Oh We of Little Faith

I started writing this post while I was on pilgrimage with my old choir back in January of 2019, but I didn't post it then, as there was something missing. Some experience or some message that was incomplete and which my journey over the past 4 years has opened up. It is more appropriate to continue this thought process today.

Being a pilgrimage, we toured sites of particular significance to the catholic faith:

The shrine of St. Catherine at the Basilica San Domenico. The relics of St. Catherine (her thumb and her head) are held here and where it was so cold, we could see our breath at the mass we sang.

We also sang mass at the Basilica of St. Peters - yes the Vatican - twice. Being at the seat of the Catholic Church and the ground where St. Peter was killed was remarkable. Not just the sheer magnitude of the ... everything about it, but also the history of a conversation started 2000 years ago regardless of where people in power have taken the conversation since then.

We also visited Assisi, the grounds were St. Francis lived and died. St. Francis was charged by God to fix his Church which was falling into pieces. The current pope took the name Francis in the same context, to fix the Church which is falling into pieces.

ASIDE: In shamanic journeys lately I keep hearing this same message, "Clean this shit up".

I share all of this not just because it was a heart-wrenching, beautiful, and exquisite journey, which it was, and not just because it was such a privilege to sing with my colleagues in some of the most beautiful and significant catholic locations on the planet, which it also was. 

I share this because as a neuroscientist and as a student of humanity and the context in which it grows, I was mystified by the saints and their works and how they influenced the world around them. Their lives are described as miraculous, in fact, to be canonized a saint, there needs to be at least 3 miracles attributed to you. I find it funny that after millennia of trying to eradicate magic, it is still a requirement that magic has to happen for you to be hallowed a saint. 

You don't hear much about miracles these days - not without snorts of derision in the same breath. Is it because "miracles" aren't? That they are attributed to something else? Or is it that they just don't happen anymore?

I have a theory about what happened to miracles, and it has to do with how we relate to ourselves within the context of our society.

But first, for context, I want to share my favorite TED talk of all time with you. Elizabeth Gilbert (no relation) speaks about creativity and genius, and the way humans get messed up with the current view of their own creative genius.

Elizabeth Gilbert on Genius

I bring this up because it points to a shift in how we view ourselves in the context of our world over the last epoch. We hold ourselves as separate. Separate from the world around us, the environment, the elements, the animals, separate from the people around us, even separate within ourselves (we have both a mind and a body?).

Now for my theory regarding miracles and what happened to them - it's actually more of an assertion. 

We no longer have the faith a miracle requires.

Hear me out... Jesus, Francis and Damien all healed lepers in a time where there was significant stigma regarding the affliction. In fact, there is still stigma regarding leprosy, even in Florida. Lepers were relegated to the margins, literally, of society and were required to loudly proclaim their status to anyone approaching them. Yet, when they were healed (as with many other miracles in the bible), it was their faith that was acknowledged to have healed them. They somehow embodied something that allowed them to be healed. It's like there are instructions for how to have miracles happen. In fact, the many interpretations and translations of the bible have effectively butchered the text so that the magic it used to teach is impotent.

Check this out as a possible interpretation of how to pray from the original texts: 

" All things that you ask straightly, directly.. from inside My name - you will be given. So far you haven't done this,... So ask without hidden motive and be surrounded by your answer - Be enveloped by what you desire, that your gladness be full"

                                                                            Gregg Braden, The Divine Matrix

In the King James version of the bible, the second half of the directive is completely gone. The part that tells you how to have the miracle, the magic, if you will. 

Perhaps, it was too much like divine revelation, too much like the magic the church was trying to eradicate?

Searching for a sign

In my last post, Everything is Connected, I start to draw connections between various parts of my past and what I have accomplished and the precipice I am now viewing my future from. There are those that speak of "flow", "luck favors the prepared", and "there are no coincidences". While the educated mind might balk at some of these kinds of concepts, we still strive to have that kind of "magic" in our lives.

 At the beginning of the year, instead of creating a resolution or goals for 2023, we decided to pick a word. Out of a deck of cards. Very woo. I pulled the word existence. It was perplexing, inscrutable, and kind of intriguing. So I adopted it.

I have been on a journey exploring what my life is going to be about in this next phase: all I knew was that there had to be more nature and more exploration of consciousness. Many years ago, probably 20 years ago, I had a colleague guide me in a shamanic journey to meet my power animal. She was beating a drum that created a deep reverberation that I felt all through my body and I could definitely feel the hypnotic quality of it. I was working on my PhD at the time, steeped in the scientific method and just beginning to delve into the mysteries of human consciousness. When I found myself in a snowy wasteland talking to a raven, I was surprised and awed, but came out of the journey doubting my experience and explaining it away with thoughts of trance-like dream states and hypnosis. I mean, it had to be bullshit, right?

Twenty years later, my exploration of neuroscience as a science communicator and educator, has opened my eyes to altered states of consciousness (both psychedelic- and non-psychedilic induced), the power of emotions to create a deeper learning experience, and the mystery of how a purpose that is bigger than you alters the way you see yourself and your reality. Practical Neuroscience is what I started to call all of that.

