This is a retrospective of week 50, 2024 (2024-12-09–2024-12-15).
I mentioned last week that I’ve started reading The Dreaming Way by Toko-pa Tuner. This week I’ve been reading Belonging by Toko-pa Turner.
Toko-pa Turner writes:
…I write to you not as an expert in belonging, but as an orphan who needed to discover that there was more to lose before I could be found.
—Toko-pa Turner, Belonging: Remembering Ourselves Home
In the attempt to belong, one can become masterfully adaptable… But the irony is that in my adaptability, I could never earn a true sense of belonging.
—Toko-pa Turner, Belonging: Remembering Ourselves Home
…places of false belonging grant us conditional membership, requiring us to cut parts of ourselves off in order to fit in. While false belonging can be useful and instructive for a time, the soul becomes restless…
—Toko-pa Turner, Belonging: Remembering Ourselves Home
There is a wilderness in every person. … It is the animal in us that knows what it knows, and it’s the origin from which all creativity is expressed.
—Toko-pa Turner, Belonging: Remembering Ourselves Home
There is an energetic stamp or vibratory signature behind every act of creation. Though difficult to perceive, it is like the wind blowing through a valley, touching everything we do.
—Toko-pa Turner, Belonging: Remembering Ourselves Home
It’s a beautiful book!
I’ve also listened to the following podcasts:
- Greek Philosophy and Early Christianity with Pierre Grimes and Jeffrey Misholove.1
- Shamanism: Pathways to Transformation with Michael Smith and Leanne Whitney.2
- Our Minds Are Connected According To Math with Edward Frenkel.3
Pierre Grimes said (my emphasis in italics):
Christianity is not really Christianity.
—Pierre Grimes https://youtu.be/Yy_XAjcD4xg?feature=shared&t=1227
The central doctrine of present day Christianity is not [the] gospels, it’s Paul. What makes Paul distinctive, [what is] the justification of Faith? It’s because of Jesus died for your sins that therefore your sins can be abolished. And upon your death, if you have faith, you gain heaven. There’s only one difficulty with that, you can’t find that—literally, you cannot find that—in the gospels.
—Pierre Grimes https://youtu.be/Yy_XAjcD4xg?feature=shared&t=1241
Christianity should be called Paulinism.
—Pierre Grimes https://youtu.be/Yy_XAjcD4xg?feature=shared&t=1337
Michael Smith said:
The tradition that I really operate out of is Andian… The eagle and the condor are symbolic birds that fly together. The condor represents the heart and its capacity to feel and to know. And the eagle represents the intellect, the mind, …which can plan, calculate, analyze, and so on. … You need both. So they got to fly together, but there to be in balance though, [the] heart must be led under the leading of the condor. That is, the heart must lead the life, and the intellect then is its ally in arranging things on a practical level and [a] social level… If the eagle takes the lead, like it does in our culture, then we get what we’ve got, [a] heavily materialistic, rationalistic, technologically addicted culture. So it’s out of balance.
—Michael Smith https://youtu.be/kL2-ts7dulE?feature=shared&t=1932
The genius, the intelligence of this lived experience, is such that the mind cannot co-opt it, the body must also participate…through the heart opening, right? … Ultimately, you can’t play a game on this thing…You’re only hurting yourself in the end. Like, you’re only robbing yourself of the experience, of the power of seeing… Or, I don’t know, even, if we want to put words on it? But, certainly, I would say the yumminess of the experience from the heart.
—Leanne Whitney https://youtu.be/kL2-ts7dulE?feature=shared&t=2461
Edward Frenkel said:
The best theories that we currently have, quantum field theory and general relativity, are incompatible with each other, and, hence, they are incomplete. The upshot of this discussion is that physical theories are always approximate. A given theory works well in a certain range of cases, but not in all cases. Physics is always working progress, you could say. Now, this may sound discouraging to some of us, but I actually think this is not a bug, it’s a feature. What it means is that our universe is so incredibly complex that we shouldn’t expect any theory to describe it completely.
—Edward Frenkel https://youtu.be/7eejAeqYFCg?feature=shared&t=416
Math[ematics] and physics actually describe different things, closely connected to each other, but different. … In fact, it’s very easy to miss.
—Edward Frenkel https://youtu.be/7eejAeqYFCg?feature=shared&t=546
We have to be careful not to identify our mental world with the physical world.
—Edward Frenkel https://youtu.be/7eejAeqYFCg?feature=shared&t=1776
I would say…the biggest takeway…[is] this idea of unity, this idea of non-separation. So, we go from this sense of…being isolated, alienated from each other and from nature… to this realization of how deeply connected we are. … We are led to this by mathematics, the most objective of all sciences.
—Edward Frenkel https://youtu.be/7eejAeqYFCg?feature=shared&t=1886
I’d summarize the above as follows:
I’ve changed. I am changed. I am changing . . .
There is an intuition, a felt sense, that draws me forward. It is the part of me that knows, without thinking, what and when to do something, how to respond, which way to go. It is what guides me towards my yesses, and away from my noes.
For most of my life I’ve been so domesticated and harnessed (not least by religion) that I barely could recognize its call. The intuition was repeatedly overridden, dismissed, and ignored. So, going forward I need to trust my own responses without questioning the validity of my felt sense.
The genius of this lived experience is such that the mind cannot co-opt it, the heart must also participate. Ultimately, you can’t play a game on this thing. You’re only going to hurt yourself in the end… Value and purpose is inherent in life itself. The journey is about accepting the gift of life and it’s beauty.
The eagle and the condor are two symbolic birds that fly together in a South American prophecy. The condor represents the heart and its capacity to feel and to know. The eagle represents the intellect, the mind, with its capacity to plan, calculate, analyze, and so on. You need both. So they got to fly together. But the heart must lead the life, and the intellect, then, is its ally in arranging things on a practical level.
The eagle is always there in me, but I also need to invite the presence of the condor; to just be in the moment, seeing what’s going to happen in that moment, and being part of that moment; connecting with my heart, acting from my heart, greeting moment by moment with my whole heart; to show up with respect, and compassion, wishing every being well, in every time and in every place.
Mathematics and physics describe different things. A given theory in physics is always approximate and works well in a certain range of cases, but not in all cases. Life is so incredibly complex that we shouldn’t expect any theory to describe it completely.
You are, in a way, free to make any idealizations you want in mathematics. A trivial example is a straight line. If you look carefully, however, there are no straight lines in nature. Does it matter? Yes, the map or theory or model is not the territory!
Notes:
1. New Thinking Allowed with Jeffrey Mishlove, “Greek Philosophy and Early Christianity with Pierre Grimes (1924 – 2024)”, Published: 20241204 (Recorded: 20180910), YouTube Video, 54:10, https://youtu.be/Yy_XAjcD4xg. Retrieved: 20241215.
2. New Thinking Allowed with Jeffrey Mishloeve, “Shamanism: Pathways to Transformation with C. Michael Smith”, Published: 20241208, YouTube Video, 1:09:38, https://youtu.be/kL2-ts7dulE. Retrieved: 20241215.
3. Edward Frenkel, “AfterMath | Our Minds Are Connected According To Math”, Published: 20241024, YouTube Video, 40:38, https://youtu.be/7eejAeqYFCg. Retrieved: 20241215.
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