Nicholas E. Brink's Blog, page 9

Unleashing Your Mind

Unleashing Your Mind
I have been writing about the attributes of the New Age and have missed the one attribute I would likely consider the most important. The attributes I have described are five in number: a sense of oneness with the Earth, a sense of community with each other, a sense of harmony and peace, a sense of curiosity and continued learning, and a sense of creativity. The one I have left out is of relearning the way of communing with the spirits. Jean Gebser calls the new age the age of time-free transparency of when our consciousness is able to connect with the Universal Mind that is free of time.
This idea may sound airy fairy to some of you, but you already have this ability and listen to it most every night in your night time dreams. Most of you probably jump out of bed in the morning thinking of all the think you must do during the day. I spend a little of my morning time in bed just thinking, very often about my dreams. I am discovering the great importance of this time of thinking. Staying in bed and letting my mind go where it takes me is probably the most important thing I do during the day. It opens me to the Universal Mind, to the era of time-free transparency, to the world of the spirits. I have written about the use of hypnosis and ecstatic trance as avenues into the Universal Mind, but my morning time of just letting my mind go in free association and in using my imagination is probably even more important. This is when I probably do my more creative thinking.
Initially your thoughts will take you into your own unconscious mind, and this at times may be a little frightening, but my belief is that wherever your mind takes you, it unconsciously knows you are ready to go there and going there is where you find resolution to problems and were healing takes place. It has been my experience that this resolution and healing greatly empowers you and with it, you soon discover that you are going beyond your own personal unconscious and into the world beyond, the Universal Mind, the world of the spirits where there is much exciting to be learned as it opens itself to you. I find the best times for letting your mind go in creative thought is the first thing when you wake up, when you are still in a warm bed, and half way into your dreams. Another time is when you happen to waken in the middle of the night and may feel somewhat anxious because you are having problems falling back asleep. Letting your mind go in such thought at those times works as well as in the morning and it also helps you to again fall asleep. Other times during the day or when you go to bed at night may also work, but at those times it takes some practice to quiet you mind enough to let it go where it wants to take you.

Nick

Terrorized by Trump

Trump’s actions are terrifying, his elimination of environmental protections, his bombing and sending up missiles, and his killing of who knows how many people. He is the enemy of the people and of the Earth. He is truly terrifying, but as I have previously written, there is hope. From much of what I have read, we need to expect extreme violence before the doors to the New Age are opened. As Jean Gebser wrote in 1947, we have to expect such violence in times of transition that lead into the new eras of great change. He tells of the five eras of consciousness, the archaic, the magical, the mythic, the rational and the soon to be era of time-free transparency. At the times of transition between these eras great violence is expected, because those who are afraid of the new are hanging onto the old for dear life. Laszlo and Dennis write of the door to the New Age opening by 2020.
But the story I love is the Nordic myth of the rebirth of Baldr, the most loved and gentle of the gods. Loki, the trickster god, sees the great hypocrisy of the gods in their love of strength as demonstrated in their incessant fighting and violence, but they also love Baldr, Odin’s most gentle son. This sounds like the hypocrisy of those who are now hanging onto the old with their absurd belief that fighting and war can bring about peace. Loki continually confronts the gods on this hypocrisy, but only when Baldr dies, a death instigated by Loki, do the gods seek revenge by restraining him. This restraint of Loki brings about Fimbulvetr, the three endless winters when father goes against son, son against father, and brother against brother, each killing the other. Fimbulvetr ends with Ragnorok, the final battle when all the gods die and Baldr returns from the dead, thus bringing about the birth of the New Age of peace and harmony. Ragnorok happens in the fourth year after the three endless winters, that is the year of our next presidential campaign. I have called the recent election our Fimbulvetr, and Trump’s terrorizing acts make this ending very clear.
I have also been experiencing this endless winter more personally with some of the responses I have been receiving to my writing of Nordic mythology, specifically Baldr’s Magic, and Beowulf’s Ecstatic Trance Magic, as seen in a review posted on Amazon for Baldr’s Magic, and also from one adherent to this ancient mythology who has unfriended me on Facebook. I am more and more appalled by the Facebook posts I receive from a couple of different Nordic mythology Facebook sites that are all about strength and fighting, these adherents definition of manhood. With this definition of manhood I sense that they are very insecure with their own manhood.

