I lived at Stillpoint Zen Community for 11 years in the sangha of zen master Umi.
He shared this same experience you describe, but in a more felt sense, in weekend workshops. We wore specially created ski goggles, blocking out all light, but allowing the eyes to remain open.
During the weekend, the "blind" ones, were watched over silently by "angels", those not wearing goggles. We went for walks, prepared meals, laughed and played games together, all our normal activities. The blindfolded ones could talk, but the "angels" remained silent, only intervening (via clapping) or a gentle touch if someone were about to endanger themselves. During the weekend, Umi read to us from a wonderful book "And There Was Light" by Jacques Lusseyran, who became blind at the age of 7, writing about his experiences of perception.
The weekend was the most profound experience of my life. I felt joy and total wellbeing, a complete absence of worry or fear. It was the same for all of us. I saw light and colors and a whole amazing world of experience opened up to me. I was able to perceive and navigate easily and felt completely safe and content. I realized how much seeing is connected to the mind, and all the unhelpful thoughts it creates. I felt only love.
We all cried when we removed the blindfolds at the end of the weekend, leaving that beautiful world behind - but the memory of the experience still remained
I felt a little sad to read this was being presented as somewhat of a magic show by those you wrote about. It's an experience that I wish everyone could have. It changed me forever. You're absolutely right, there's nothing to prove. It shows that, as you've said, that there is a much larger lens to experience life, no magic tricks necessary.
It's my opinion that the dumbing down of humanity is intentional via toxins, cellphone addiction, manufactured fear/crisis, unhealthy food, etc. etc. - which makes people easier to control. If we were all encouraged to use redirect our energy in this and other positive ways, a whole new experience would begin to unfold. Once seen this cannot be unseen.
Thank you Charles for shining a light in this and so many other beautiful directions.
my uncle was a research chemical engineer. every night he read science fiction for 2 hours before bed. sure, he enjoyed science fiction—but this pursuit also wired his brain for solving problems no one had solved before.
i stay immersed in these fields b/c i enjoy them, but also b/c i need the “language of possibility” for the rest of the problem solving i do.
if we’re not reaching beyond what’s already been done, we’re not gonna make it.
It is all there - we just have to open up to it. And for each of us, there are our own individual blocks that we need to let go of. It is such an exciting time - IF we can let go!
We don't realize how weighted down we are , until we begin the process of letting go. The majority of all humanity is unconscious of our own unconsciousness
We don't realize because we are blind of our spiritual essence of ourselves
A few people at a Monroe Institute gathering we attended had just been telling us about some of these same activities, and of course at IONS they've been gathering mounds of data on this type of thing for a long time.
One thing I have arrived at (rather reductively, unfortunately) is that so-called homo sapiens (on average) does not seem truly interested in reality. We appear to function primarily to reduce psychological discomfort. This takes many forms, over time and across cultures, but once locked into a death-spiral, it will take an extraordinary shift to have a consensus or tipping point -- or even small minority-- that shifts to some other priority. To make something like "reality" of greater interest than our relative psychological comfort would result in a very different landscape for civilization. Real Reality, even a fraction of it, from where I sit, will be mind-blowingly bizarre and filled with things that make us uncomfortable if we were to truly see clearly. I guess, I might say we will need to grow up someday, myself included. Some day soon.
💯… and for me a growing appreciation for/understanding of quantum mechanics + deeper exploration of quantum philosophy opens this door to extraordinary potential. and living into that future feels amazing!! ✨
Charles I am in tears! Of gratitude. I feel such a deep recognition that what you say is true. Down from when I was a child reading books about magic, all the way up to now. At the very least I can quote the I Ching: "The best way to fight evil is to make energetic progress in the good" - a line that has been with me for many many years.
I’ve been aware of the unfolding of this for a couple of years now.. and know in an online kind of a way some of the people involved.. it’s so brilliant and what’s really great is seeing all the children who are learning these techniques, my imagination bristles with joy at what a beautiful world they will be able to create with such assuredness in the magical..
One of my favorite sayings is, "Those unaware of their ignorance will always be misled by their knowledge." For us mere mortals, there will always be Rumsfeld's "unknown unknowns" and so we're always in danger of being misled by our knowledge. But your willingness to go beyond the current consensus greatly reduces that danger. And you may agree with another of my favorite sayings: "The most degrading slavery is to be a prisoner of one's own age."
A language obsessed with fighting, is a language that doesn’t acknowledge stress.
Like any atmosphere, we can not ‘see’ the self, if we are always judging the outside world.
We can not see ourselves as the problem, if the only language is that of demands without shared understanding.
One species, no borders, one blue dot.
Celebration and life is not a calendar of events but a feeling we live in a comatose and smoke of endless partitions, invented and repeated without opposition, preached without conversation and chastised, repudiated and ejected by conventional wisdom and its insistence the world goes faster than notice the waste, extinction, loss of water and oxygen, happily creating Mars on earth with the two extremes of space of being simultaneously cooked and freeze dried, hammered by every frequency of the suns radiation, for atrophy and harms, because the atmosphere is a secondary inconvenience to the tailpipe.
