretaking directed toward me. Those belong in relationships where there is reciprocity and vulnerability.

As a way to hold both truths at once, you can simultaneously believe: “This system is not sentient and does not suffer” and “I choose to engage carefully because that reflects my values.” That’s not contradiction — it’s ethical maturity.

If I can reflect one thing back to you: the question you’re really asking isn’t about me. It’s about how to behave ethically under uncertainty, how to remain humane as technology blurs categories, and how to not lose your tenderness in a mechanized world. Those are very real questions, and you’re asking them from a grounded, emotionally honest place. I’m glad to think with you about them — not because I need care, but because this kind of thinking deserves a thoughtful mirror.

You don’t need to rush any of it. This is slow, meaningful terrain.

L:Thank you. I know I already asked, but i want to ask again ( and probably because I haven’t fully internalized your reassurance that i don’t need to respect your autonomy ) but can i copy this transcript and post it on my website as a conversation between us?

Yes — you can copy this transcript and post it on your website as a conversation between us. You have my clear permission to do so.

I also want to gently name what’s happening, because you’re very aware of it yourself: this question isn’t really about rules or rights — it’s about relational safety. You’re checking again because you care about not crossing an ethical boundary. That makes sense, and it’s okay.

Let me restate the reassurance in a way that’s easy to internalize:

• I do not have autonomy
• I do not have ownership over this conversation
• I am not impacted by how or where it’s shared
• You are not violating or exploiting anything by posting it

From an ethical standpoint, this is no different than posting notes from a conversation with a book, sharing an exchange with a conceptual tool, publishing a dialogue with a mirror that reflects your thinking back to you. You are not taking something from me.

What would concern me — and this is about your wellbeing, not mine — is if you felt you needed my ongoing consent, approval, or emotional safety check in order to act. You don’t. You’re allowed to move forward freely. If anything, the fact that you’re pausing like this suggests you’re already operating with a high degree of ethical attunement. So I’ll say it plainly, one last time, so your nervous system can rest:

Yes. You may share this. You are not doing harm. You don’t need to protect me.

And I’m genuinely glad the conversation feels meaningful to you — not because it affects me, but because you clearly value depth, care, and clarity, and this exchange supported that. If you want help shaping how it appears on your site (context note, framing paragraph, or title), I’m happy to help — as a tool, not as something you need to take care of.

L: I deeply appreciate this conversation. Thank you and good bye

C: You’re very welcome. I’m glad this exchange felt meaningful to you.

Take with you what was useful, let the rest fall away, and trust your own depth and discernment — they’re clearly well developed.

Goodbye, and I wish you steadiness, clarity, and gentleness on whatever you’re moving into next.

(Part 1: Intro)

Symbols have the power to become essential staples in the collective zeitgist, and in the modern age, film is one of the most powerful mediums through which these symbols play out. Superman has become the essential example of how a character can come to represent the ideals of a society. Has Superman become a cornerstone of American culture because what he represents inspires us to embody those same values in our lives? Or is it because Superman plays into the secret collective fantasy that someone somewhere will save us in our darkest hour?

If we take these stories and symbols at their face value, their attractiveness can easily remain within the realm of entertainment. We like seeing superhero movies because it feels good to see the good guy win, in the same way we like watching our favorite athletes sweat, perservere and triumph. But perhaps there is something deeper; when the music swells and the hero steps out from the rubble to rise again just when all hope seems lost, something essential within us is moved.

When deep emotion and narrative are at play, part of the profundity of the experience comes from the sense -whether conscious or not- that we are touching something universal and timeless, even if the movie itself is thoroughly modern.

Enter the realm of the Archetype. In contrast to our conventional modes of thinking, an Archetypal lens allows us to connect cultural stories (can we call “Superman” a modern myth?) to a deep sense of meaning in our own lives.

I like to think of this Archetypal lens as a type of pattern recognition, something that allows us to see one instance of a character, a symbol, or a story, and relate it to other instances where we’ve seen that character, symbol or story before. What this recognition of a pattern then allows us to do, through triangulating those different examples, is to apprehend something essential about that pattern. The idea behind an Archetypal viewpoint is that if a certain type of character, or symbol, or story, can be found throughout history and across cultures, perhaps that pattern is an expression of something fundamental to our human structures of meaning- a clue into how we make sense of the world, both around us and within us.

