eternity. It was there, always; that, for me, was all I needed to know.
I lay back again and gently glided down into a peaceful reentry as the magic chemicals were processed out of my bloodstream. As I became curious about revisiting the world outside, which was surely going to be brand new to my reborn soul, I reflected back over my visions and experiences and felt I was returning from an immense adventure through time and space. In certain respects it felt as though I had sat down in the tank perhaps thirty minutes earlier (whatever “thirty minutes” means), but when I soon extracted myself from the tank I noted that five hours had passed.
The experience deeply affected me. It was completely different from the several psychedelic trips I had previously undertaken. I walked around north Chicago neighborhoods for a few hours to get anchored back into embodiment. My body seemed newly reborn, as did my mind and soul. I had a few awkward interactions with the hustle and bustle of what seemed an insanely overmechanized world—cars, bikes, trucks, buildings, planes flying overhead. It was a bit jarring, but also edifying, as it taught me how the consciousness closes, puts up a barrier of protection, when violence, noise, and angst-filled disturbances occur. It’s doubtful, I thought to myself, that the modern life of humanity allows people to keep even the slightest sliver of spiritual consciousness open.
I sat in a park, drank water, and ate an apple I had brought with me, which was truly nectar. My senses came alive and my body lapped up its juicy flesh. Wow. I wrote what I could recall in my notebook, and by that evening I was none the worse for wear. My notebook concludes with an odd pronouncement, a kind of philosophical muse that echoes some key ideas from
In the beginning the gods drew a veil over the eyes of humanity like breath clouding a mirror. Now with that mind mirror polished, the entire universe of form appears clear while the light of eternity shines through.
I don’t advocate LSD use or suggest this experiment should be repeated. What I would like to convey is that the infinite and eternal Divine Ground is our own source-mind and soul, and it underlies and gives rise to all manifest form. To catch a glimpse of this truth is the birthright of every human being, is not impossible, and radically reorients the ego to an awareness of realities much greater than it could ever imagine or hope to rival. Ego’s job is to be an ego, not stage a coup on eternity.
To connect all this with some topics previous explored, realizing a unity consciousness within is completely congruent with the partnership mode, investing in our inner bonobo while divesting ourselves from chimpocracy, reviving the aboriginal Dreamtime, and opening up the transrational perspective. We might call it an integration of East and West, but a transformation of the lower self into higher self is probably a better way to think about it. In addition, assuming that this kind of initiatory experience of non-local immersion in eternity is what the “transformation and renewal” of 2012 is about, then many mystics, visionaries, shamans, and spiritual seekers have already been to 2012.
GET DIRTY AND JUST DO IT
I’ve saved the best for last. Of the three “methods” for realizing or building the Big Picture, the practical is probably the most important. Undertaking works in service to a greater good is essential for building a foundation for a civilization that honors the whole and desires a sustainable way. We can all offer our unique talents and gifts to this effort. I feel that my writings, guided tours, and conferences are my “activist” offering. Priorities and interests can shift, however, and the unfolding process of self-actualization can activate other abilities and projects. Our outer work in the world reflects, in some way, the inner work we are engaged in. It is precisely through this synergy of inner and outer that both domains receive nourishment and actualization.
I tend to be cerebral, engaged in thoughts and creative mental processes. Writing is also a very introverted process that can only be done alone. Imbalances in the inner being, by reinforcing exclusive focus on one area of the self, need to be tempered by engaging the opposite. Psychologically and energetically, this is equivalent to embracing the shadow. To ground my cerebral tendencies, I recently decided to take up a very tactile and physical pursuit. This wasn’t really a decision but more of a half-conscious groping for wholeness. It was, as Joseph Campbell would say, “following my bliss.” Loved ones might see it as a radical departure from your habitual patterns and can become alarmed. Some people seem to do an about-face, and often the intuitive effort to find wholeness is aborted before it barely begins. A straitlaced practical accountant may take a singing class to express a long- repressed aspect of his being.
For me, the turnabout in the deepest seat of my behavior was to take on physical challenges and invite earth and iron into my elemental life. It was a big, long-term plan that started as a small little voice. The more I pursued it, the more I felt I was paving the way for a new kind of future for myself, one that led beyond 2012 and one that divested me of the cultural matrix that imposes limits and controls. It doesn’t need to have a practical component, it just has to open up dormant parts of the brain. Instead of sitting in a chair and tapping away endlessly on a keyboard like a crazed woodpecker spewing private monologues, I sank my hands into clay. I carved wood, and I began to draw again. I resuscitated my ancient ten-speed bicycle and grounded myself with vigorous rides, reviving my inner sixteen-year-old who loved riding for hours along the Prairie Path in suburban Chicago.
And then a new path inside of that opened up, one that I doubt would have presented itself had I remained stuck in habitual patterns. My friend Stevyn Prothero told me of an old print shop going out of business in my old neighborhood in Denver. I was curious. The dying art of hand-set letterpress printing was already on my radar. Between 1880 and 1940 thousands of printing machines were produced, and they could be operated by hand or foot. Typically, the operator hand-set the type and images in a metal frame, mounted it in the press, inked up the rollers, and pumped the foot treadle. Clang, clang, clang! The beast’s maw opens and closes as you feed each page in by hand, to be inked and pressed into the metal type. True printing! You can design pages with ornaments and use different-colored ink, handmade paper, and then bind your books by hand. It appealed to my sense of doing things off the grid as well as producing something of quality. The craft-guild ideals of William Morris’s Kelmscott Press, or the Roycrofters, stoked my imagination. Our modern marketplace, especially books, have gone down in quality in terms of both content and design ethic, while the primary goal is to sell, sell, sell! The reign of quantity has smothered the value of quality.
As a writer, this concerns me. In my youth I produced my own books. I enjoyed designing intricate book covers and page content, then going to Kinko’s with it. My original self-published version of my book
I was surprised to find a community of like-minded printing enthusiasts who were happy to initiate me into the Black Art. Stevyn and I wrestled with a ton of iron, loading up a rental truck with “the beast” and other paraphernalia. I strategized a work space in my one-car garage and even got some tips from Lloyd O’Neil, the master printer in Denver, who was folding up his shop after fifty years. There aren’t too many of these around anymore; almost all of them have now succumbed to offset and digital printing. What I love about this is that without once plugging into the grid you can produce a book-as-art, just as medieval illuminated manuscripts were a feast for the senses and an invitation to go deep into an experience that the book’s contents could trigger. Sacred art was designed to transport the viewer into a state of consciousness that could directly apprehend the mysteries they symbolized. So, too, a book could open up vistas beyond the surface meaning of words printed on a page.
My little print shop has opened new relationships in my community with artists, designers, other letterpress fans, authors, and poets. Everyone was excited about the underlying motivation and value that the enterprise creates. And they met it with innovative new enterprises of their own. Our entire American culture is feeling a deep upwelling urge to turn the boat around, to begin doing things differently than our culture wishes us to do. Conspicuous consumption can be rebuffed with creative generosity, dog-eat-dog economics can be mitigated by community-based sharing; dominating others can be diffused by building mutually beneficial
