We are like flies crawling across the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel: we cannot see what angels and gods lie underneath the threshold of our perceptions. We do not live in reality; we live in our paradigms, our habituated perceptions, our illusions; the illusions we share through culture we call reality; but the true historical reality of our condition is invisible to us.
– William Irwin Thompson
When I got out of the Navy in 1973, I moved to Seattle, and I lived there till 1985.
In 1974 (or ‘75) I happened to go to a weirdo party. It was there that I met Bruce Myron (one of the other weirdos). We became friends.
Well, Bruce was an astrologer and a clairvoyant; that is, he could see auras & chakras. I hired him numerous times as an astrologer; but he would always give me feedback as to the condition of my lighter bodies.
Now, at the party (where we’d met) there were some people playing a ‘party game’. One person was lying on their back, on the floor, with six people squatting (or kneeling, I can’t recall) close to them (three on the right and three on the left – in ‘pairs’: one pair at the shoulders, another pair at the waist, and the 3rd pair just below the knees)
What was meant to happen was – the six people kneeling were supposed to lift their person up (high). The lifters had been instructed to put their two hands close together with their index fingers extended (and slide them under the liftee). And then, at some point, lift them up (just with their index fingers.)
I was not one of the participants, but I was sitting next to Bruce; and we were both watching the proceedings. But, in fact, nothing much happened. The person was NOT lifted up. (And I don’t think anyone there was greatly surprised. I mean, HOW could such a thing happen, anyway?)
But at that moment (of “failure”) Bruce said to me (discreetly) that a certain woman (he knew her name – one of the “lifters”) “didn’t connect” with her lifting partner opposite her. That was his (clairvoyant’s) explanation.
I did not discuss this incident (with anyone, ever); but I did not doubt the truth of what Bruce had told me he had seen.
And some fourteen years later, I thought the time had come to test it.
It so happened that (at an education conference in 1985) I met a certain British-Canadian woman, Moira Morningstar; and I moved to Canada. We lived in Burnaby, B.C. and on Saturna Island; then moved to Quadra Island and were married there in 1986.
In 1989 I accepted a job – of running a “Time-Out” room at Phoenix Junior School, a short ferry ride across Discovery Passage, . Phoenix is in the town of Campbell River, on Vancouver Island.
You should know that Campbell River is a mill town. Plenty of alcohol consumption, and drugs. Spouse abuse. Child abuse.
Many Phoenix students led unenviable lives. A lot of adult (and peer) mistreatment. A lot of unhappiness.
It was my view that the culture of the school was (mainly) owned by the students, not the teachers (or administration). I think many of the students regarded the adults in the school the way an “occupied” people regards its occupiers. With resentment. If a student were, somehow, able to get the better of a teacher – humiliate them in some way, that student would ‘earn a lot of points‘ with his peers. Such a transaction was probably the Most Valuable one of All, within that micro-culture & social economy.
A culture is a complicated thing, and is made up of things such as Language, Customs, the shared Paradigm, Songs (& other art), and shared Values. (but one’s values basically fall out of what one thinks is true. Is it not so?) And if you’re convinced that the adults in your life are ‘the enemy’, you will not be eager to follow their lead. Any self-respecting people will resist and fight against their occupiers. Mmm? (in as far as they can get away with it)
Peer bullying was (among the students) accepted as ‘normal’. Brutality, cruelty. Many times I observed a boy give another boy a ‘wedgie‘ – by grasping the back of the lad’s underpants and then lifting up very hard. I am glad to report that I never observed this practice being done to a female. Even so, I think it is not simply cruel, it’s a version of sexual abuse. ( &, like rape, it’s a power transaction). Now, when I say that peer cruelty was accepted as normal, I’m pretty sure that many of the students (most of them, perhaps) did not approve of it; however, I never saw any student attempt to intervene (in any transaction of bullying). But when it was feasible, I would give the perpetrator my standard lecture of the nature of fun. That is – that “there are TWO kinds of fun: one where everyone has fun, and one where some people have fun and others don’t.”
