Beyond the Narrow Life

And, it’s hard to contemplate death and change without contemplating loss. Everything is lost over time. We even constantly lose ourselves. In both a microcellular and psychological sense, we aren’t exactly as we were just a few days ago, much less after a year or decade.

Trust your curiosity to guide you to places of significance. And trust any moments of awe as signals that you’re on the right track.

The expanding polarization has made it painfully clear that something is not quite right.

“Mad Thoughts on Mushrooms: Discourse and Power in the Study of Psychedelic Consciousness.”

We risk despair if we’ve overcommitted our life, sense of self, and meaning to be contained within a narrow realm of possibility, a self-imposed prison. This is being lost in the finite. On the other hand, becoming lost in the infinite is falling into an abyss of aimlessness or fantasy by avoiding commitment to any path.

Our ending is no ending at all, but a launching pad for continued engagement within your corner of existence.

Yet the fullness of ‘mono no aware’ is in experiencing beauty and love despite loss. A feeling of deep appreciation intermingles with the mourning of what once was, or could have been, and what we know won’t last. Given that all things end, this same sentiment may prove helpful in understanding much of our human journey.

The ego can experience a type of whiplash moving rapidly from transcendent states and back into the material world. Its response is sometimes to double-down on defense mechanisms to convince us we’re in control.

As the poet Rilke exclaimed, “I want to know my own will and to move with it. And I want, in the hushed moments when the nameless draws near, to be among the wise ones—or else alone.”73