Are You Going to Ascend Soon?

Some time ago I had a person come to me for some spiritual counseling. Let's call him Jack, and he was about forty years old. Jack was not a happy chap. He hated his job and was planning his escape, a nice trip around the world. In particular he was going to visit all the great spiritual destinations out there. 

Nothing wrong with that, you might say. Good on him for having the goolies, so to speak. Yet as I spoke to Jack it became quite clear to me that he was living a fundamental delusion. This delusion is common in alternative spiritual circles, so I am going to discuss it briefly here today. It also mirrors a psycho-spiritual delusion that is the foundation of many religions across the world.

Jack had been told by a certain spiritual teacher that he was going to ascend one day, and this formed the basis of his spiritual belief structure. 'Ascension' is the idea that you are going to be pulled up and out of the body and into a higher dimension. This other place is trypically seen as having a higher vibration, being more blissful, and generally just a lot nore groovy than the mundane world of the earth plane. Sound familiar? Well, to me this other place sounds a lot like the Heaven or paradise of most religious philosophies.

Here's the problem. Ascension is a false teaching. It is not going to happen. There are two reasons why this is vitally important to understand.

Firstly, what generally lies behind the belief in ascension (and Heaven) is the rejection of what is here now. There is a subtle desire to escape. In this sense ascension entails a rejection of the life that is before you, and also the 'you' that you are now. You are saying that this life is not good enough, this 'me' is not acceptable.

Secondly, this rejection of your life makes it impossible for you to be fully present, and it is in presence that the true joy and love of "God" is found. If you speak to those who have experienced strong transcendent experiences they will tell you that they almost always emerge when the mind is in a deeply embodied state of silent presence. Thus the great irony is that the belief in ascension actually cuts you off from presence, from God, and from Heaven on earth.

What is now before you is the truth of life. There is tremendous simple joy to be found in just being here now, in the body. You were not put here to escape. You were put here to be here.

What drives the delusion of ascension is the dissociation of mind, body and spirit - and the trauma this entails. Your mind feels this pain at all times, but it doesn't know quite what is wrong. In fact if you stop and become fully present, you may actually find yourself falling into a state where you begin to feel this pain within you. If you have the courage to give it a voice, it rises from belly and into the throat, expressing itself as a sad whining sound, like a lost child which cannot find its mother. It is the fundamental feeling of being lost and unloved. Empty. This is how I have experienced it.

The mind, in its dissociated state, is unable to recognise that it has created the pain by itself, by not being here fully. Instead of stopping to be here, it runs. It tries to escape. It finds solace in entertainment, fiddling with gadgets, 'romance', eating, drugs and alcohol, sex, gossip, reading blogs like this... Or going on a spiritual journey. It might even believe that it is going to be lifted out of the body and beyond the mundane world into a better place. In this endless seeking it turns toward a hoped-for better future, and away from itself. Yet in all this there is no relief. The pain does not heal.

The quest is doomed to failure, for it merely perpetuates the split, the separation. 

This is what I told Jack. I told him that he was already a being of light, love and compassion. There was no need for him to ascend, merely to deepen into presence. In that moment Jack didn't understand. He didn't want to. His final words to me where that he had arranged the meeting to check to see if my knowledge was coming from a higher plane. But alas my understanding is not higher, merely deeper. He decided to keep aiming for the higher place.

Yet one day, one lifetime, Jack will get it. Maybe that little seed God planted in him that day as we talked will find fruition soon. It is not for me to judge.

The only way to heal your pain is to be here now. That's it. One of the great mysteries of our species is that this is so very, very simple. Yet only a few extraordinary individuals have ever been able to master the process.

Marcus

"Light", Chapter 16: Arousal

Click here for a full list of chapters from Marcus T. Anthony's novel Light.

There was someone shaking me. I opened my eyes and felt daylight crash into my brain. It hurt like hell.

“Stupid kid. You shouldn’t drink so much damn beer!”

I squinted, and through the slits between my eyelids I could make out the form of an old man leaning over me. He was carrying a large canvas bag, and from the sounds it made when he moved, I knew he was collecting aluminium cans and plastic bottles.

“Get some clothes on before you die of pneumonia!” He trundled away muttering something about “Kids these days.”

