Greetings, Dear Sunny Buddies,
What I appreciate about having the Sunny Optimist in my life is how I can explore and celebrate a phrase or a concept that captures my imagination. This love of ideas and curiousity has been part of me ever since I was young. I have lovely memories of sitting at the bottom of my Mum and Dad's bed, asking many, many 'why' questions. I can still see their rueful smiling faces as they indulged me with my rather wild enthusiasm. I like to think that I am paying this forward with my grandkids now.
My dad always said he was 'my biggest fan', and in those early years, he encouraged me by buying a set of Harmsworth's Universal Encyclopedia. This time was during the 1950s, way before computers and the internet! I would pour over them for hours, and my curiousity was well met by them. I can see the print and remember their booky smell. Mmmmmm :)
This week, the idea that caught my imagination came from a recent Substack essay by Charles Eisenstein called An Eruption of the Implicate Order. I love his work, and I sense that he has always been a deeply curious person, too. My favourite book of his is The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible—his ideas and writing duck under my rational mind to a deeper place of inquiry and inspiration. I find he is constantly testing new ideas for wholeness and balance, and I look forward to his next post in my mailbox.
In the post I mentioned above, he explored his take on conspiracy theories, and one of his paragraphs caught my attention. Here is what he wrote:
‘If pressed, I am fully capable of entering the Cartesian matrix, the myth of objective reality, and opine on which among those theories I think are true. I’m as capable as the next person of examining evidence, marshaling arguments, and making a case. But for many years now, I have felt alien to that territory, alien to the field of narrative warfare in which each party tries to ontologically dominate the others by establishing what is true and what is false.’
Oeeerrr! I just loved this. The central concept that lit up in my imagination was the idea of there being a Cartesian Matrix. I had not heard this phrase before and was intrigued. My first port of call was to explore the notion of cartesian thinking from the work of René Descartes (1596 –1650). He had a famous saying, ‘Cogito, ergo sum’, which translates to ‘I think therefore I am’.
In my Earth Wisdom training, I have had many spirited conversations about whether Descartes got this the wrong way around. I would ask, ‘Should it not be, ‘I AM, therefore I think’. I posited that if consciousness is the I AM then this is the ground from which we are capable of thinking. I wonder if phrasing it this way suggests that our existence comes first, and then our thoughts arise from that existence.
I then moved on to the Matrix series of movies and the mind-expanding imagery of what the Wachowski siblings considered ‘objective reality’ to be. I loved the films and feel they gave me a wonderful sense of not taking things for granted and not assuming that I know.
Above is the green vertical representation of an example of simulated reality called Digital Rain. I believe this concept was inspired by Japanese typography and even sushi recipes! The questions that arose for me as I thought about the ideas with the films were:
What is reality?
Is life just a simulation?
How do I know what is true?
Do I really have free will?
Are we at existential risk from things like AI and the Machine?
Then there is the whole red pill and blue pill concept, which is essentially a choice between my willingness to reveal to myself an unsettling or life-changing truth by taking the red pill or to remain in blissful ignorance within ordinary reality if i take the blue pill.
I am pretty sure I have already taken the red pill. Rueful smile!
I take from all of this that ‘objective reality’ could be a trap that predisposes the rational mind to think in opposites. In such duality, we are orientated to the ‘either’ ‘or’ thinking in polarities. It is either this or that, and no credible middle ground is considered. This rigidity shows up in dissent, where people are often embedded in one side or another of a topic. Be it politics, climate change, equality, wars..…… Here is what Charles says;
‘There is a fundamental victim mentality implicit in the myth of objectivity, holding us subject to arbitrary forces alien to ourselves. Yet the alternative is not solipsism, the idea that everything is all in one’s own mind. Rather, it is to acknowledge a mysterious intimacy between inner and outer, between self and world, and between consciousness and experience. Hope must, therefore, come from beyond the bounds of practicality. It must come from the places we do not know. It must come from outside the realities that we have sought to impose.
What happens when we move away from objective reality and into what Charles calls mysterious intimacy? Yet another phrase of his captures my imagination, giving me a sense of our life experience as magical, fantastic, and full of wonder.
And so, for completion today, I wanted to share a video of Charles, whose eloquent speech about awakening resonates with the red pill/ blue pill dilemma. He vividly describes the process of breaking through the surface of the water, leading to a transformative experience of a new reality. His journey of falling back under the surface of being asleep, only to rise again and again, is a testament to the transformative power of awakening. Each time he breaks through the surface, more people join him there in awakened community. His joyful optimism and sense of emboldenedness to seek out a new story, not be hemmed in by old objective reality narratives, is inspiring. Just brilliant!
Questions for this Week
Well, this was such fun to write. Thank you for being with me on this journey. Here are my questions for you to consider.
Do you have a view on the order of Descartes's 'I think therefore I am'?
Are there aspects of objective reality that impact your life?
What breakthrough experiences have you had? Who was there to join in the fun?
Have you had any practices that helped you rise into a new reality?
As always, I look forward to hearing from you
Ann
Thought-provoking post! I am just finishing up an exploration of the hemispheres of the astrology wheel, two of them being objective and subjective. I won't be able to weave in any insights from what you have shared here, but it will be interesting and fun to see it all filters through over time.
Such a thought provoking post. I saw the film Civil War a 2024 dystopian war film written and directed by Alex Garland last night during a mom and son night out. The film was a head scratcher. The whole time thinking well that could happen. Thanks for the intro to Charles like his world so much more. Going to spend the day in gratitude for the reality that I have today. I am therefore I think. ❤️