Below the Additions there are excerpts from the book
241117 ADDITION
Recapture the Rapture
This is the title of an excellent book by Jamie Wheal that provides useful, entertaining anecdotes, information, and recommendations from many sources. The main purpose of the book is to help people learn how to get into higher states of consciousness, states that benefit us and all we interact with. There are many diverse elements involved in this long-term process that, if followed, increase the rich quality of and satisfaction in our lives. With comprehensive wisdom, lucidity, and humor, he elucidates much of value.
He discusses three stages of meaning related to the egocentric, ethnocentric, and worldcentric perspectives with the why and how of evolving through them.
Meaning 1.0 is based on Traditional conservative values, wanting to keep things the same and keep rigid obedience to the rules and norms of one’s peer group, then if you strictly adhere to these, you will be saved. Think fundamentalist religionists of all sorts.
Meaning 2.0, which includes the liberal, rational humanistic values of Modernity, which began with noble aspirations to bring prosperity and equality, is clearly failing.
In this mess, trying to fulfill the basic human for coherent meaning is proving quite problematic as it shows up in the daily news.
So he is offering an understanding of, and a path towards, a Meaning 3.0 that can encompass the best of the earlier stages while creating a world where more people can find a sense of existential well-being in a satisfying, meaningful life.
Among many other things, he discusses three types of ecstatic personalities: Hedonist, Conformist, and Purist with their respective characteristics. I found this illuminating. He points out the error of trying to hold on to or become obsessed with repeating ecstatic experiences.
He describes how our interoception, i.e., internal body awareness, which is the source of our emotions, comes in four categories based on whether they’re active or passive and positive or negative. Positive-Active: love and sex. Negative-Active: fight. Positive-Passive: follow. Negative-Passive: fear. It’s interesting how these patterns may show up in our social lives.
There’s an excellent introduction to the philosophy of the maverick Jesuit priest Teilhard de Chardin and the harsh reaction he received from the Catholic Church.
Early in the book, he discusses five transformative physiological techniques for hormonal, neurochemical, endocannaboidal, and vagal tone enhancement. Later, he provides a simple recipe to create an ecstatic life. Given my focus, I really appreciated his discussion of the value of life-enhancing substances and conscious lovemaking. There’s an appendix Sexual Yoga of Becoming Study that is truly awesome. In this area, I don’t think he talks about using psychedelics while making love, which I have found to be the most pleasurable experience ever, even if it is somewhat ephemeral.
I like how he discusses ‘stacking’ these processes, i.e., using them together in various ways provides additional benefits. I could give you more specifics, but that would be plagiarizing his work. If you want to know more about this, I prefer that you go to his material. Along with his books, there are https://www.recapturetherapture.com/ and https://www.flowgenomeproject.com/.
The above said, I find the common shortcoming in almost all self-help and social commentary books is that the authors aren’t Integrally informed. In this case, Wheal’s Meaning 3.0 dynamics would have really benefited by understanding the Modern Postmodern views, and the possibility of moving to a Meaning 4.0 with Integral.
He is also very interested in psychedelics. I think his cautionary view on psychedelic use is reasonable, especially when dealing with novices. He talks about how the spiritual insights on psychedelics are rarely if ever, stabilized without personal growth and spiritual disciplines. I agree. Still, emotional healings on life-enhancing substances can indeed be, and often are permanent. I have a series of such stories at the end of my autobiographical Chapter 4 – Across the Universe and Back.
He deals with enhancing human sexuality in detail, including an interesting experiment in which twelve couples volunteered to participate in a three-month-long regimen to see if they could increase their peak experiences. This included daily 15-minute stimulation of the clitoris, partner yoga, and soft-tissue massage. Once a week, 2 hours of sensual yoga, bringing their partner up to but into an orgasm, extended hyperventilation, and use of nitrogen oxide. There were more twice-a-week and once-a-month activities. The results were mixed.
I noticed he didn’t include the use of psychedelics for enhancing lovemaking, and there’s nothing I’ve ever done that comes close to that experience. It’s tricky. Too strong a dose, and you’re not in your body at all, although you can be barely in your body as in making love with a physically shaped form made out of stunningly gorgeous diamond light or whatever. Time dilation will likely occur, and you may subjectively experience making love for a long, even a very very long time.
The other thing is that with this ultra-extreme sensitivity, the relationship has to be pure. In these states, you can’t open fully if you have a stash of secrets or resentments or that kind of subconscious. As unbelievably amazing as these experiences are, as a state-dependent memory, later it’s just a fond memory. A very very fond memory.
Ch 2 The Final Frontier
‘Happiness is like a butterfly, the more you chase it, the more it will evade you, but if you notice the other things around you, it will gently come and sit on your shoulder.’
Henry David Thoreau
There are many ways of thinking about the characteristics of a mature life. People will have different versions related to their personal lives and cultural worldviews. A simple generic definition of maturity is the ability to respond to a situation age-appropriately. But what does that mean, given that there is no universally agreed-upon description of an age-appropriate manner? One version of age-appropriate behavior is having or showing characteristics, such as patience and prudence, considered typical of well-balanced adulthood. And again, what is a typical well-balanced adulthood? However, patience and prudence do cover a lot of helpful territories. These definitions are tautological. They’re saying mature behavior is mature behavior. Another way of thinking about this is: How is your life going? What’s working well and what isn’t? In the latter case, can you do anything to improve the situation? If you are not doing it, what’s holding you back? With increased maturation, overall, things tend to go better, even much better.
Still, challenges will come, even grievous ones. Life will get serious at times. The more mature one is, the more one can see what is happening inside and around them. They will be better at marshaling the appropriate strategies and resources. They will be able to work better with others toward accomplishing common goals.
The personal ideas, beliefs, and stories that follow come from my experiences and from intimate conversations with peers whose maturity I respect. Starting on this interviewing and writing quest, I didn’t know what to expect or how much others might be willing to share with me. I didn’t know how much their experiences would or would not correspond with mine and my partner’s. I was pleased with how open some people were in sharing their experiences, given that sexuality and the use of mostly illegal substances are generally very private matters. These were topics and insights they had rarely, if ever, discussed outside of their relationships. It was gratifying to learn how many similarities we shared.
The nature of beliefs, what’s involved in holding and changing beliefs, is an essential and valuable area of study. I like what Nietzsche said (this was in the late 1800s) about how a stroll thru an insane asylum will quickly convince you that beliefs don’t mean anything. In today’s world, the right and left extremists remind us of this daily on social media. We know that eyewitness accounts of commonly perceived phenomena are often wildly divergent. There might be an auto accident with several witnesses who disagree about what happened, while each one is sure their version is correct. We also know that when a person has a strong emotional attachment to a story, it may be impossible to change their belief, even in the face of facts to the contrary.
Many members of my boomer generation have attained a genuinely mature life. This cohort is almost invisible and impossible to measure as there is little recognition of them in the mainstream media or popular culture. Hints of them can be found more often in the higher culture around university towns and old hippie haunts. I recognize a glow to them and a twinkle in their eyes at a glance.
The Use of Life-Enhancing Substances
Since this is such a controversial topic for many people, let’s deal with this more before moving on. There are high-dose, psychedelic-induced mystical experiences of such power, sensitivity, and presence that no words can remotely describe them. From the experiences of intense psychedelic journeys, many of us became as sure as we can be that consciousness is the ultimate reality underlying all physical, energetic, mental, and spiritual phenomena. One might say that the Universe is the Mind of God, using Mind and God differently than standard nomenclature. I could be wrong about this. In any case, believing something like this isn’t necessary for this maturation process. In philosophy, there is the study of epistemology, which explores the complex topic of what one can know. Physiological, psychological, sociological, intellectual, neuroscientific, and quantum mechanical considerations are all involved.
Living a More Mature Life
How does one develop a more mature life? The simple answer is to live more consciously and compassionately, desiring to learn and serve more. This takes dedication. It is a piece-by-piece layered process dealing with your legacies from your parents, etc. It’s a long-term process unique to each individual. As one heals more deeply, different concepts and processes will become more appropriate for each stage. Maturation is the natural process of becoming an age-appropriate, productively functioning person. A person who is physically, psychologically, mentally, and spiritually healthy.
Questions of the Moment
There are many questions that, if looked into deeply, may bring further questions rather than answers. As you read this, I hope you’ll pause for self-reflection, asking yourself: How am I doing? How is my life going? There are many domains in answering such questions, so how about a broadband generalization for now? If your life isn’t going well or your mind is behaving poorly, look for why. Assuming that you want to see changes in yourself and your situation, the next question is, What to do? This book is, in one way or another, mainly about this.
All of our beliefs and reasons come from our life experiences. That said, for all of our differences, humans are very much alike in many ways. Our bodies have the same general anatomical and physiological processes. We follow similar gestation rates in our physical, psychological, and intellectual maturation from the wonder of birth to the inevitable decay and death. We’re all of the same species, having unique life experiences and expressions.
Enhanced Sensitivity and Transparency
Personal growth, in part, results in and leads to and is greater sensitivity. All of life-enhancing substances do this in various and to various degrees. Increasing one’s sensitivity to life energy is a double-edged sword. It makes good things better and bad things worse. One common example of this is how some people get paranoid from using cannabis. I don’t know if there’s any empirical evidence of this or what the causative elements might be. Generally, I think it is because of unhealed emotional issues. Inappropriate dosage may be another factor. People’s tolerance for these substances varies, so matching someone else’s dose may be too little or too much for another. In one study using rats, the females got off (however they measured that) on one-sixth the amount as males did.
There’s a lot more in the chapter