It sure felt as if I’d been drinking – like about two keg’s worth of black Irish beer. My mouth was bone dry, like I hadn’t drunk a drop of water for a month, and I could feel every heartbeat pound through my skull. Even more frighteningly, I noticed that my heart beat was irregular. One moment there were three or four rapid beats, then a pause, then it came back again. I sat up, and grabbed my head with my hands, as if that would make the pain go away. My body was shivering. There was a slight cool breeze blowing in off the ocean, and I was freezing.

My heart skipped a beat again, and a moment of terror descended upon me as the thought passed through my mind that I was about to have a heart attack. That made my heart race even faster as my breath caught in my chest. But the expected explosion of my cardiac matter never came, and I relaxed a little. It looked like I was going to live.

I slowly stood up, steadying myself against the dizziness. I was fascinated to discover that I was wearing only my jeans and was bare foot. Then I noticed that I was standing at the low point of small sand dunes which were covered in thin layers of tall, rough grass.

My shirt. I needed to find my shirt. I looked about me, and could see nothing but sloping dunes, grass and sand. I scrambled around, and eventually found one of my shoes, but not the other; and the shirt was nowhere to be seen. After a few minutes I cursed and hobbled up the dune wearing my one shoe and made my way towards the car park.

My thoughts were more scrambled than a Sunday morning omelet. All I knew is that I had to get back to Edwards Hall. I hobbled up the hill road, heading back towards Scott Street at the top of town, where I knew there was a bus stop. A guy walking his dog passed me, looking at me like I was from Mars. A bit further along two schoolgirls giggled as soon as they saw me. That’s when it dawned on me that it was not socially normal to stumble along in public, shirtless and wearing one shoe.

The 100 bus pulled up, and I clambered on. The driver gave me a “WTF?” stare as I clambered into the vehicle. It was when I fished a couple of coins from my still wet pocket that a vague sense of the events of the previous evening filtered into my consciousness. Scattered thoughts of brilliant lights and a roller coaster ride through some alien dimension momentarily besieged me. But I was having trouble remembering anything specific.

When I drew the coins out of my pocket they were, well, black. I ignored the incongruity, the look of incredulousness on the driver’s face, threw them into the tray and crashed down on a seat.

I was the only person on the bus, but as we moved passed other stops, a few more people got on, and all the funny looks I got began to make me feel just a little self-conscious. Still, I’m sure the radiation victims of the Hiroshima bombing in 1945weren’t overly concerned with social disapproval as they stumbled around half naked at the impact site of the A-bomb. What I am saying is that my brain hurt too much to really give a damn.

A sense of overwhelming fatigue overcame me, and I fell asleep like a cheap drunk…

When I awoke I had no idea where I was. I felt totally lost. I sat up, and everything felt completely alien, like I was in someone else’s bed, and in someone else’s body. But slowly the room about me began to form recognisable patterns. The desk, the poster of Bono, the crappy T-shirts hanging in the open wardrobe. I was in my room.

The scariest thing is that I had absolutely no recollection of how I got there. The last thing I could remember was being on some bus. Now I was lying on my bed wearing only my underwear.

I got up, stumbled a few steps and presented myself as best I could in front of the tall mirror on the wardrobe door. For a moment in the dimly lit room I didn’t notice anything too unusual, except that I looked a bit pale. Then as my eyes adjusted to the light I noticed some small dark freckles on my chest. I flicked on the light, and discovered they were all over my chest and abdomen. I fingered one or two and there was a slight discomfort. They were burn marks.

“What the fuck?”

All I knew was that something weird had happened, and that I had lost any real remembrance of recent events. I scanned my mind, and the last thing I could really remember before the bus was standing on the beach with the storm closing in. Even that was hazy, as if from a dream. But as I looked at the marks on my body I remembered the blackened coins I’d fished from my pockets on the bus. An unfeasible hypothesis was beginning to formulate in my mind. I went straight to my computer.

First, I needed to find out what day it was. Saturday? This was another WTF moment.

 Then I went to a medical diagnosis site, and filled in my symptoms. The list of seven possible diagnoses popped up. The very last hit me like a blow to the face.

I scratched my head and decided to ring the last person I could remember talking to: Amanda.

Pressing fast dial, I waited while for the dial tone.

Click. The line disconnected. I tried again, and it rang just once before the same thing happened. I scratched my head again, and tried one more time. This time she picked up.

“Hi Amanda.”

There was no response.

“Amanda?”

“What do you want?”

“Just calling to see what’s up. Is something wrong?”

“Is something wrong? Are you fucking crazy or something?”

