Please have a listen to the above introductory audio before beginning to read the text below, which is the Introduction to the book ‘Breaking the Spell’
Introduction: Our Intuitive Selves
Human beings have always lived within a world steeped in mysteries and secrets. For most, the gap between our perception and Reality remains unbridgeable. Yet ways, means, and teachings have always existed that have provided access to glimpses of Reality. One of the core secrets contained within this perennial body of knowledge has been that we, as human beings, have the ability to manipulate our sense of reality. Further, that this capacity stems from within ourselves and can be developed. In fact, we’ve always had this potential; we just never knew how to understand it and thus approach it. And if we ever learned how to use it, and were not ready for it, we could cause a great deal of disruption – and distress - for ourselves and our societies. This has always been the ‘secret that protects itself’. Yet, at all times, it has never been wholly absent or invisible.
It may be the case that there have always been hints provided. Only that the language wasn’t always clear. It couldn’t be. There was too much at stake to reveal some of the most potent secrets into the profane sphere. The ‘Kingdom of Heaven’ was always within. And this has been so from the very beginning. Yet some things got lost along the way… and the world outside of us became so much more enticing than the world within. Human attention became fixed on the outward, exteriorizing the gaze, until there was little else to look at. And so, the physical world became the focus for the senses. From archangel to atoms, from magic to materiality, the human spirit slowly seeped away from its imaginative center.
Our far human ancestors saw the world around them very differently. For them, life existed together as a vibrant matrix of connected, living energies. Each stone, flower, buzzing insect, played a role. Each aspect of the cosmos was intrinsically entangled and woven together. All matter, organic or inorganic, was in correspondence. The line between ‘living’ and ‘non-living’ was a blurred one in long ages past. There was a sense of communion virtually non-existent today. Nowadays the average person is unaware of the affinities that bind the interior and exterior realms. In one way the physical world was perceived as softer and less defined in our ancient past. Life was permeated by a mosaic of energetic affinities and correspondences. Biology was not restricted to within the membrane of bodies but was bound also to the heavenly movements. Human patterns mirrored their cosmic counterparts. Their rhythms were joined in fusion, influencing human function. Today we know of such correspondences as biorhythms; such as the 24-hour circadian rhythms. Sun, moon, planets, and stars have all been known in ancient times to have their various influences upon the living processes of Earth. Astrology and astrobiology are avenues that seek to understand these connections.
It is said that humans breathe on average 25,920 times per day, the same number of years within a Great Year, or for a full precession of the equinox (the number of years it takes for the sun to complete a full cycle of the Zodiac). Similarly, the average human lifespan of 72 years contains the same number of days. Our far ancient ancestors instinctively knew of such biological interconnectedness. They also recognized the interrelatedness of consciousness, mind, and material reality. In modern terminology, we can say they understood how the field of consciousness acts as an extended mind; how thoughts connect species and groups. Further, that thoughts are not so much created within an individual mind but are impressions received from the interpenetrating collective mind. No thought or action lies separate or without consequence. All of life is inextricably woven together.
Yet perhaps most important of all, the ancients knew that universal order was a mind-before- matter manifestation. In other words, Mind was the fundamental basis underlying Matter. Connection with a conscious, living universe through internalized affinities and correspondences was thus vital for a harmonious relationship with the external physical world. Matter could be approached through the sphere of the Mind. Creativity was inherent within the power of the imagination, human will, and intention.
The modern industrialized world of the human being today is largely void of this internalized relationship. It rarely comes to our ‘mind’ that if we limit our vision, we create our own limitations for the endless possibilities around us. In other words, the human ‘worlds’ we live within can only evolve as far as we have the vision to conceive and connect with it. Without such creative, intuitive and perceptive vision our cultures will eventually fall away and cease to evolve in line with the Earth’s evolving change.
Whether we fully appreciate it or not, we choose the manifestation of our world picture. As in the famous ‘optical illusion’ image that can be seen equally as a pretty young woman or an old hook-nosed hag, our worldview can be pretty or haggard. Thus, how we view determines how we do…
To be conscious of this process helps us to make our own decisions on how we wish to engage with daily life. We are constantly being asked to choose the level and quality of our involvement - how we use our inner vision to both correspond and respond to our physical circumstances, as well as our cosmic environment.
Our consciousness is already different from that of our parents’ consciousness; and probably far beyond that of our grandparents. Already the rate of change in our perceptual paradigms has evolved rapidly. Human forms of consciousness have always evolved (e.g. from the mythical to the mental-rational); yet today they are evolving at an increasingly accelerated pace. Can we envision how our consciousness will change in the near future? This is likely to be greatly influenced by the quality and depth of our intuitive perceptions, and the increasing manifestation of our interior capacities.
