Author: lailatotti

Alchemy is the art of transforming energy from one state to a higher state. What “higher” state means in this context is a state that serves the harmony of the autonomous self. this is in contrast with “lower” states of energy that may serve egoic patterns but that disrupt the harmony of the total system of the Self — ie. the self’s relation to the Whole.

Typically this transformation results in a liberation of energy from rigid systems (built off reified self-other separation). Such systems are rigid because energy gets stuck at the level that we disassociate from it ie. once we distinguish between whats in the domain of “self” and what is “not self” we create a fracture in the Experience of wholeness and bar ourselves access to the fragment of Experience that we designate “not self”.

This energy gets stuck in that system of relating to reality (whether it be a particular relationship to oneself, an other, or reality at large) and an energy system that is practiced and perpetuated over time concretizes into a mindSET.

What is the mechanism by which energy can be liberated from the self-perpetuating nature of a particular mindSET?

The simple answer is: through compassion.

Compassion is the fundamental means by which we REcognize, REmember, and REsonate with that exiled energy that we “otherized”/fragmented from our Experience when we designated it as “not self”.

Compassion and love is therefore the ultimate alchemical process.

Perpetual cycles of unconscious whim

Closed eyes whipping frantically around

The trance of forgetfulness weighing heavy on our eyes

The mechanical determinsim of dullness

The evolutionary lineage of distraction

The centerless center

Remains the eye of the storm

With every arising 

Or what we call moment in time

How do we choose to be

Where do we choose to illuminate 

What world do we choose to live into fruition

From our birth into Memory 

Nestled between a mother and father

Trying to find an elegant balance

Both sides of infinity love you

Something flows through us

I do not know what

I form little nets 

To catch some dew 

As it passes by

She flows through my fingertips

And doesnt like inhibition

But sensitivity

And dialogue

She flirtily abides

Keep the direction pointed outward

Resist the tendency to resist

(Isnt it always negate yourself out of the negative?)

And from here hopefully we find some flow

I wonder if this too is how we are to live our lives

In harmonious balance with the interlocking forces of all

Directed outwards 

and inwards to dialogue 

To feel the interstices

But not to the point of falling back into solidifying the pushback

Can we have courage to be sensitive 

to a face too magnificent to behold

And do not confuse a temporary turn away from this depth 

With its disappearance

God has mercy

Both in offering omnipresence and respite from our sensitivity to it

And do not confuse the darkness in this cavern of the belly

With the shadow forms that it contains

Becasue its power encompasses and transcends what the mind can comprehend 

So we sit in enchoes of knowingness

Resonating from time immemorial 

 

our cognitive process are the fruit of our unconscious. The conscious mind is the tip of the ice berg of the totality of our being.

Out of the necessity to orient ourselves and to mediate the inner and the outer worlds, we create narratives based on the information we have access to. The most evident of this information is how we behave, and our behavior is the level on which many people’s narratives are almost exclusively confined to because that is the domain/type of information they’re able to access/perceive. another relatively evident level of information is how we think, because -although not as visibly obvious- we can easily observe what we think about and when and how often and sometimes why. on yet a subtler level, we have information regarding how we feel. This level of information is more nebulous that thought, as it isnt always evident how and what exactly we feel.

And this is the border past which most of our conscious minds stop. It’s extremely easy for the conscious mind to label away the “unconscious” and “subconscious” as something abstract and inaccessible, thereby relegating their role to the margins of our experience.

In this view, when faced with the seemingly irrational or undesirable ways our minds work, we look outside to the dominant systems of meaning-making in our culture to help us make sense of why our brains are “malfunctioning”. A narrative (such as a medial diagnosis) helps us find footing – and a plan of action – in an otherwise overwhelming bombardment by thoughts and feelings. It helps us make sense of the internal chaos.

In my own experience, I am extremely grateful for the “OCD” narrative, because it has connected me to support and experts who provided hope when i was lost and the opportunity to get a handle on the “problem”.