It was the first time I had ever heard her swear. That was just a little shocking.

“I’m sorry, did I say something?”

Again there was a moment’s silence.

“Look Greg, this is not funny. I think we’d better stop seeing each other. I’ve got exams coming up. It’s a really busy time.’

My head started to spin.

“Sorry, I don’t understand.”

“Greg, you are really fucking weird, do you know that? Is there something wrong with your brain?”

My confusion was now a reign of mental chaos. I didn’t quite know what to say, so I said, “Possibly, but I haven’t been tested lately.”

She laughed. I hadn’t a clue what I was doing, but I felt an opportunity.

“Sorry if I have been acting a bit strange. Things have been a bit difficult in the last few days.”

“Your Aunt sick again, by any chance?”

This time I laughed. “Yeah. It’s chronic.”

 “So, what happened? Last time I saw you were running into a storm, quite literally.”

I felt it within me. Her energy had shifted. There’s a well known song in Newcastle, called The Newcastle Song. The refrain from the chorus goes, “Don’t you ever let a chance go by.” I decided to heed that advice.

“Will you hate me if I tell the truth?”

“I already hate you.”

“OK, then here it is. I think I was struck by lightning.”

“What!?”

“Either that or I was at a really, really wild party.”

I described the burn marks on my body, the black coins, the loss of memory. Waking up on the beach. Finally I mentioned all the symptoms of a lightning strike I’d uncovered on the web. After I’d finished there was silence again. Finally I added.

“Well?”

“Fucking hell, Greg. If you are right, you are lucky to be alive!”

“Lucky is my middle name. I need to talk. Can I come over?”

Much to my surprise there was no silence. No hesitation. She said yes.

A Woman of Grace and Grandeur

Jill Bolte Taylor’s My Stroke of Insight is one of those books that I had heard mentioned and referenced many times, but which I never actually got around to reading. Well, recently I did actually get round to it, and I have to say that I am very glad I did. This is a wonderful book. I have found it to be particularly useful for me, as someone who practices meditative and spiritual disciplines. It also has relevance to me as a futurist.

The most attractive feature of the book is the honest narrative of the author. This is not so much the retelling of a life-changing personal experience, but the generous sharing of great wisdom gleaned from profound personal and spiritual experiences.

The author was a 37 year old neuroscientist when she suffered a stroke.

One of the most fascinating and important aspects of the book is its detailing of the neuroanatomy of having a stroke, and in turn of spiritual experience and inner peace. This may sound dry to some, but I personally found it fascinating. It confirmed much of what I have felt to be true for a long time, according to my spiritual experiences.

The actual account of her stroke makes for fascinating reading in itself. It occurred early in the morning, and at first she does not know quite what is happening. She feels dissociated from her body. The aneurism in the left side of her brain begins to debilitate several key modules of the brain. One of these is the Superior Parietal Gyrus, which is responsible for the perception of physical boundaries. As a result her sense of self as a discrete individual separate from the world begins to diminish. She is filled with a great euphoria, even as she senses herself as being one with the cosmos. If this sound like a mystical experience, then this is precisely what she makes of it.

Assisting in her rapid and involuntary shift of consciousness is the fact that the stroke also affected two neighboring areas of the left brain, including the Superior Temporal Gyus (hearing and speech). Blood flow was thus restricted to Broca’s area (speech generation) and Wernicke’s area (comprehension of speech). This caused the chattering inner voice of the left brain to go quite. It also meant that Jill Bolte Taylor was virtually unable to generate any intelligent speech when she finally managed to phone a friend to tell him that she was having a life-threatening medical emergency!

The middle section of the book details Bolte Taylor’s rehabilitation. Some of the details given here are very useful for those passionate about spiritual and consciousness development. Though the author literally lost a golf ball sized chunk of her brain as a result of the after-stroke surgery, she is fully aware of the plasticity of the brain, and how important it is to immediately begin to fully activate her brain again after the stroke. She begin first by learning how to walk again, then how to speak, read and even go hiking by herself.

Bolte Taylor states that her complete recovery took eight years! However, what is most fascinating is that she chooses NOT to reactivate aspects of her former personality. For what changes most after her stroke is her value system. She comes to value inner peace and tranquility above all else. Her controlling and short-tempered personality traits are discarded. The story of how she does this is invaluable. I believe that much of her strategy can be applied even to those of us who have not had such a brain-altering experience! How does she do it? By determined self-discipline, and carefully monitoring her inner world. Reading the book I was struck by how much her personal methods mirror my own spiritual disciplines.