Last year, I participated in a psychedelic journey led by a couple of shamanic practitioners and was deeply moved by the spirituality and presence of the ceremony and the deep connection they had to Spirit and the world around us. It was the kind of spirituality that I always wanted to experience and had never been able to with the organized religion I grew up with, except while singing sacred music.  During that psychedelic journey, I asked myself "Could the way of the Shaman be a path to the kind of spirituality I was longing for?"

I just recently completed a seven month long Shamanic Calling course. We explored sound driven shamanic journeying and connecting to the subtle realms. While my scientific training and way of thinking seemed like it would get in the way of these exercises, it had the opposite effect. In a shamanic journey there is a yang aspect in which you are actively imagining, and then there is a yin aspect where you are open to what ever arises. The yin aspect is very much what I do while I am meditating, but the yang aspect was enhanced by my scientific mind as, once I stopped doubting, I used my background knowledge to imagine more precisely. And even tho my mind still still asks, "this is bullshit, right?", my experience of being closer to nature and in tune with my own emotions and hidden notions is exponentially better. So it really doesn't matter if it is bullshit. I am getting way more from it, both spiritually and creatively than I ever expected.

And the creative aspect is particularly important. Most of what I am interested in requires a creative and innovative approach to impact it. Scientific writing, psychedelics for medical and consciousness expanding ventures, having people be heard and empowered in our current reality, using data science to map and innovate, and having people live a life aligned with their purpose. In my favorite TED talk, and her book Big Magic, Elizabeth Gilbert talks about creative genius as a separate entity or spirit that can work with you or not depending upon your willingness to let it. I find such resonance with this way of thinking as it allows me to bring lightheartedness to what I am working on. That there is a message waiting for me to receive it has my mind be open to ideas that I have disregarded in the past.

I recently attended an event presented by Paul Stamets and Guujaw called How Psilocybin mushrooms can help save the world. Having Guujaw there brought a spiritual dimension to the talk that was moving and resonated with me. Guujaw said that people just needed to reconnect with Nature. We have separated ourselves, and need to reconnect. Just dwell on that, meditate on that, apply the scientific method to that. And Paul also said something that had me be connected to my creative genius. He said that while he often gets marching orders while he is on a psychedelic journey, on his last journey, he was given a single word. Existence.

Everything is connected

 

I love messing with the mind. I also love messing with the brain. The two aren’t the same thing, although some things mess with both. My graduate training was in receptor biology, g-protein couple receptor biology to be a little more specific. I could get way more specific, but then I’d be doing the thing that had me leave the bench in the first place. I like to talk and think about ecosystems, about how everything fits together, I like to model and visualize the complexity, and I like to make connections obvious and non-obvious. So a little background before I go back to messing with the mind.

I like to tell the story of Darwin and how he relates the Aha moment in which the Origin of Species came into existence. I’m all about making connections, and subsequent research has demonstrated that while it may have looked to him like it came to him in a flash of insight, I like to think of it as his brain making the last little connection that tied his decades of thinking all together into a beautiful bow.

My decades of wandering started while I was realizing 8 year old me’s dream of being an astrophysicist. Sitting in the Array Operations Center at the Very Large Array, in front of the terminal with lines of green code on the dark screen, I realized that this is not what I wanted to do with my life. Mind you, sitting there was the result of me responding to an innocent “You wouldn’t be interested in Astronomy, girls don’t do Astronomy”, so I’d never really explored what I could or would want to do. But from my vantage now, that is life isn’t it? Taking a journey to see what works, to find out what there is for you to find out, to learn all the lessons along the way?

Last year, I took a dear friend’s suggestion and participated in a guided psychedelic retreat, ‘cuz I like messing with the mind, ergo it had to come to that eventually, right? I didn’t commune with God, or see my ancestors or anything cool like that, but it did start me on a journey of letting go. For the past year, I have been catching up on the Psychedelic Renaissance happening all around me. Given how much I like messing with the mind, I was shocked that I had been oblivious to it all. Turns out oblivious is not far off track. You really don't see what is right in front of you. 

Back in 2006, I wrote a blog post on The Power of LSD, based on an article I’d found. I got so much of that article wrong. I remembered thinking that psychedelic research was a limited phenomenon, that the studies in that review were isolated work, that not much came of the research people were doing. In fact, the first sentence of that article reads "The therapeutic uses of psychedelic drugs have recently resurfaced as a topic of debate in neuropsychopharmacology." In my own defense, at the time I found the article, I wanted to get back into working on the brain after having done a stint in program management and event coordination in transformational education, in fact, that was the year before I started working at the Allen Institute for Brain Science.

So I was around, though I wasn't necessarily present to the birth of this psychedelic renaissance. And it has captured me. Medicine that could actually cure (loaded word innit?) mental disorders, instead of treating the symptoms?! I'm all in. Well kinda. What is someone who loves to study the brain, loves to teach others about the brain, and loves to map and explore possible connections for innovative ideas to do in this space? Well that is the question. And the inquiry I'm on these days. Mostly I'm gathering my thoughts and using all my talents to determine what is next for me around here.