Ecstatic Soul Retrieval

My next book, Ecstatic Soul Retrieval, is being released tomorrow. It is available through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, the publisher, Bear & Co., and hopefully on the shelves of most bookstores. Following is the publisher's description from the back cover:

Ecstatic Soul Retrieval
A guide to integrating ecstatic trance, soul retrieval, and psychotherapy to overcome emotional challenges and deepen your connection to all life on Mother Earth.
• Describes the methodologies of ecstatic trance and psychotherapy, explaining how they can be integrated in a way that feels familiar and safe
• Illustrates five ecstatic postures for strengthening identity, uncovering the root of suffering, and aligning with a spirit guide.
• Includes three in-depth case studies to illustrate how to override negative beliefs and habits, and experience oneness with the Earth and all life.
Sharing the wisdom of shamanic healing, Nicholas Brink creates an accessible link between psychotherapy and the ritualized use of ecstatic trance postures. He explains how ecstatic trance triggers the imagery that allows us to override negative beliefs and retrieve the lost innocence of the soul. He shows us how to broaden healing beyond the resolution of emotional and behavioral issues to create harmony in family, community, society and the world around us.
Integrating cognitive behavioral therapy, narrative therapy, and dream analysis, the author provides a unique model for tapping into the universal mind in a way that feels familiar and safe. He illustrates five ecstatic postures for emotional and spiritual growth, moving from finding a place of relaxation in which to strengthen your sense of self to the soul retrieval experience, which leads to the death of dysfunctional beliefs and restoration of your original innocence. The author shows how spirit guides can support us as we achieve the spiritual consciousness of the shaman and recognize the interdependence of all cultures and all living things on the planet.
Using three in-depth case studies, Brink demonstrates how these practices can be used to resolve common psychological issues such as agoraphobia, panic attacks, irrational anger, mood swings, obsessive behaviors, and control issues. Allowing you to find your inner shaman --- your ability to heal yourself, and, in turn, contribute to the healing of all life on our planet --- ecstatic soul retrieval helps you overcome emotional and behavioral problems, override negative beliefs, and experience oneness with all life on Mother Earth.

Mystic Living Today

Several excerpts from my next book "Ecstatic Soul Retrieval" which will be released next Tuesday, the 11th, have been reprinted in the monthly e-zine "Mystic Living Today." To see these are the excerpts click on:
http://mysticlivingtoday.com/view_pag...

On Becoming an Elder

Each morning I have been walking the labyrinth that I constructed last fall as the spiritual place for practicing ecstatic trance. Each day I have gone back to the spirits of the Earth, to an Ohlone village just down the road from this labyrinth in Alamo, CA at the edge of the San Ramon Creek. These indigenous people of this valley have shown me such peace and harmony in the way they lived in community. Today while using the Priestess of Malta middle world posture, I felt the posture telling me, “I am here!” I am here to do what I can do to bring others to this sense of peace in community. What I find that can bring this about most effectively is through teaching ecstatic trance. What I have found is that those who commit themselves to practice ecstatic trance regularly, opening themselves to the spirits, soon move beyond their self-centered struggles and concerns to open themselves to others with feelings of respect and reverence for the Earth’s community of living beings.

Though as a psychologist I have searched continually for ways to bring people beyond their personal concerns and struggles, and my next book, Ecstatic Soul Retrieval offers a way to incorporate ecstatic trance into the process of psychotherapy, I realize that each person has the power within themselves to resolve these struggles and concerns through the use of ecstatic trance. The postures of ecstatic trance can carry a person along on this journey of resolution without the need of a psychologist. The sacred ecstatic postures are sufficient to provide this direction, of bringing a person to become an elder in helping others in the New Age Community. An example of this personal journey is found in my last book, Trance Journeys of the Hunter-Gatherers, Chapter 7. Regular practice of ecstatic trance has carried the woman of this chapter beyond several personal struggles and concerns such that she has become an effective instructor of ecstatic trance. As the circle expands we move closer to fruition of the New Age.

The Ancients and the New Age

I have frequently made reference to our hunting and gathering ancestors while describing our journey into the New Age. What do these ancestors have to do with this journey? I offer three reasons that are important for understanding:

• First, Jean Gebser describes five eras of consciousness: the first is the dreamlike consciousness of the archaic era, followed the magical era of our hunter-gathering ancestors. The third is the mythical era of the beginning of recorded history, followed by the current rational era of the last 2500 years. Now is the beginning of the new era of time-free transparency. During the rational era we have limited our consciousness to what we perceive through our five senses. In the new era of time-free transparency we will regain our sixth sense, the sense of listening to and valuing the spirits of our ancient ancestors and of what they have to teach us. During the first two eras, humans communed with and learned much of how to live from the spirits of the Earth and of their ancestors, but we have denied the presence of these spirits even though we do commune with them most every night in our nighttime dreams. The title of Gebser’s book, The Ever Present Origin, suggests that as we open ourselves to this New Age that our origin in the archaic and magical eras will become present to us.

• Second, the recent discoveries of quantum physics, the discoveries of such concepts as non-local coherence and entanglement, offer validity to the extrasensory experiences of the spirits that come to us from beyond our five-senses. I have reviewed these discoveries in three of my books, first in The Power of Ecstatic Trance where I describe how this form of trance opens us to the world beyond our consciousness, the world of the universal mind, the world of the spirits. Then in the next two books, Baldr’s Magic and Beowulf’s Ecstatic Trance Magic, I use ecstatic trance to journey back from 1200 to 1500 years ago to commune with my ancestors and the spirits of the Earth. From these journeys I have learned much of how to live in oneness with the Earth, experiences that have much to say about how we can and need to live with the Earth and all life on Earth in the coming New Age. More recently my book, Trance Journeys of the Hunter-Gatherers, is of the experiences of others in my ecstatic trance groups that have brought them into the world of the New Age.

• Third, a quote of Felicitas Goodman that I have often used in my writing well describes the way our hunting-gathering ancestors lived and what we have to learn from the way they lived: “In a very real way, the hunters and gatherers open the first chapter of our human history. And fittingly, this dawning was as close to paradise as humans have ever been able to achieve. The men did the hunting and scavenging, working for about three hours a week, and the women took care of daily sustenance by gathering vegetal food and small animals. It was such a harmonious existence, such a successful adaptation, that it did not materially alter for many thousands of years. This view is not romanticizing matters. Those hunter-gatherer societies that have survived into the present still pursue the same lifestyle, and we are quite familiar with it from contemporary anthropological observation. Despite the unavoidable privations of human existence, despite occasional hunger, illness, and other trials, what makes their lifeways so enviable is the fact that knowing every nook and cranny of their home territory and all that grows and lives in it, the bands make their regular rounds and take only what they need. By modern calculations that amounts to only about 10 percent of the yield, easily recoverable under undisturbed conditions, because they do not aspire to controlling their habitat, they are a part of it.”

It is these three sources that can bring alive within us how our hunting gathering ancestors are playing a very relevant role as we move into the New Age.
My next book, Ecstatic Soul Retrieval, is to be released in two weeks.

The New Age of Peace and Harmony

In returning to my vision of the New Age, I have previously itemized five possible characteristics: a sense of oneness with the Earth, of being in community with others and with all life on Earth, of harmony and peace, of curiosity and continued learning, and of creativity. There may be many more than those I have thought of, and I would like you to tell me know of those I have missed, but today I want to focus on the sense of harmony and peace that I believe we will find in the New Age.

I have found two sources that suggest this possibility of peace and harmony: first Barbara Hand Clow suggests that the New Age will be that of the Homo Pacem, the peaceful human. How can this be with all the craziness and violence that we now experience in our current era of “rationality?” Carl Calleman suggests that the world of dualities will dissolve, that our need to define such dualities as that which is good and that which is bad, or that which is beautiful and that which is ugly, will end, and we will find value in and appreciation for the diversity that we all have to offer.

The ancient hunter-gatherers lived a life of much greater uniformity, a life where everyone within a particular age and gender group offered the same thing to their community. There was not the great diversity that there is today, especially with the ease of communication between the various ethnic groups around the world. This diversity brings about much of the alienation and tension we now experience, and the current political administration feeds on this alienation by placing being white and male above everything else. But the diversity within our country and the world can and needs to be valued and appreciated. For example, the breadth of knowledge is now so great that one person can no longer know everything, thus we are dependent upon others with this diversity of knowledge to show us what we need to know and how to live. The valuing and veneration of this diversity is especially important when we realize that we do not have dominion over the Earth but that we are no better than or lesser than all other life, that all life has much to teach us as we live in oneness with it. We are discovering this when we recognize that planting our gardens with a diversity of plants creates a healthier and more prosperous garden that does a monoculture.