As a result of her stroke (in fact right in the middle of it), Bolte Taylor immediately sensed the importance of communicating a powerful spiritual message to humanity: that inner peace and spiritual love are an innate aspect of the human experience, and that they can be experienced at virtually any given moment if we simply still the mind. The key is to allow the left brain to go quiet, and the wonderful and spontaneous presence and mindfulness of the right brain to find expression.

My Stroke of Insight also contains some simple and effective processes for allowing inner peace. These are worth the price of the book alone.

The message of My Stroke of Insight is powerful and clear. Deep inner peace and “divine” love are available too all of is right here and now, and that a little understanding of neuroanatomy can help us understand how to allow this.

The book does indicate what I have long realized: that the physiology of the brain greatly affects the expression of consciousness. Bolte Taylor does not quite go so far as to suggest that the brain does not generate consciousness, but it is clear that her worldview is deeply spiritual.

For me the book has granted me further permission to allow presence into my own life. There is no reason for you, I and everybody not to experience perfect love and fulfillment. Not one tiny little reason! The ego sets up a host of reasons why it cannot allow “divine” love at any given moment. Let me be blunt. These reasons are all bullshit. Many years ago when I was a door to door salesman, my boss used to tell me “Don’t buy their lies!”. He meant don’t listen to the excuses of potential customers. Keep selling! “You”, as the manager of your mind, have to be the boss, and you have to learn to call BS on the mind’s endless tricks, it’s relentless excuses as to why you cannot permit love and peace in this moment.

What I love most about Jill Bolte Tayler is her personal courage. She has not been afraid to go out and tell the world about her experiences and the profound insights she has gleaned from them. What a remarkable contrast she represents to the dry, politically correct detachment of so much of modern education and science! More power and success to her, I say!

Why is this book important for the future? It is because this is a story of a scientist who is catapulted out of her mundane rational world and worldview by an extraordinary event. The insights she has gained are relevant to us all. In the modern world we spend too much time stuck in the head, in the rational mind. The non-ordinary perceptions granted by the right brain are only deemed extraordinary because the way we have developed our societies creates brain structures and processes which lock us into a fragmented, linguistic experience of life and world. Our society creates talking heads. It time we must permit the creation of feeling, listening, receptive souls. People like Jill Bolte Taylor have a special role to play in this regard, because she is literally accredited by mainstream science.

If you take the time to watch to her TED talk, below, you will see what a remarkable woman Jill Bolte Taylor is.

Marcus

What Lies at the Heart of the Future?

I typically describe myself as a futurist. I often write about the future, including in Futures Studies journals. My book Extraordinary Mind is subtitled Integrated Intelligence and the Future. Yet I am a futurist who believes that the one thing that all the possible probable and preferred futures of humanity must contain if they are to succeed, is... presence.

Yes, the essence of my preferred future is to be here now.

It is only through presence that human beings can become fully conscious, and bring darkness into light. It is only in presence that consciousness becomes fully alive.

Most of all, it is in presence that we find the love that lies at the heart of every human story that has ever mattered.

It is in presence that we find God... or something that feels like God.

Visions of the future which fail to address this story are ultimately empty. They are like a person turning up at a baseball game, then sitting backwards in his seat and watching the wall at the back of the stadium. The essential point has been missed. Most visions of the future are out of alignment with the essence of our story. They have become lost in the flickering mind. The present worldwide obsession with gadgets is simply an extension of the scattered awareness of the ego. The flickering screen is an extension of the flickering mind.

The way back is simple. It's quite easy really. Simply return to what is real, what is here.

Rather than my telling you, here is a short video from someone who taught me much about presence. He speaks straight from the heart: Leonard Jacobson. Leonard is a modern mystic whom I first met in Australia 19 years ago. He is the real deal. He is not trying to sell anything nor be anything other than what he is. I invite you to take a few moments to listen to his wisdom.

Here is Leonard talking about what God is. Nothing is more important.

Marcus

Urban Enlightenment

The following is linked to the Love Ideas, Love Hong Kong campaign. I have submitted my Urban Enlightenment programme to them for consideration. The winners are chosen by public vote, so I will make the odd reference to the programme here on 22C+ from time to time.

There was a time when people retreated to quiet caves in far-distant mountains or to simple huts beside the ocean to sooth their soul, rediscover their spirits, and to find enlightenment. The Buddha rejected earthly materialism and meditated under a banyan tree, while Chinese mystic lived a secluded life in rural, rustic China. The serene lives of mystics seems as far removed from the modern hustle and bustle of Hong Kong as you could possibly get. 

Given that most of us do not have the luxury of escaping to a secluded spiritual retreat for a year or two, the key question for you and I is whether there is a way to reconnect with the spirit and remain at peace, while being a part of the energy and vitality of Hong Kong? 

When I came to Hong Kong six years ago I had already spent more than a decade exploring the mind through meditation, spiritual practice and direct academic research. Initially, I found the fast paced urban environment of Hong Kong to be very challenging. So I set about developing ways to help myself stay connected to my soul, even as I went about commuting, working and socialising. 

Urban Enlightenment is the result of that quest. It is a 30 day programme to help you restore the soul, find peace of mind, and just relax more and enjoy life in the present moment. The great thing is that it helps people slow down and connect with others, and enjoy all the great things about Hong Kong. The truth is that there are literally thousands of opportunities every day to centre the mind and allow inner peace. 

Urban Enlightenment teaches people how to do this. The project will consist of the creation of a single web site which will feature the 30 daily activities. The activities will have written text of no more than 500 words, plus a short YouTube video explaining how to do it.  It will also have a list of all the great places to visit, and things to do in Hong Kong which can help people restore their spiritual vitality.

All activities have been created for people with a busy Hong Hong lifestyle, so they do not require much time. Many require only a minute or two. There is an option for doing a short 10 minute meditation each morning, if the person chooses.

Here are a few of the activities which will appear in the programme. Note that the actual text will be less than 500 words on the web site, and in the booklet.

• Enlightenment on the MTR
• The Media Fast
• The Connector

Finally, here is The Introduction to the Urban Enlightenment Booklet and web site. 

Feel free to email me, mindfutures@yahoo.com, if you have any questions.

Peace (and enlightenment!),


Marcus T. Anthony (PhD)

The Subway as the Path to Enlightenment

There are a lot of people in the world who are interested in spiritual development. We sense that there may be a better way to ‘operate’ the mind than going about allowing the world to constantly distract us. Yet many of us are very busy, and may not have the time to devote to a specific spiritual practice (I won’t go into the obvious point about making spiritual practice a priority...).

It may be true that it requires complete dedication to experience ‘enlightenment’ as experienced by some advanced spiritual teachers. Yet there are more simple, mundane, yet nonetheless uplifting and even transformational processes that we can incorporate into our everyday lives, which help elevate consciousness.

Here’s one that you can use today. I call it “The Field”. Don’t be fooled by the fact that it is both simple and easy. It can take as little as three minutes.

The Field helps shift you from ego to Spirit, from the little self to the higher Self. It does this by bringing into awareness the countless value judgments that you make, and then allowing you to relax into presence.

Transcending the Rational Mind

It is commonly believed in many circles - particularly those dizzying circles one finds oneself in within academic and educational institutions – that the rational mind is the highest cognitive set currently available to human beings. The rational mind is higher than the emotional mind, it is assumed, because the emotional and unreflective mind led us into mass superstition during the dark ages. Then science, with its empirically founded scientific method, led us out from the darkness and into Enlightenment. Thereafter came massive progress in science and social science; and the benefits to society are obvious. Just look at all those clean hospitals, computers on office desks and airplanes that can whisk us around the world in a matter of hours.

In the dark ages of prehistory people pretty much believed whatever Mum or the village idiot told them. Most people couldn’t read or write for a start. It was said that there was only one literate man, a clergyman, in all of Britain after the fall of the Roman Empire. Now almost everyone in Britain can read and write; and you take your capacity to make sense of the black squiggles on this page for granted. Thank about that for progress!

People haven’t always employed the critical/rational mind the way we do today.

Are You Enlightened?

I rarely ever use the word “enlightened” because, like many people (including those on a spiritual journey), the concept is heavily culturally laden. It seems arrogant to think of being enlightened, or to say that my representation of enlightenment is truer than yours. It’s also fashionable, and indeed politically correct, to state that enlightenment is relative, and that each representation of spiritual development is perfectly valid according to the culture and time in which it occurs.

Yet those who have reached the higher stages of human spiritual development do not seem terribly interested in such arguments.