The future need not be to live inside the fridge of technocratic success, but to stand in awe of big trees, big water, big life, not big deserts, big machines and big death of objective evangelized sacrifice.
Some humans planted those big trees and arose within liberated and multiplex linguistics, improvised observations because every living chance is that of nature, not caves designed by colonial force, colonial corporate education and the inherited skill less mind games of extraction against the truth of needs instead of continued educated fear, loneliness, compartmentalized thinking and the erasure of family and community for the corporate number.
I just mingle Karl, attempting to unravel the bipolarity of our dominant language.
Usually the prompt of *why* is answered with *just because* or, *it’s always been this way*.
It most definitely hasn’t..
Who am moi a bit of I and we.
An annoyance to my neighbour as I often unpack the dictionary of meaning, while others mostly bla in reliable stereotypes, conspiracies and paradox’s of comfortable mush.
I thought I am a substack, quality not quantity maybe?
I just haven’t used the soap box or the milk crate much.
"...walling paradigm-breaking topics off from political reality preserves the status quo and locks us in the fruitless struggle of centuries...". That part. I have no doubt that, just as the "divide and conquer" method of crowd control is very intentional, so is this method. God bless you, Charles. 🙏🏽💚
In The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible you invite us to pause and notice the sensations and tendencies that arise before, for example, reaching for another book about past lives.
Is this author expressing something similar? Not that alternatives are necessarily fantasy or delusion, but that they can be used as an escape from being present with the sense of what still needs to be felt?
Telepathy is real. Blindfold vision, perhaps. What I call magic is real, undeniable. Perhaps we're evolving. But there are limits to what can be accomplished with magic. Otherwise there wouldn't be polycrises.
Love it! Yes! Do you know if they were perceiving and interacting with the perceived through glandular perception (such as pituitary) rather than eyesight? I have been exploring this through one of the bodywork modalities I study and wonder if it is similar.
Yes! The Human body is immensely powerful. We are limiting our potential by clinging on to a mechanistic framework. A future where babies are taught to re-learn these ancient skills and a complete reframing of the human condition from one of lack - which leads to fighting for more - to a realisation that we are whole and can share with abundance. Thank you for this! Now we need to get this mainstream.
I lived at Stillpoint Zen Community for 11 years in the sangha of zen master Umi.
He shared this same experience you describe, but in a more felt sense, in weekend workshops. We wore specially created ski goggles, blocking out all light, but allowing the eyes to remain open.
During the weekend, the "blind" ones, were watched over silently by "angels", those not wearing goggles. We went for walks, prepared meals, laughed and played games together, all our normal activities. The blindfolded ones could talk, but the "angels" remained silent, only intervening (via clapping) or a gentle touch if someone were about to endanger themselves. During the weekend, Umi read to us from a wonderful book "And There Was Light" by Jacques Lusseyran, who became blind at the age of 7, writing about his experiences of perception.
The weekend was the most profound experience of my life. I felt joy and total wellbeing, a complete absence of worry or fear. It was the same for all of us. I saw light and colors and a whole amazing world of experience opened up to me. I was able to perceive and navigate easily and felt completely safe and content. I realized how much seeing is connected to the mind, and all the unhelpful thoughts it creates. I felt only love.
We all cried when we removed the blindfolds at the end of the weekend, leaving that beautiful world behind - but the memory of the experience still remained
I felt a little sad to read this was being presented as somewhat of a magic show by those you wrote about. It's an experience that I wish everyone could have. It changed me forever. You're absolutely right, there's nothing to prove. It shows that, as you've said, that there is a much larger lens to experience life, no magic tricks necessary.
It's my opinion that the dumbing down of humanity is intentional via toxins, cellphone addiction, manufactured fear/crisis, unhealthy food, etc. etc. - which makes people easier to control. If we were all encouraged to use redirect our energy in this and other positive ways, a whole new experience would begin to unfold. Once seen this cannot be unseen.
Thank you Charles for shining a light in this and so many other beautiful directions.
my uncle was a research chemical engineer. every night he read science fiction for 2 hours before bed. sure, he enjoyed science fiction—but this pursuit also wired his brain for solving problems no one had solved before.
i stay immersed in these fields b/c i enjoy them, but also b/c i need the “language of possibility” for the rest of the problem solving i do.
if we’re not reaching beyond what’s already been done, we’re not gonna make it.
It is all there - we just have to open up to it. And for each of us, there are our own individual blocks that we need to let go of. It is such an exciting time - IF we can let go!
We don't realize how weighted down we are , until we begin the process of letting go. The majority of all humanity is unconscious of our own unconsciousness
We don't realize because we are blind of our spiritual essence of ourselves
I enjoyed the video earlier this week Charles.
A few people at a Monroe Institute gathering we attended had just been telling us about some of these same activities, and of course at IONS they've been gathering mounds of data on this type of thing for a long time.