This world of diverse knowledge is the world that Jean Gebser points to in suggesting that we are moving into the new era of time-free transparency, a time-free era in which we can see into the past and into the future, opening us to even greater diversity. Gebser has described five eras of consciousness, the archaic, magical, mythical, rational, and the time-free transparent eras, and that the time of transition between each era is a time of great conflict. I again refer to Geber’s thinking in describing the transition between the rational era and the era of time-free transparency because of one quote from his book, The Ever-Present Origin, written in 1947: “Soon we will witness the rise of some potentate or dictator who will pass himself off as the “savior” or healer and allow himself to be worshipped as such. But anyone who does this in the days to come, and is thereby confined to time and is visible in it, has nothing to do with the true manifestation of the one who, in time-free transparency, will make the ‘future’ present.” How well this describes the potentate that has risen to power in our country. My hope is in the writing of Laszlo and Dennis who suggest that the New Age will become evident by 2020. Twenty-twenty is the time of the next election, a time that can take us beyond the craziness of our current dictator and into the New Age of Peace and Harmony. I still stand up for Peace and Harmony even now in this frightful time, a message that needs to be continually heard to give us direction as we move into the New Age.

The Sense of Curiosity and Continued Learning for the New Age

My vision of the New Age is one of a sense of oneness with the Earth, of being in community with others and with all life on Earth, of harmony and peace, of curiosity and continued learning, and of creativity. In my last post I elaborated on the expanded sense of creativity. Today I want to explore the breadth of curiosity and continued learning. As I previously mentioned, on our journey into the New Age we have much to learn and to unlearn. As described by Johan Calleman, we are leaving the world of dualistic thinking, of our automatic ways of thinking that have been our survival in this world of separation, separation so deep within us that it blocks our true connection to the Earth and the community of all life on Earth. Unlearning that which separates us will bring us into the new world of harmony and peace. Charles Eisenstein describes in great detail the world of separation that keeps us tied to our dualistic thinking and what is needed for us to break free of it.
Our learning begins within the community of those who seek to live sustainably with the Earth. This movement directs us with great diversity to many actions, to recycling and finding ways to avoid excessive packaging and consumption, to shopping, growing, cooking and living organically, to working together in mutual support in our projects of living and in overcoming our personal needs and struggles, to love each other in our diversity because each person has something to offer and teach, to decrease our carbon footprint by living with renewable energy, and to give back to the Earth more than we take. Our knowledge is incomplete, but as we move into the New Age our learning continues.
A second source of learning is to realize that our hunter-gatherer ancestors lived in this sense of harmony with the Earth and all life of the Earth, and that we have available to us ways to commune with and listen to the spirits of our ancestors to discover and learn from them how they lived in this oneness with the Earth. These ways of communing and listening are through dreaming and both hypnotic and ecstatic trance. A number of writers, foremost among them Ervin Laszlo and Rupert Sheldrake, have shown us the existence of this Universal Mind, which Laszlo calls the Akashic Field and Sheldrake the Morphic Field. These fields or the Universal Mind are accessed through our dreams and trance experiences, altered states of consciousness that diminish the interference of our five senses. Our dreams and trance experiences open us to the Universal Mind that exists beyond our own limited mind, limited by our five senses, and open us to the visions of the distant past and the voices of the spirits of our ancestors and of the Earth. I have been writing about and teaching Ecstatic Trance, trance that opens us to this world of the spirits that has so much to teach us. Dreams and trance take us beyond the rational world that is limited by five senses and take us into the world of the sixth sense, of the spirits that become our guides and provide us with the intuitive knowledge that we need to move into the New Age.
To keep alive within us these spirit guides, a personal home altar as was used by our ancestors and is used by our current hunter-gatherers is a useful place for collecting the images and reminders of these spirit guides to keep them alive within us. On our trip to Peru we visited one home in which we saw a family altar ) of the family’s reminders of their human and animal spirit guides and a figure of the deity of abundance to whom they placed bits of food and other offerings to give thanks for what the Earth provides.