And, as I routinely rode the ferry to & from work, I would (often) overhear a student bragging to his friends about how ‘last night I ingested poison and survived’. (that is – bragging about how they did some drug, or drank a lot of alcohol [substances that the grown-ups considered Bad] … but I did it anyway, and I’m still here to tell you about it.) And of course, they wouldn’t be bragging to their friends about their superiority/invulnerability, if they weren’t accruing social currency/status by doing so.
Anyway, many students really did not want to be in class. Sometimes a student might, for example, make a pool of spit, on the floor, till the teacher would kick them out of the class. That student would then report to the office, where the Vice-Principal would speak with them. And then they would sit in the office till the bell rang for the next class.
That’s why I was hired. To try to do something worthwhile with these troubled students once the vice-principal had said to them what he could.
My time-out room was across the hall from the office, and next to the Library. It was pretty large with black boards along one wall and a round table in the center. That was my ‘desk’. I kept a potted cyclamen on that table. Something beautiful, and alive.
Much of my efforts were – to convince my charges that we (actually) live in the SAME world.
Also there were a few students who got assigned to me – to teach them (math, or social studies, or science, or whatever) when that seemed more promising than the regular classroom (for whatever reason).
I enjoyed all these tasks.
I will admit that there was one student I did not like. ( And I am sure that was due to my own spiritual immaturity.) But otherwise I liked everyone. And I did my best for them.
Well, a bit before the school year ended, there was a Special Day. I don’t remember what it was called, but it was meant to be a ‘fun day’ for the students. Non-academic, and a complete break from their regular classes.
The students were assigned to groups (or ‘teams’) of 7 or 8 students per team. Throughout the day, the bell would ring every 25 minutes or so (I forget, exactly); and each team had instructions where to go next, each time the ‘ending’ bell rang.
Meanwhile all the teachers (and I was included that day, as a Teacher, though technically I was an Educational Aide) were assigned a certain room (for that day), where we could offer the students some activity of our choosing. I chose this exercise (party game) described above.
Somewhere I found a book with pictures of etheric energy extending from the ends of a person’s fingers. And I used these visuals to instruct the teams of students, as each new group of teams would arrive.
I told each new “class” (comprised of perhaps four teams) what I wanted them to do (or attempt to do): That – one among them, from each team, would lie on the floor – the one to be lifted. And the others should form pairs and squat down (at the shoulders, at the waist, and at the calves) And that each pair of lifters should endeavor to connect their etheric energies together, like in the pictures I showed them. (And, when they were ready, they should try to lift their person, using just their index fingers + the web of etheric energy)
I guess I’ll tell you – that I came to school early for this day – so that I could do a psychic cleaning on the room I was to use (which was not my regular “time-out” room), just a regular classroom.
The students at Phoenix are seventh, eighth, and ninth graders. (That’s how it is in British Columbia.) It’s a tough age group.
By the time students get to High School, they begin to behave more like Human Beings. Mmm? (Junior High is the worst) I figured the room needed to be “cleaned”. I wanted to ‘prepare the ground’ as best I could. I reckoned what I was asking them to attempt – well, it would be quite a stretch.
Here’s what happened (in my room) that day.
New sets of teams arrived (all day, except for a lunch break) about every half hour. I explained to each new ‘class’ what I wanted them to do. And they all failed.
That is – they all failed – except for ONE team. (and this was at or near the end of the day)
But I saw it with my own eyes. Those kids picked up their person – LIKE THEY DIDN’T WEIGH ANYTHING ! and held them momentarily up there, higher than their heads. Then they lowered them safely back to the floor.
I went to that team, and I told them – “Remember this.”
It must have had some effect. Those who LIFTED their person high into the air (& those present in the room who saw it happen) were no doubt impacted. And the whole student body of Phoenix Jr. School has a well-functioning communications (gossip) system. So I presume it got around.
As William Irwin Thompson points out – [ref: the epigram] – “We do not live in reality; we live in our paradigms, our habituated perceptions, our illusions; the illusions we share through culture we call reality.” And (I would add) – “Proof is whatever convinces you.”
In Campbell River, like everyplace else, there is no shortage of conviction (& little shortage of agreement) about the Nature of Reality. And we’re a Materialistic culture, aren’t we? This means that the students of Phoenix Junior School showed up that day ALREADY KNOWING the “Nature of Reality”; but they were (somewhat) willing to suspend their disbelief in Subtle Energies. (and this is probably because I was generally liked by the students).
