It's been over three weeks now since landing in New Zealand.
Daily writing, yoga, nature therapy, cleansing, video editing, meditation.
On the surface, it's been wildly "productive." But below all that, something else more meaningful (and challenging) is brewing...
Two things are happening simultaneously: the first is that the outside world is quickly becoming drained of significance and enjoyment for me. Any time I even so-much as open Instagram, I am plunged into heartache. Working out is also becoming agonizing, not out of sensational discomfort, but for the pain in seeing all the subtle ways I reject and hate my own body. Even writing has started to become a labor of love, rather than a way of joyously expressing myself, for it is being recognized all the small ways I selfishly hope that doing so will ultimately benefit me.
The second is what is perceived to be the outside world is actually expanding. More and more, what once were considered "my thoughts," "my memories," and "my sensations" are now being seen as "outside" me.
One way to describe it is like the walls or closing in on the identity structure. Everywhere 'I' look seems more and more foreign, less and less hospitable. This gives no choice but to turn away from the mind even further, hoping that the Real Answer will be found on the other side of being flipped inside-out.
Another way to say it is "my" ego is absolutely exhausted from trying to prop up the world. Even the tiniest judgement, when noticed, is heavy enough to break its twig legs and cause the whole edifice to come crashing down. I don't want to see through foggy eyes anymore; I want to see what's actually here.
Put together, the self is slowly being plunged into a stillness so deep and so vast, it can hardly begin to be described.
I'm told by writers like St. John of the Cross, Gopi Krishna, and David Hawkins that all of this is a sign of significant progress–the separate self getting to the end of its rope–the personality no longer being contented by anything other than God.
Progress, or not, it's...weird. Incredible? Overwhelming? Honestly, I have no idea what to call it. All I can really say is that it's neither bad nor unwanted.
P.S. As a reminder the {Body} • {Mind} • {Soul} Newsletter has altered its structure a bit, because of the writing of this book. If you care to support what I'm doing here, please consider pre-ordering the book. This helps me fundraise for a proper book editor, and gives publishers confidence that it will not be a flop!
Ethan Hill Owner, Yoga with Ethan
Ignorance is Not Bliss : Sneak Peek
Another important aspect of the subconscious mind is its alarmingly hijackable disposition—having “an impressionable mind,” as it were. In this layer of one’s psyche, there is no ‘read-only’ option, only ‘read-write’ access. That means the moment an impression is referenced, however delicately or inadvertently, it gets modified before being saved back to storage. Such editing needn’t be a full-on rewrite; it can occur at very minute levels, too.
Say you’re reading an article while your kid screams bloody murder in the background. Congratulations, the content of the article is now encoded alongside any irritation you feel, such that the next time you recall it, the impression isn't just "this article about such and such”—it's "this slightlyannoying article about such and such." The sensations of annoyance, however minuscule, being one of the states of your nervous system while reading it, are now gently intertwined with aspects of the article, even to the point of entanglement with the subject or author itself.†
Or consider the yoga student lying in final relaxation listening to their newly-certified teacher talking about the nature of reality. In such a receptive state, unless one has the appropriate protective measures up, the subconscious mind will readily swallow and digest that information, perhaps regurgitating it back up on a social media post three years later without any clue where it came from, or that the yoga teacher had no idea what they were talking about that day. Just like impressions, the unpurified, subconscious mind automatically pairs good feelings with true statements and bad feelings with false ones, and continues doing so even when it knows this bias about itself.
Said differently, human cognition, unaided, is simply unable to perfectly tell fact from fiction, or what is Good from what is good. It requires deep humility to admit this within oneself, but without proper safeguards, the right priming can be push, pull, sway, and manipulate one’s mind in literally any direction, especially in regards to religion, so-called scientific truths, and New Age dogma.
This one human psychological trait—the mind’s tendency to automatically dismiss or adopt what it hears without second thought, unable to tell the difference between truth versus falsehood—can work to explain all humanitarian, technological, ecological, and spiritual crises. Take the obviously destructive cargo-loads of misinformation polluting our media landscape. Thousands of independent ideas are flung at us every day, and if one gets unlucky and the algorithm chooses to show a bogus ‘Flat Earth’ conspiracy right after a factually true one about ’Big Honey’ lacing their honey with corn syrup to cut costs, now you’re primed with distrust and fuming with betrayal, and the actually bogus theory leaks into one’s subconscious pool without much of a fight.
More damaging still, most advertisers understand this vulnerability (repetition plus sensation equals change in belief and behavior) and won’t think twice about exploiting it to infect your subconscious mind with false ideas about how their completely unnecessary (and occasionally harmful) product will resolve your inefficiencies, self-confidence, illness, or heart’s gaping void.
There’s no easy way out, either, for as it currently stands citizens have no political protections against the all-out psychological warfare happening for their attention and money. No one consented to having billboards of photoshopped models and energy drinks polluting their eye-line and bombarding them with subliminal messages as they travel across public land. And yet, this is the reality some of us must learn to live with (and try to ignore).
Such mental kryptonite is still a relatively untouched issue within New Age communities, too, though it is a huge and ever-growing problem. In reaction to society's rigid dogmas and conditional love—'behave this way or else be cast out’—many spiritual seekers have swung to the opposite extreme, now claiming that almost any thought or impulse is 'intuition' and dismissing any suggestion to the contrary as judgment or limitation. Again, it needs to be reiterated: beyond the untrainable willingness to be humbled to the point of dissolution, there is no automatic mechanism that helps the seeker recognize when thoughts and visions are guidance versus when it’s the ego’s self-reinforcing patterns claiming to be guidance. It is fantastically easy to get tricked.
Though it is reckless to assume that all New Ager’s actions are based on idolizing such a false god as themselves, for protection it is strongly advised that genuine seekers proceed with caution around those who take pride in their spiritual practice, abilities or knowledge. Instead, if one is serious about discovering what is True, do what all the great religions recommend: continue deepening and strengthening your own contemplative practice, devote yourself to a Savior (guru, enlightened teacher) with a proven track-record, and develop an ever-intensifying dedication to surrendering to God’s will. As a general rule, the more one relies on intuition for guidance, the greater should one’s commitment to selfless service be.
†As such, do me a favor and get in a good mood whenever you’re about to read this book; otherwise, I might come across as quite the preachy twat!
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