Death Practice Dreams 13.1
Halloween Compilations
In this one I’ve compiled some of the writings from over the halloween period, post Ancestors Death Practice Group. I have a bunch of new stuff ready to publish in conjunction with Death Practice Group #6, The Story That Eats Itself: An Introduction to Non-Conceptual, Sleep & Dream Practices, coming up Weds Nov 16th 2022 4pm PST.
More to come very soon including new UnderworldParty episodes and probably a new short term foundations course offering around Perception, Play, Learning and Improvisation (deathclown lite).
O GREAT FUCKING NOBODIES CALLED GODS
BENEFICIAL INTERDEPENDENT DREAMS
SPACE WITHOUT STORIES
I RELINQUISH WHATEVER RESISTANCES I HARBOR,
BELIEFS ABOUT LOSS AND PAIN,
FEAR AND DEATH
THAT KEEP ME AS A SLAVE PRETENDING TO BE FREE.
NO! BASTA I SAY AND THAT IS THE SUPREME
THUNDERCLAP THAT AWAKENS TEN THOUSAND THOUSAND
LAUGHING WISDOM SONGS
THE GREAT HURRICANE DANCES AND THERE IS ONLY
PEACE.
The quality of your practice is evidenced in the kinds of questions you ask about anything.
To the experienced mind (i.e. the practitioner who really becomes interested in the process of practicing), nothing is truly hidden, but nothing is really "un-hidden" either.
It becomes more and more easy to skillfully skip past the "hang-ups", internal double-binds and labeling of "problems" that plague the oppressed modern mind.
Skipping past the hang-ups and getting to real practice which is complex, inquiry-based, creative construction. Play that is learning which sparks neuro-genesis and destabilizes homeostasis. yes, DESTABILIZES homeostasis.
The overall composition of attention & perception are different than those with highly disorganized nervous systems that are always in an internal conflict.
If you have a nervous system with constant internal conflicts, you often perceive organized nervous systems as a threat as much as you perceive other dis-organized nervous systems as a threat.
(The destabilization of homeostasis is also perceived as a threat, which means play & learning feel threatening)
Even reading this, which has no threat or harm within its content, can tell you a lot about what needs to be prioritized in your nervous system. If when reading this you feel in any way fear, anger, envy or confusion - that is a clue as to where your nervous system is wasting energy via dis-organization and internal conflicts.
And there are such things as people with highly organized nervous systems that are essentially highly-functioning ghosts. This has always been an option of being human. You need to be able to know and notice that without going into a highly charged state about it.
as the season grows colder and death makes her presence known in more obvious ways, been contemplating how this very weird game works... and i mean the game of practicing liberation inside a capitaLOST paradigm.
learning is never safe.
learning which is play, requires risking new shapes. requires destabilizing homeostasis. requires meeting the death of your cherished fantasies and narratives.
many people never actually learn. many people are too afraid of the pain that escapes from the cages we use to feel safe but never actually are.
learning, for real. learning for liberation, will not make you famous or loved in some broad, celebritist way. at each turn in the game of surviving domination in an ethical way, ghosts will appear in all forms to tempt you to cut corners, to return to using dominance, but now masked in the guise of liberation and success.
so we have so many teachers, experts, gurus... that speak out of both sides of their mouth. the book deals, the speaking deals, university guest spots, confrence invitations, lucrative consulting gigs, all of these are the way that dominator politics bargain for your shen, your soul. how you will so easily transact your way through survivance, as if the real world of nature is just another bank that you must convince to give you a loan.
liberation is not popular, even inside the liberation eschatologies that capitalism preaches. in order to "be free" inside of capitalist society, you must enslave some part of the soul. you must come to terms with this compromise and begin to think like an oligarch, you must begin to empathize with your oppressors. this is the infection that lies dormant in our genome.
holding strong to a center that is outside this infection paradigm is akin to walking away from omelas. and the traveler who does this moves towards death in a more perceptive way.
all the while the ghosts of our connected biome tempt you back into a BRIGHTER FUTURE TM. Liberation Lite, Liberation Ultra, Liberation with copyright protections. Liberation YOU CAN OWN.
you already know which road youve chosen. make peace with it and move on.
#deathpractice
u can break down self-improvement and psycho-social healing into two broad categories of practice
1- arrested development issues
2- people who have dealt with their arrested development issues and are no longer shackled to the symptoms, shame, inaccurate narratives and various caca that comes with arrested development type issues
neither is better than the other, its just like saying that some ppl have balance issues and need to use training wheels until their vestibular system adapts, and some ppl will always need training wheels because they are disabled in some way but theyve worked all the edges as best they can.
me, for example, i drowned in the atlantic when i was three so i never learned to swim that well at all. this past summer i decided to just wear a lifejacket all the time in water and guess what, it allowed me to be in deeper water more often and have less stress and more fun. thats a net positive whether i learn to swim better ever or not.
but there are other things in life i had to move past and not constantly rely on a "lifejacket". like panic attacks, addiction, co dependent relationships, insecure bullshit, listening to the wrong style of people, learning to cook real food by myself, learning to survive by myself, cutting myself off from toxic or addictive situations, starting my own business, etc.
there are some remedial re-training things a person will have to do if they want to be free internally, in their own little ecosystem inside the big ego-system of capitalism.
like, how to be a good friend to themself, how to stop focusing on what you dont like, how to stop being jealous of other ppls privileges, how to feel satisfied with the basics, how to talk yourself down from mania, depression, suicidality, possession, grandiosity, domination, neglect etc.