What I’ve also learned through experience and study, is that the paradigm of a “medical diagnosis” is an incomprehensive narrative because it only takes into account the conscious information regarding the mind.

This is a valid basis to draw conclusions and statements from if one is content with living life on the conscious level. to each their own.

but for people with a nagging pull that there is something more going on than just the neurochemical cards that we’ve been dealt – of which our thoughts, emotions and behaviors are supposedly only epiphenomena of- the exploration of the unconscious mind is a tried and true path for offering such insight and profound personal meaning-making.

if there’s smoke coming from a car engine, the way to go about addressing the problem is to lift the hood and see what aspects of the mechanics of the car need rewiring. in this metaphor -lifting the hood doesnt mean getting an mri, but rather lifting the hood on the unconscious. In the paradgim of subjectivity- which is the realm of our identities and thus the reality we inhabit- the physical correlates of our subjective states (like our neurochemistry) are actually the symptoms — not the cause. of course there are degrees of relativity… extreme physical disruptance can cause more subjective disruptance and perpetuate a feedback loop. sometimes we can get too caught up in these loops to be able to approach the inward journey with clarity (or to function even without the desire to pursue the inward journey) and here medication can be beneficial and even life-saving.

In the example of the car metaphor, having so much smoke can inhibit our ability to see or even get close enough to examine under the roof, so aid in the form of medicine can help facilitate a less severe foundation to start from.

so what is this causal dimension of self below the level of the conscious mind? This is the realm of intuition, dreams, biological hardwiring, trauma , archetypes and deeply held beliefs.

if we can develop a relationship with this sometimes dark, nebulous and mysterious world we can slowly uncover the real personal roots of our cognitive dis ease from within. Through this process we may find that how we divided and categorized our experience at one stage (like through a medical diagnosis) may not capture the dynamism of the mechanics of our psyche in the most useful or comprehensive way. What we previously saw as “the problem” may come to be interpreted as a symptom of a deeper unresolved tension… often times originating with some unconscious belief about who we fundamentally are in relation to the world. The contents of the mind come to be viewed from a holistic perspective instead of as isolated occurrences to be treated as separate from our total evolution.

I offer my evolution in unearthing the unconscious roots of my own mental health journey as a case-study in how this process can unfold here.

written April 29, 2019

This was the result of attempting to bring my narrative faculties as close to “my” experience of non-dual awareness as possible: I kept trying to explain my experience of “totality” to my friend but became tangled in the mobius-strip-like nature of language. I wasnt able to coherently speak unless I shifted my identification to the ego’s perspective. The words that came *closest* to accurately reflecting this state of mind were: “‘i’ am ‘it'” and “‘it’ makes ‘sense'”. (Where “i”=ego and “sense”=meaning… still trying to figure out how to explain “it” besides “it”-ness)Going back and forth between pure experience and an articulable experience (and trying to come as close as possible to closing the gap between the two) … my ego self was experiencing quite major reverberations that looked/felt/sounded like the attached picture:

This whole experience was like an escape room of “my” awareness from its entanglement in language. I realized that we can only speak in one perspective at a time. As such, words necessitate a metaphysical stance… a creative cutting up of experience in which a level of identification with a “self” is implied. We can not give non-dual awareness a voice because words only “stick” to breaks or fragments between components of our experience. “I see the apple” can only be spoken because an “I” that is distinguished from “an apple” is implied. If we are truly able to transcend the conventional “i” (ego) then we are not able to speak because the distinction between doer and doing dissolves. Thinking about this more made me realize that the “conventional” self (ego) might just be the inculcated inward projection of the syntactical structures that we learn to operate within in the social realm.

our modes of cognitive understanding include a wide range of dimensions – such as lexical, visual and emotional – each medium resonating with a different level of experience. Each mode of comprehension is most compatible with a particular type of information. For instance, while words may be the most skillful medium for everyday social interactions, emotions may be a more suitable lens through which to understand what our own bodies are trying to communicate with ourselves.

attempting to coerce a certain mode of understanding onto an incompatible dimension of experience is bound to lead to confusion and distortion of information – as most commonly occurs on the subtler levels of reality. On those levels, insistence on using languages too clunky for the experiential environment impede ones ability to actually understand… like insisting on seeing a photon through ones store-bought prescription eye glasses.

While conventional language can adequately describe certain of the more subtler levels of reality, the very paradigm within which it is meaningful dissolves on the subtlest levels of reality.*

Notions of space and time are no longer linear and discrete – and the conceptual self vanishes without these usual signposts of experiential orientation.

So what level of understanding is more conducive to these subtle realms – where Information is understood instantaneously rather than through the syntax of narrative langauge?

i would like to offer a possible alternative mode of comprehension that sits at the precipice of my conscious understanding & so i write the following words with an extra level of awareness of their inadequacy/incomprehensiveness:

This mode of comprehension is grasped instantaneously as an embodied understanding that is accompanied by a pre-visual image… it is an image through the medium of something close to emotion. It conveys energetic dynamics in such an abstract way that it can clarify & apply to many dimensions of meaning.

This is the language of archetypes before they’ve been dressed in cultural or natural symbolism.

For me this is the language of intuition & i humbly theorize that it is the pre-verbal foundation of all modes of cognition.

*playing around with conventional syntax (especially verbify-ing nouns) in unconventional ways is a way of loosening the rigidity of english in a way that can be more accurate for these levels – (like “the electron particled” or “it was Laila-ing peacefully”). (However this is still inadequate for the subtlest of levels).

Clarification of terms:

• conceptual thought is the lens of cognition whose contents are concepts.

• concepts are abstract constructs that we *assume* are natural derivatives of the constituents of reality.

• narrative faculty is the higher order mode of understanding that emerges from conceptual thought whereby conceptual thought is ordered into formulas of meaning (the chattering mind, thinking to oneself, internalized speaking, etc.)

• logic the seemingly self-evident formulas of relationships between concepts

• energetics the pre-verbal, pre-conceptual, lowest level cognitive abstraction , level of experience. non-local somatics, felt “energy” before any interpretation of it

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Eventually, following the mechanics of logic leads to the logical limits. logical “lines” of reasoning are much more like self-perpetuating circles.

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although energy is pre-verbal and narrative, and narratives are creative abstractions, that is not to say that anything goes. Energy moves and interacts from which a a level of meaning emerges closer to the conceptually abstract but intuitively understood level… which is why symbolic language is the kind of conceptual language most conducive to interacting with what is true. interestingly, although narrative conventional thought is degrees of abstraction away from direct experience, to the conceptual self the closer one gets to cognizing the level of direct experience, the more abstract the meaning seems. in a way, we use cognitive and hermeneutic abstractions in order to make the meaning appear less abstract -which is to say, to have more cognitively tangible resonance with our familiar dimensions of meaning-making ie. our networks of associations.

what is the implications of this system for mans search for meaning?

although meaning is not inherent to life on the level that we generally tend to interact and identify with life and meaning, one can align their conceptual faculties -if careful not to suffocate with too gross a grasp- with their energetic truth which is in harmony with collective truth. but this requires a proficiency with energy in order for the dynamic and subtle energetic truth to be channeled skillfully in the desired realm of meaning.

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to despair due to a lack of truth is usually a symptom of attachment to a form or dimension of truth without adequate sensitivity to the feeling of truth behind (in a literal somatic sense) ones (identified) self.

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the self is a conceptual construct in which we nest our sense of identity and thereby our perceptual center of gravity. conceptual experience then shapes and molds itself according to the architecture of the terrain formed by that center of identity and the associated forces identified on that level of being.

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our culturally and biologically informed default is for our narrative faculties to minimize unwanted sensations and maximize wanted ones- so it takes a great deal of unlearning to dis-identify with this way of navigating the energetic and recalibrate our narrative faculties to be in alignment with our energy (rather than trying to force vice-versa).