The New Age Sense of Creativity

In my last post I described five characteristics of the New Age: a sense of oneness with the Earth, a sense of community with each other, a sense of harmony and peace, a sense of curiosity and continued learning, and a sense of creativity. Over the next few weeks I would like to expand on each, today on the sense of creativity.
I have described the power of ecstatic trance as a way to commune with the spirits of our ancestors and the spirits of the Earth. Among those who I have taught ecstatic trance, those who most quickly resonate with this altered state of consciousness are those who value their dreams and other trance and imaginative experiences, and the artists, that is the people who have developed their sense of imagination. In moving into the new era that Jean Gebser refers to as the era of time-free transparency, it is this sense of imagination that carries us beyond the era of rationality, rationality that has limited us to the world around us only with our five senses of sight, sound, taste, smell and touch. Now we are moving beyond into the new era where we reclaim our ability to commune with the spirits, spirits that were so much valued by our ancient hunter-gatherer ancestors. The spirits of our hunting and gathering ancestors have so much to teach us on how to survive sustainably on our one and only Earth. They are our guides and models as we move into the New Age, an age of creative beauty.
Two writers, Riane Eisler and Marija Gimbutas, have explored the ancient time when humans worshiped the Great Earth Mother, the creator and sustainer of new life. This time, before the worship of the masculine deities of power, was a time of peace and creativity. The veneration of the more recent masculine gods can be blamed for bringing us into the age of an endless series of wars and destruction of the Earth. The artistic creativity seen in the two books by Marija Gimbutas with their many ancient images of the Great Earth Mother Goddess demonstrate the creativity of this earlier hunting-gathering era. She shows the many artistic accomplishments that have been found around the Mediterranean, e.g. of such people as the Minoan culture of Crete. The nurturing creativity of the Mother Goddess stimulated the people to take the time for creative expression in their veneration of the Great Earth Mother who sustained them for 200,000 years. Because of our much greater numbers it would be impossible for us to live as did the hunter-gatherers, but with creative thinking we can find new ways to incorporate within our lives and communities how they lived. Two museum reproductions of figurines from this era, dated from 28,000 to 25,000 BC, are in my personal collection, the Venus of Willendorf and the Venus of Lespugue.

The New Age

I have been writing about my continued search for where we are going on our journey into the New Age. What is this New Age? From my reading of what others think, I hesitantly summarize or describe five elements of this New Age: a sense of oneness with the Earth, a sense of community with each other, a sense of harmony and peace, a sense of curiosity and continued learning, and a sense of creativity.
• Oneness with the Earth: We will no longer see ourselves as superior to all other life and that which is of the Earth. We will treat all that is of the Earth with respect. We will recognize that the Earth is alive and everything of the Earth is interdependent, i.e. Gaia, and that the Earth does and will sustain us, but we need to give back to her as much, if not more, than we take. We are still learning how to do this, but one beginning step is seen in our striving to garden organically. Another important step is to rediscover that which our hunting and gathering ancestors knew well and that is to listen to the spirits of our ancestors and the Earth that are alive and exist all around us.
• Sense of Community: We all need to work together, share without greed, and care for each other in mutual support, and this all includes all life below, upon and above the Earth. Again we are all one and interdependent, and when one suffers we all suffer.
• A Sense of Harmony and Peace: Our mutual respect for each other in our great diversity brings us a sense of harmony and peace. Each of us have that which is valuable to the whole, to Gaia, to share, and our mutual caring for each other brings of peace and harmony. We are all one. This new era bring us to the end of our dualistic thinking of identifying that which is good and that which is bad.
• A Sense of Curiosity and Learning: We are on a journey into this New Age and we are far from having all the answers as how to live in oneness, harmony and peace with a sense of community. Our minds need to remain open in curiosity and in learning, learning from each other in our great diversity as how to live. We need to listen openly to our ancestral spirits and the spirits of the Earth that are available to us from beyond our five senses, from our dreams and other altered states of consciousness such as hypnotic and ecstatic trance.
• A Sense of Creativity: In living in harmony and peace with a sense of curiosity and openness to learn from the diversity of all life we go beyond the destructiveness we have imposed on the Earth and each other. We discover a new sense of creative beauty, of new ways of caring for ourselves, for all life and the Earth in ways that bring about a growing sense of beauty of all that is around us.
If you have other suggestions I would appreciate hearing of them. This is the direction I believe our Penns Valley community of friends is moving that I am trying to portray in my current writing.