I’ve got more than a few pieces in the works, but I need to pause for a week or so to do some more kneading. This bread is rising, but the fire in the oven is too hot right now. I’ve got to let things burn down a bit before I pop this loaf in the oven. Here’s why.
Over the last couple weeks, I’ve had a very generative interaction with Stella Stillwell, starting with her post: You’ve become “the meat problem”. Something she said in response to my comment/note made me gasp in recognition.
I’ve been holding back here. Way back. I didn’t realize just how much. My experience in recent weeks/months has been super struggly. So much effort needed to chain myself in front of the keyboard and get a few words to sputter out before jumping up or opening a news browser.
Now I know why. There is so, so much I have to share with you about the state of the world, how we got here, and how we’ll need to redirect if we’re going to survive, that comes directly from this work and what it reveals about the inner world of conscious experience.
To be fair, I’ve felt the need to establish my ground, to make it clear where I stand. This ground beneath me is very, very strong, but it’s significantly removed from the well-trodden ground others have been walking for millennia. I’ve needed not only to present the ground, but some kind of path from the norm to this sacred place.
That task is not complete yet. But. It’s good enough for me to redirect. Right now, after completing the section on the moving phase of fieldwork, you have everything you need to bake psychotopology from scratch, no packaged mix needed, no UPFs, no plastic container. So along with continuing to build Volume 2 of Frontiers, I am also going to step up and speak as clearly as I can about why you might want to do that.
Things in this world are fucked up for a reason. And that reason is not that we are inherently flawed, as everything from religion to science would have us believe. The reason is because we are grossly misunderstanding and misrepresenting our own selves, and what it is to be alive and conscious. The stories we have crafted about “human nature,” built as they are on concepts of being inherently sinful, animal, primal, or otherwise corrupt, are distorted and corrosive. These stories make it very difficult for us to access our inner compass of wisdom, so the distortion becomes self-intensifying. It’s a horrible feedback loop that is setting things up to destroy the entire planet at some level.
Fieldwork reveals what is actually inside of us, beyond our ideas, concepts, theories and mythologies. Let me say that again. Fieldwork reveals what is actually inside of us. And what it reveals is inherently wise, good, and powerful.
This wisdom, goodness and power is doing all it can to wake us up right now. It serves capital L “Life.” And Life has a structure that serves its own ongoing development. Right now, the evolutionary experiment that is humanity has taken a turn that is not serving Life. We are receiving louder and more powerful signals alerting us to this misdirection. Every day, every week, every year, every decade, the signals continue to get more intense.
All it is asking is for us to pay attention to the signals, to turn our awareness to the pain, the terror, the rage, the horror, the shame, the grief, all of it, all of it, all of it. Fieldwork provides a way for us to do that directly, without the distractions and redirections of all the other stuff that gets in the way of us actually getting real with feeling. It’s there. The signal is loud. Life is begging for our attention.
I will have much, much more to say about this as I begin to tap into the immense backlog of all I have to share with you. And I will continue, slowly, to lay out the science of psychotopology, along with all the magnificence of our being that it reveals to us.
I absolutely love good bread. Can’t wait to pull it out of the oven for you.