Living an interiorized life does not mean retreating inward as would an ascetic or hermit. Rather it is about recognizing, engaging with, and connecting with the living cosmos of which we are a part. This means we interiorize what we feel to be the exterior, physical cosmos. We live with it as part of our every moment as if there is no separation between us and ‘it’. The physical distance in between the cosmos and the individual melts and merges into a living unity. By this act of intuitive engagement we request our right to once again become a living, creative part of our larger environment. Perhaps it is now time we broke open our cocoons of the material self by our recognition of the greater living, conscious unity. And by recognizing too the perceptual prisons we are held within.
These ‘prisons’ that hold us are the cognitive systems that we employ to interpret the world around us. These processes are responsible for our everyday awareness; they filter perception, experience, communication – our material worlds. These processes have become a part of our feeling of security and familiarity. Yet they also keep us ‘boxed’ within the comforts of our conditioning. Any immediate shifting away from these ‘comfort patterns’ may at first create a sense of disorientation and/or of strangeness. Things in our daily world may become less certain, less ‘knowable’. The world around us is constantly in flux, yet persistently being defined and fixed by cognitive conditioning processes. However, these processes can become fluid if approached from the correct forms of perception.
Human consciousness manifests in our daily lives through the cultural lens of our cognitive systems. And these systems are a result of specific, often localized, conditioning. They are often the result of our upbringing, our education, our regional legal systems and cultural ‘realities’. Our beliefs too form a part of our cognitive matrix, infused through various faith and/or dogmatic teachings. It is now accepted by modern research that the general person thinks in patterns that become reinforced over the years. After some time a person finds it difficult to adjust to a different cognitive reality, or point of view. Yet everything changes, is subject to change, and must develop (or devolve). In the end, it is all a question of how we perceive the external world internally. That is, how matter becomes a part of our mind.
Many commentators have reasoned that modern human life has slipped into a type of existential vacuum, where ‘meaning’ has become a vague fantasy. Where once life held ‘meaning’ is now a myth to be told in tales and tall stories. It is a deep shame if this indeed is the case, for ‘meaning’ is the very essence of creative life. And our intuitive selves should be responsible for divulging meaning to us within the moments we experience. It has been said that:
each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible.[1]
We are responsible then for how we think and perceive life. And this responsibility manifests in the world we encounter through our human experiences. What is needed is a revitalization of the sense of human significance: a renewed intention towards creative relations between ourselves and the living cosmos.
If we do not remind ourselves we are likely to forget: human beings exist in a living universe where consciousness is primary. And real change has always occurred through the power of focused thought and intention. An individual working alone with the creative force of conscious energies can act upon the world more subtly yet more fully than a battlefield of soldiers or a garrison of uniformed generals.
This short book (now serialized as essays) will attempt to explain to you some of the capacities of conscious thinking, and to place this within an historical and cultural context. Also, to remind the reader of those capacities which lie within each person for energetically engaging with the everyday world. It is a testimony to the power of the energies inherent within each of us that humanity has evolved thus far, and continues to evolve toward an unprecedented future. Although we may well have had some help along the way, the future most surely now rests within our hands… or minds!
After all, within our intuitive selves lies the true capacity for magic…
A TALE TO FINISH: The Magician’s Dinner
There was once a Magician who built a house near a large and prosperous village. One day he invited all the people of the village to dinner. ‘Before we eat,’ he said, ‘we have some entertainments.’
Everyone was pleased, and the Magician provided a first-class conjuring show, with rabbits coming out of hats, flags appearing from nowhere, and one thing turning into another. The people were delighted. Then the Magician asked: ‘Would you like dinner now, or more entertainments?’
Everyone called for entertainments, for they had never seen anything like it before; at home there was food, but never such excitement as this. So the Magician changed himself into a pigeon, then into a hawk, and finally into a dragon. The people went wild with excitement.
He asked them again, and they wanted more. And they got it. Then he asked them if they wanted to eat, and they said that they did. So the Magician made them feel that they were eating, diverting their attention with a number of tricks, through his magical powers.
The imaginary eating and entertainments went on all night. When it was dawn, some of the people said, ‘We must go to work.’ So the Magician made those people imagine that they went home, got ready for work, and actually did a day’s work.
In short, whenever anyone said that he had to do something, the Magician made him think first that he was going to do it, then, that he had done it and finally that he had come back to the Magician’s house.
Finally the Magician had woven such spells over the people of the village that they worked only for him while they thought that they were carrying on with their ordinary lives. Whenever they felt a little restless he made them think that they were back at dinner at his house, and this gave them pleasure and made them forget.
And what happened to the Magician and the people, in the end? Do you know, I cannot tell you, because he is still busily doing it, and the people are still largely under his spell.
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Taken from the book ‘Breaking the Spell’ (published 2013/2020)
[1] Frankl, V.E. (1997) Man’s Search for Meaning. New York: Pocket Books
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