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"Culture replaces authentic feeling with words. As an example of this, imagine an infant lying in its cradle, and the window is open, and into the room comes something, marvelous, mysterious, glittering, shedding light of many colors, movement, sound, a transformative hierophany of integrated perception… and the child is enthralled and then the mother comes into the room and she says to the child, 'that’s a bird, baby, that’s a bird,' instantly the complex wave of the angel peacock iridescent transformative mystery is collapsed, into the word. All mystery is gone, the child learns, 'this is a bird, this is a bird', and by the time we’re five or six years old all the mystery of reality has been carefully tiled over with words... This is a bird, this is a house, this is the sky, and we seal ourselves in within a linguistic shell of disempowered perception."
- Terence McKenna
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I feel like the times I've listened to or read Terence McKenna quotes, it rarely if ever requires me to think if I agree with it or not. It's just right on. I've never read this quote before, but it seems so spot on to what we were talking about in the other thread, about how when we grow into the norms of society we lose our ability to do great things, to perceive things.
Now do you think there is a way to return to this, or unlearn the restrictions we've become acclimated into?
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Jon D wrote:I feel like the times I've listened to or read Terence McKenna quotes, it rarely if ever requires me to think if I agree with it or not. It's just right on. I've never read this quote before, but it seems so spot on to what we were talking about in the other thread, about how when we grow into the norms of society we lose our ability to do great things, to perceive things.
Now do you think there is a way to return to this, or unlearn the restrictions we've become acclimated into?
I like to think anything is possible. Perhaps meditation or ritualistic dance or something can bring you back to a purer state. They did it in a galaxy far far away, right? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4jeREy7Pbc
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It reminds me of the Christ Consciousness concept (not the transcendental meditation spinal fluid thing, but simply the concept that we are our own reality) and must "become as little children". Which might mean not just to "follow Jesus" by reading and studying about the mythical Jesus being in scripture or Dead Sea Scrolls, but by actually trying to "be like him" and do "like him"—whomever the "him" is that you want him to be. And not just by some bible story, but rather by really being him and by transcending this world like we are supposed to do. Sort of like Phenomenon (L. Ron Hubbard inspired) movie from 1996. TrailerIf we could just really become as a little child all over again and unwrap the language and symbolism so we could truly just observe things for what they are and not the relationship we have artificially built for it in our minds, we really could transcend,
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