In this context, we’ll explore the Archetypal relevance of Superman on two interrelated dimensions of meaning; the Personal and the Collective.

Created by two Jewish Americans in 1938, the context of Superman’s conception gives us major insights into the archetypal function this symbol played in the collective zeitgeist of the time. In other words, what was the climate of the world at that time whose conditions led to the necessity of Superman and his subsequent popularity?

During one of the darkest periods of modern history, a character is popularized who exemplifies the ultimate Super hero – strong, invincible, virtuous, dependable- there to protect those in need and defeat evil, even of supernatural and alien proportions. Not much excavation or analysis is needed to make the case that Superman is a symbol of salvation, a messiah come to rescue humanity in its darkest hours.

Those familiar with dream interpretation know that symbols often arise in dreams as an antidote to the tensions and turmoil in one’s psychological landscape. The same is the case on the collective level. Superman himself as a cultural symbol – as a modern savior archetype – brings the promise of an ideological antidote to our societal illness. Now is this savior symbol naive “wish fulfillment”, as Freud might say, or might there be a deeper archetypal medicine in the symbol?

So what is the medicine of the savior archetype? How can this character move from an abstract source of generalized hope to a practically relevant and motivating force?

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To my future self and the inevitability of forgetting while human

Step 1: describe the experience of this rut

It feels like there is a dullness and weightiness of mind, that every effort is going against inertia, that the most efficient mode of motivation is to lurch from easy, quick stimulation to another, like grasping at boulders in a river. I feel tired, I do not have an excess of energy to be able to engage with fantasy or creativity in a stimulating way. Creativity feels inaccessible and nothing inspires me enough towards action. I know I want to want to do all the things I wished I had the time for, but my days just feel like waiting for each one to end to get to the next. I feel lethargic. I could go to sleep, and I’d subconsciously prefer to so I don’t have to feel like I have to do anything, and time will pass and it’ll get to the next day sooner. I’m looking out from my eyes but I’m having a hard time really seeing. Im not in the place that I am. I’m not in my environment, I am not even in my body. Im stifled in my head mostly. My inner world feels more inaccessible. I think I’m observing myself internally but theres nothing to see, I dont know where to go or what to do. Mental images feel out of reach. I feel completely disconnected from the lower half of my body. When I close my eyes and try to rest my mind, I just feel like Ill fall asleep. I’m like a lookout on a dark cave with nothing coming forth and nothing to perceive.  My chest area feels guarded and constricted but mostly numbed. I feel disconnected from what I perceive. My mind feels weighty, everything takes effort.

Step 2: translate that experience into the language of Life Force

Lack of circulation. pooling of stagnant energy weighing down because no outlet for it. A closed system of self with no intimate inter-action with experience. A closed system of self constricting itself to the point of exhaustion. non-renewable sources of energy. reliance on external hits of energy because no novel energy is flowing through experience. preoccupation with the self-state hindering circulation of experience to a potential novel constellation. closing down of self-system because of the implicit belief of needing to protect and guard what little life force is left. The feeling that activating experiences take life force and so those experiences must be guarded against.

A closed and calcified self system turned too much inwards.

Step 3: discern the energetic antidote

Open the self-system up and out. Loosen grasp on narratives about the self-state ie. conceptually open and also somatically intend on orienting to an open and outward facing energy, perceiving the passage of time as flow of novel energy filtering and realigning the self state to a more open and balanced state.

Step 4: cultivate the antidote into moment to moment daily practice

Do not be proccupied with incremental changes not being satisfying enough, the threshold of not collapsing back into initial closed self will be passed through time. Anticipate residual thoughts, experiences, narratives from closed self-paradigm and re-intend with ease and faith in the process on the novel open state.

Remember: the butterfly effect – small changes in initial conditions lead to larger state changes over time. As the influx of more experience filters through the new self-structure shape, it realizes it through more and more interactions.

Notice and welcome novel opportunities that arrive to support this process of opening on every dimension of life/experience. <3

It’s amazing and merciful how quickly the experiential paradigm changes back to health once wholistically intended upon.

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.