A lil riff on something that was pestering my pre-conscious

Got some convos scheduled soon but I am shy + lazy

Longest podcast yet! Had a delight recording this with Elliot and learned a lot regarding Lovecraft and his philosophical ideas. Hope you enjoy this riff of ideas and stay tuned for more conversations in the future!

Elliot's links:

https://youtube.com/@filmicfop?si=6VXGmCVVKj9Glsjk

https://youtube.com/@theisopianchronicles?si=fP-tWPp0GdLSIpb7

The Science of Serenity:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/B0CH25N6CL/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?ie=UTF8&qid=&sr=

Attention mediates much of our orientation to the world, parsing reality into what is salient and relevant, and into what is irrelevant and ignorable.

It can also become parasitised by addiction and illusion, experiences whereby our attention enters a maladaptive conformity with reality.

Inquiring into attention, which entails a recursive process of mind turning in on mind and representing itself, takes one into confrontation with the patterns of the psyche.

Confrontation, however, assumes a dualistic frame where there is ‘someone’ who is confronting ‘something’. Dropping such dualistic notions through inquiry into attention and what 'is', whilst perhaps intuitively strange and maybe even scary, can facilitate the phenomena of what I try to explain as “non dual attention”. I attempt to connect this form of attention to a discussion regarding the basic ‘isness’ of reality to help perhaps create a useful set of conceptual pointers for the listener.

Hope ya enjoy!

#consciousness #attention #spirituality #philosophy #nonduality #meditation #psychedelic #psychology #mysticism

Thoroughly enjoyed this! Covered a lot of utterly fascinating ground relating to mysticism, techniques for accessing mystical states, meditation, metaphysics and much more. The conversation regarding this category of "techniques for accessing mystical states" was framed within an exploration of Kabbalah, Hermeticism and certain types of ritualistic magic. Learned a tremendous amount about these schools of thought which I wasn't intimately familiar with prior - so am thankful that my friend (who wishes to remain anonymous due to the sensitivity of topics discussed) took the time to riff with me today. Hope you all also derive some benefit from what was discussed!

#philosophy #mysticism #hermeticism #kabbalah #magic #consciousness #spirituality

Riffing some thoughts on the nature of God, the spectrum of consciousness in nature, mysticism, the limits of language, the problem of evil and much more

Will be releasing more podcast discussions with friends and interesting people soon! Plus will be releasing something more formal going into the problem of evil and the work of philosopher and mystic Simone Weil.

This can be a disorientating process to experience, as it involves a radical departure from the familiar and a merging with the ‘mystery’, or the universe. In other words, it’s a directly experienced dissolving of separateness - something that makes tangible the quasi-mystical nature of quantum entanglement and non-locality.

Whilst we may often think of ego death in the negative, as constituting the loss or diminishment of something (namely the ego) - there is also a paradoxical positive merging or expansion into something ‘greater’ or ‘deeper’ - which speaks to how the seeming dissolution of “egoic processes” can facilitate a deeper connection with the more intuitive and subtle aspects of psyche, the conscious realities that lie beyond immediate perception.

Yet also, as in the example of psychedelic experiences, ego dissolution can render accessible throughly mysterious forms of intelligence - that are importantly ‘other’.

Indeed the experience of contact with a kind of transcendental reality, this ‘seeing deeper’ into truth, is commonly reported as axiomatic of the ego death/transcendence phenomena.

Understanding and developing these sorta themes is my main goal here - nothing is final - am just trying to play around with concepts.

#egodeath #mindfulness #consciousness #meditation #philosophy #psychology #psychedelic #spirituality

Originally recorded on the 5th October 2023

Here's a nice discussion into how psychedelics can be used as a tool for self-exploration with Kara, pres of the Warwick psychedelic research society. We cover a lot of ground here so I hope you find benefit from listening!

(apologies for the audio quality)

You can find warwick psychedelic on instagram @warwickpsychedelic

and on spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/show/7j4rNhixn3bYpicxXvXrGz?si=1688b02706ad412e

#psychedelic #spirituality #philosophy #metaphysics #consciousness #mindfulness