One thing I have arrived at (rather reductively, unfortunately) is that so-called homo sapiens (on average) does not seem truly interested in reality. We appear to function primarily to reduce psychological discomfort. This takes many forms, over time and across cultures, but once locked into a death-spiral, it will take an extraordinary shift to have a consensus or tipping point -- or even small minority-- that shifts to some other priority. To make something like "reality" of greater interest than our relative psychological comfort would result in a very different landscape for civilization. Real Reality, even a fraction of it, from where I sit, will be mind-blowingly bizarre and filled with things that make us uncomfortable if we were to truly see clearly. I guess, I might say we will need to grow up someday, myself included. Some day soon.
💯… and for me a growing appreciation for/understanding of quantum mechanics + deeper exploration of quantum philosophy opens this door to extraordinary potential. and living into that future feels amazing!! ✨
Charles I am in tears! Of gratitude. I feel such a deep recognition that what you say is true. Down from when I was a child reading books about magic, all the way up to now. At the very least I can quote the I Ching: "The best way to fight evil is to make energetic progress in the good" - a line that has been with me for many many years.
I’ve been aware of the unfolding of this for a couple of years now.. and know in an online kind of a way some of the people involved.. it’s so brilliant and what’s really great is seeing all the children who are learning these techniques, my imagination bristles with joy at what a beautiful world they will be able to create with such assuredness in the magical..
One of my favorite sayings is, "Those unaware of their ignorance will always be misled by their knowledge." For us mere mortals, there will always be Rumsfeld's "unknown unknowns" and so we're always in danger of being misled by our knowledge. But your willingness to go beyond the current consensus greatly reduces that danger. And you may agree with another of my favorite sayings: "The most degrading slavery is to be a prisoner of one's own age."
A language obsessed with fighting, is a language that doesn’t acknowledge stress.
Like any atmosphere, we can not ‘see’ the self, if we are always judging the outside world.
We can not see ourselves as the problem, if the only language is that of demands without shared understanding.
One species, no borders, one blue dot.
Celebration and life is not a calendar of events but a feeling we live in a comatose and smoke of endless partitions, invented and repeated without opposition, preached without conversation and chastised, repudiated and ejected by conventional wisdom and its insistence the world goes faster than notice the waste, extinction, loss of water and oxygen, happily creating Mars on earth with the two extremes of space of being simultaneously cooked and freeze dried, hammered by every frequency of the suns radiation, for atrophy and harms, because the atmosphere is a secondary inconvenience to the tailpipe.
The future need not be to live inside the fridge of technocratic success, but to stand in awe of big trees, big water, big life, not big deserts, big machines and big death of objective evangelized sacrifice.
Some humans planted those big trees and arose within liberated and multiplex linguistics, improvised observations because every living chance is that of nature, not caves designed by colonial force, colonial corporate education and the inherited skill less mind games of extraction against the truth of needs instead of continued educated fear, loneliness, compartmentalized thinking and the erasure of family and community for the corporate number.
Man who are you? So eloquent an extrapolator of Charles's presentation. You coul;d start your own substack or Reddit. Let me know if you do.
I just mingle Karl, attempting to unravel the bipolarity of our dominant language.
Usually the prompt of *why* is answered with *just because* or, *it’s always been this way*.
It most definitely hasn’t..
Who am moi a bit of I and we.
An annoyance to my neighbour as I often unpack the dictionary of meaning, while others mostly bla in reliable stereotypes, conspiracies and paradox’s of comfortable mush.
I thought I am a substack, quality not quantity maybe?
I just haven’t used the soap box or the milk crate much.
"...walling paradigm-breaking topics off from political reality preserves the status quo and locks us in the fruitless struggle of centuries...". That part. I have no doubt that, just as the "divide and conquer" method of crowd control is very intentional, so is this method. God bless you, Charles. 🙏🏽💚
In The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible you invite us to pause and notice the sensations and tendencies that arise before, for example, reaching for another book about past lives.
Is this author expressing something similar? Not that alternatives are necessarily fantasy or delusion, but that they can be used as an escape from being present with the sense of what still needs to be felt?
Telepathy is real. Blindfold vision, perhaps. What I call magic is real, undeniable. Perhaps we're evolving. But there are limits to what can be accomplished with magic. Otherwise there wouldn't be polycrises.
Love it! Yes! Do you know if they were perceiving and interacting with the perceived through glandular perception (such as pituitary) rather than eyesight? I have been exploring this through one of the bodywork modalities I study and wonder if it is similar.
Thank you for this, Charles! This arrived at the perfect time for me— go figure that! ❤️❤️❤️
Of course. The new reality is KI.
Yes! The Human body is immensely powerful. We are limiting our potential by clinging on to a mechanistic framework. A future where babies are taught to re-learn these ancient skills and a complete reframing of the human condition from one of lack - which leads to fighting for more - to a realisation that we are whole and can share with abundance. Thank you for this! Now we need to get this mainstream.