I think it’s likely that every small group/team that came through my room that day was ‘mixed’; that is, some were able to suspend their disbelief, and some were not. But – if even ONE group member is stuck in (the agreed-upon, Material) paradigm that will be enough to disable that whole group. That’s why every group failed. All but one, that is. In THAT group each and every person managed to suspend their disbelief in a higher paradigm. In that moment when they attempted their (“impossible”) assigned task (of lifting one of their number) they took a step into a Higher Reality. Together. If it had not been unanimous, they would have failed too, like all the other groups did.
All the students who showed up that day were essentially in the same Situation – They each belonged to a Small Group / a Team (for the day). And each brought with them their Beliefs about the nature of Reality (their Personal Paradigm). And these views (of course) were largely SHARED (and agreed upon) by the greater society of which they were a part. There was no one around to ask. No ‘authorities’. No wise men. No parents. (“Mother, should I trust the government?”) Nor did I ask them to discuss amongst themselves whether they believed the task I assigned to them was Possible or not … and WHY they thought so. I simply asked them to DO it. They were EACH on their own; they had to make their own (private) decision – as to whether to attempt the Suspension of Belief that would be required to accomplish the assigned task. I think it’s likely that most of them found it easier to ‘succeed by failing’. That is – if they simply STAYED in the agreed-upon (devoutly materialistic) “Reality”, they might “fail” with regard to completing the Assigned Task, but (if they should fail) they would “prove themselves Right” with regard to “what they already believed was true”. They could ‘win’ by ‘losing’. THIS was the path requiring the Least Effort. Mmm?
Their (shared) Situation reminds me of a certain movie: [‘10,000 BC’ (2008)] wherein we see a small village of people who subsist largely by hunting Wooly Mammoths]. Rather early in the story the main character happens to fall into a pit, into which is flowing a considerable amount of water (because of a raging storm. And I think this was a pit that was dug by his own village for the purpose of capturing and killing a mammoth). But he soon realizes that he is not the only one in peril in this pit. There is also a saber-tooth tiger there – entangled in debris and in immanent danger of drowning. He is tempted to kill this cat, but instead, he decides to try to free him. And this he manages to do. And then, of course, the tiger is at liberty to kill HIM. The cat does come close to him, but he does not kill the man, which would have been an easy matter (and consistent with the dominant & well agreed-upon paradigm). Later on, in a foreign land, in which the man finds himself in a situation where he may be killed by the people who live there, the cat appears (out of nowhere) and places himself between the man and the people who are threatening him. The man had taken the initiative (in stepping out of the “normal” paradigm, and treated the cat ‘like Family’) and in so doing the cat ‘came along’; he accepted the offer and became ‘Family’ to the man, as well.
One of the things which makes us so sure about whatever it is we happen to believe – is the fact that we think we are in direct contact with Reality; but this is an illusion. The World (as it appears to us) is NOT the world itself. It is a (high-fidelity) “work-up” – in & of our own consciousness. It’s a projection. (And this is not at all obvious). You may like to have a look at a previous essay: https://worldfamilytrading.com/the-great-illusion/?v=7516fd43adaa
Also – the choices that were set before (all of) the students who were assigned the ‘impossible’ task of lifting a person – brings to mind the Great War of Ideas. Particularly how this war has always been with us, how it rages all around us … AND within us.
The geneticist J. B. S. Haldane says that “The universe is not only queerer than we suppose, it’s queerer than we can suppose.”
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“In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all these people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness, of spurious self-isolation in a special world. . . .
This sense of liberation from an illusory difference was such a relief and such a joy to me that I almost laughed out loud. . . . I have the immense joy of being man, a member of a race in which God Himself became incarnate. As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now that I realize what we all are. And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.
Then it was as if I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts, the depths of their hearts where neither sin nor desire nor self-knowledge can reach, the core of their reality, the person that each one is in God’s eyes. If only they could all see themselves as they really are. If only we could see each other that way all the time. There would be no more war, no more hatred, no more cruelty, no more greed. . . But this cannot be seen, only believed and ‘understood’ by a peculiar gift.”
― Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander