The Art of Being Alone (Pt 5): Treasure Chests of Consciousness Coins
CONSCIOUSNESS COINS:
Why does all this naval gazing matter?
All this spirituality mumbo jumbo and Shamanic Periscopes, is not simply some self absorbed learning obsession (not totally).
It is directly related to everything and everyone you love. Every surreal moment and every depressingly low moment of your life.
All we have, all we really know for sure is not God nor Big Bangs. Rather all we know for sure — is consciousness and its contents.
I can't know 100% that you aren't some zombie. Instead of a 10 day vacation, this all could be a simulated reality made just for me. You may be an intergalactic robot v9.3 fuck doll, who is water proof and happens to get my bad jokes.
I, however, know whatever this is — this moment of suchness that is embodied experiential reality, is all I have for sure.
This isn't a philosophical point, but a pragmatic point, that consciousness and how we spend our moment-to-moment attention is at the root of everything of substance in our entire lives.
Anything of value, our family dinners, our rewarding job, a fun bike ride, creating that semi decent painting, making love, watching Netflix tiger king, or a life altering heroic mushroom journey — everything is part of consciousness and its contents.
So how we practice different modes of attention moment to moment, results in the quality of our life. Whether we sleep walk or open-heartedly walk, we cash consciousness coins moment-to-moment, all via our Shamanic Periscopes.
Thus, anything of substance in life is the cash value of our memories, experiences and emotions in conscious experience. This fact highlights how the quality, depth and breadth of our conscious experience matter.
We can spend them distracted and stressed or open and loving. It’s finding insights and wisdom in integrating our pain and suffering; and embracing love and transcendental depths of mother moons. We can have family dinners where we connect superficially or moments of deep vulnerability and emotional bonding.
Just like a financial portfolio, we can manage our consciousness coins better. We can train, develop and refine our ways of looking. Not wasting our consciousness coins, we can increase the ROI of experience with better mental state. With more money, more trained awareness, we make more money. This is the American way of consciousness coins. You get a teddy bear and everything.
This is why new meditators are so damn annoying proselytizing (so guilty, still guilty). There are alternate worlds we can inhabit. Varying ways we can spend our consciousness coins. We can spend them on hookers and blow or simply put our phone down and with awe admire our child play. We can be stuck in traffic jams pissed off or equanimously putting along.
The choice ours to make (and train).
The quality of our lives is a function of the quality of our Shamanic Periscopes. Periscopes are not static, but a life long mastery. It’s how we explore love, truth, and beauty in life.
From the outside, one may think by exploring Shamanic periscopes extensively, I am just a selfish prick searching for control in uncertainty (you know who your are).
But practicing and training in them makes me less of a prick. A prick who suffers less with more peace. It makes a world filled with (slightly) less prickly pricks.
That’s why Shamanic Periscopes matter. Why cultivating, deepening, and growing our periscope skills like a craft matter.
And all those consciousness coins well spent brings us to drugs.
In today’s modern world, there is a hunger not for more stuff, but also more meaning in all the chaos. For deeper experiences and consciousness coins well spent — and that’s why we are in a Psychedelic Renaissance. For why train when you can take a “pill”? Now that’s more like the western way.
While at sea, I have met many psychonaut pirates. Interesting folk they are. I even tried some of their magik.
But just as Shamanic Periscopes open us up to new words, can they also leave us in a feedback loop of self-deception?
Let’s investigate how Shamanism accelerated our growth as a species — all so we could have amazon ship us toilet paper. Ohh shit, there is no toilet paper.