but the craziness of our shared corporate hellscape is that there really are two kinds of practitioners. those who are still wrestling at the edge of their capacity with arrested developmental patterns, and those who have sort of graduated to the next vista of relating, playing, exploring and being.
there are many ppl pretending to be in the latter that skipped steps in the former. you only know that when youve really decided to become very thorough yourself. you start to grok how many places are easily bypassed.
and there are many ppl who think that this entire thing im saying here is another way to make them feel bad because they are still in the swamp of arrested development. it can take a long time to really deal with your swamp. you have to get cozy and real, build a workstation there and start to do all the messy work that it takes, for as long as it takes. theres no actual shortcuts, just practice.
back to the larger view though, just to cap this off: there are two main aesthetics for "healing". its not like everyone needs emdr and polyvagal baby steps, trigger warnings forever. but some will. thats life. i find its actually a lot less noisy for me now, because so much of what ppl are saying just ISNT FOR ME. because im not in some remedial playpen needing de escalation narrative therapy for my psycho ghosts. i dont need to be spoon fed basic bullshit because im harming myself or others. (i certainly dont need white ppl reinventing mythology as some kind of cure for their own culture... this is like drinking gasoline to cure cancer.)
ive done my anti racism work, my anti black, misogynist, xyz confirmation bias work. its part of my normal perception now. (it helps that im puerto rican mixed race and queer, for sure, i really dont know how mono racial cis ppl live with such boredom) its not "hard" or "weird" or "triggering" or whatever. if you havent done yours, then you think im lying, and thats another facet to this work: all we can do is our work, and become cleverly reluctant in how we give our "trust" to people for no good reason.
i dont need trust, i just need perception, the basics, and the capacity to navigate complexity with inquiry and sensing. i dont really care what you say, im listening to things far deeper than just words. if you are still in language confusion mode, thats where youre at, i was there for a long ass time re-wiring my language and communication center.
language is only as good as the integrated system underneath the language. deception is baked in. ppl in arrested development are justifiably freaked out by that.
if a person deals with their arrested development, they can still backslide into the patterns if enough stresses pile up, but hopefully they will know how to mitigate and stop the backslide before it becomes a big issue. the main hallmark of people who are skillfull at this is that they DO NOT MAKE COMPLEX OR FAR REACHING DECISIONS WHILE IN THIS STATE.
the overarching self help industry is full of vampires, co dependent ppl who need other co dependent people to validate their nonsense. it doesnt matter if theyre well meaning, broken clocks are right twice a day. capitalism trains us to be the mark in each others long con, so u really have to want to get free, the exit door is not labeled for you. many so called experts are not the paragons of behavior you believe them to be. on some level books and media are curated deceptions.
i dont really know how many ppl still are in arrested development but i suspect its a lot. this means that the vast majority of themes and narratives are largely for and from and about this. if thats what u need, thats great, but its a bit like imagining if every tv channel only played friends and seinfeld "because thats what the people want". this is, unfortunately, how easy it is to feed white supremacy and cis hetero normative christianism at the same time as placating to socially shared emotional-cognitive maturity level. the chimera is everywhere, and it makes culture into a kind of hammer, where your brain is the nail. by purporting to cater to "normal", it lobotomizes divergence as a default setting.
if it takes you twenty years of practice to get free, it takes you twenty years of practice to get free. it will take longer if you dont practice because you resent that you cant make it quick.
not everyone understands that the joy of being honest is better than the comfort of ignoring what is painful. this is why arrested development is so sticky and toxic. ignorance is not bliss, ignorance is addiction marketed as bliss by the addict.
#deathpractice
a very direct riff on complicity for those who are hyper empathic and conflicted with double binds
technically, we are all complicit because we are interdependent. but there are degrees of complicity that relate to power dynamics and privilege. i know that word is hot and taboo because its on trend to believe that you are either a victim or a perpetrator.
but humans are both at the same time, but individually not in equal ratios.
(this is complexity so you have to keep up)
i will use a hot metaphor that actually isnt a metaphor.
Slaves are technically complicit with the Master's impacts. But sometimes/most times a slave has to choose to survive and be complicit physically, while rebelling mentally/emotionally/spiritually.
if the slave continues to work for the master, or has internalized the master's worldview, even after there is real opportunity for freedom, then, and only then, can we begin to look at the slave's choices as perpetration.
now, for WHITE ppl and ppl with economic privilege you really have to differentiate here, because you are a kind of slave and a kind of master AT THE SAME TIME in various areas of your life because that is how clever the capitalist paradigm is.
this is why so many ppl shut down around these topics, defaulting to victim-collapse and dissociation because of how complex and non-binary the situation REALLY is.
this is also why white woman tears are dangerous even if they are personally authentic.
GET WITH IT. wake the fuck up and realize you dont live in a bubble. everything bleeds through.
a PS because because: if u listen to Douglas Rushkoffs interviews about his survival of the richest book the last few years, u will learn that most wealthy people have a philosophy where they absolutely know and believe that they must make enough money to outrun the negative effects of them making the money in the first place.
if u peer into this, the core of this 'i'm a special exception' -narcissism "loophole" worldview, u will see it IN YOURSELF except you just aren't rich.
PPS: you cant help others if you are constantly drowning in your double binds. at a certain point you have to become very practical and just get shit done, which is called NUTRITION & HYGIENE. its not bypassing to do the health things. life is risk management, so go risk. you have to get yr shit in order.
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