Dangerous Wisdom

It may seem strange to ask it, but one way to put the most important question for humanity right now is this: Can we learn to inhabit reality?

By implication, this question suggests we currently inhabit delusion. That’s what the wisdom traditions of the world—including many indigenous traditions—try to make rather clear to all of us living in, or infected by, the dominant culture.

This divergence from reality appears in many ways and in a variety of forms. One of the most crazy-making forms comes to us in the economic and political realm, when business and political “leaders” tell us that our need for a thriving and just world isn’t “realistic”. When it comes to justice and ecological health—on which our personal well-being depends—the “leaders” tell us that reality itself isn’t “realistic”. 

When reality itself becomes “unrealistic,” we face the potential for grave catastrophe—not to mention general unwellness. Sadly, we have become rather accustomed to thinking of reality as “unrealistic”.

The greatest experiment of our time will is the one to find out if inhabiting reality is possible for us, before it's too late.

How can we inhabit interwovenness? This is like asking:

Can truth be inhabited?

Can truth be embodied?

We consider these deep questions (in relation to DIY architecture) with Dr. Sarah Breen Lovett. Sarah is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow and Manager of the Future Building Initative at Monash Art, Design & Architecture MADA. Breen Lovett has instigated and been included in many exhibitions, symposiums and publications at the interdisciplinary meeting point of art and architecture. Her PhD dissertation was titled, “Expanded Architectural Awareness: Exploring Intersections of Architecture and Expanded Cinema.” Recent publications include "Expanded Architecture: Temporal Formal", published in cooperation with the Bauhaus Foundation Dessau, by AADR; and a chapters in "Flow: Between Interior and Landscape” published by Bloomsbury;  "Inter and Transdisciplinary Relationships in Architecture" by AITNER'; "Mediated Identities in the Futures of Place: Emerging Practices and Spatial Cultures" by Springer; and "Architecture Filmmaking" by Intellect.

In this dialogue with Lia Helena Rubinoff, a philosopher and certified nutrition consultant, we consider how craving itself can lead to liberation and healing.

Enlightened craving means our craving itself is enlightened—it’s just encumbered. When we look directly at it, we can bring the medicine of awareness to our craving and liberate it into bone fide wisdom. In particular, craving has to do with the wisdom referred to as the wisdom of discernment, which helps us to know exactly what we need to eat, based on the ecological intelligence of our mind and body in relation with the world.

Similarly, triggers are an encumbered wisdom. We call that wisdom the mirror-like wisdom that reflects things as they are.

Everybody has cravings and triggers, and most people are ruled by them. But they actually provide us with unique opportunities for liberation—to achieve genuine freedom, happiness, and wellbeing.

The Enlightened Craving process teaches us how to liberate the energy of cravings and triggers and restore our body’s and your mind’s innate wisdom about how to live well, including how to eat well and how to maintain holistic wellbeing. The process is based on the best science we have, and it’s also based on the single greatest untapped cultural resource we have for health and wellbeing, namely the wisdom traditions of the world.

Socrates was initiated by a priestess into the mysteries of wisdom, love, and beauty. A modern-day priestess joins a modern-day philosopher for dialogue and dangerous wisdom.

Picking up the thread of compassion training, as part of A Philosopher's Guide to Working with the Medicines of Our World, we contrast compassion with empathy distress. We also introduce the notion of the tonglen attitude, a special mindset that can empower and liberate our practice with any of the medicines of our World. Finally, we look at one way to understand one aspect of how compassion and tonglen function: a kind of magic mind synchrony in which self-regulation and co-regulation become integrated.

Part of A Philosopher's Guide to Working with the Medicines of Our World, this is the single most important recommendation I can make, for those facilitating work with the medicines of our world, and also for those seeking healing and insight from those medicines. This is a two-part discussion of compassion as a skill that requires training. Learn how compassion differs from empathy, and how it presents a revolutionary challenge to central aspects of the dominant culture. This is part of the shift from conquest consciousness to a culture of wisdom, love, and beauty.

An exploration of the ethics of consciousness—what that means and how it relates to the medicines of our world, including psychedelics.

We can only overcome fragmentation if we can begin to admit how much it has infected us, and if we can admit that we don't fully understand holism. Psychedelics and other medicines demand a revitalized sense of healing and wholeness, learning and culture, mind and Nature, self and World.

In this contemplation, we try to sense the ways we may not understand, let alone wonderstand, the notion of a holistic approach to life and love, to healing and transformation. On this basis we can then move on to outline some of the basic elements of a holistic philosophy of life.

What can Plato and Socrates teach us about working with the medicines of our World? In this first chapter of a philosopher's guide to working with psychedelics and other medicines, we look at what Plato and Socrates, and their relationship with psychedelics, initiation, and walking a path of healing, a path of wisdom, love, and beauty.

How can Buddhist philosophy empower us to work more skillfully with the medicines of our world—including psychedelic medicines like DMT, LSD, MDMA, and others?

Psychedelic medicines have a burgeoning presence in our culture. People have experienced healing and transformation with them. How can we work with them, and with our whole lives, in accord with wisdom, love, and beauty? With a more holistic approach, these medicines could empower us in ways that might yet surprise us.

In this contemplation we begin with the source of the term, “psychedelic”. By looking at where it came from, and what its fuller meaning points to, we can consider more deeply how a holistic philosophy of life like Buddhism can open up potentials for us to become the medicine the World needs right now.

Among other things, we will discuss one of the most psychedelic texts in the history of world philosophy: The Avatamsaka Sutra, or Flower Ornament Scripture. This is one of my favorite books of all time, and I think you will appreciate the way it expands the imagination and vibrates with a kind of field of enlightenment energy.