JIM'S BLOG

To contact me, write to: hahahana@hawaiiantel.net

 

03/08/2012

Expanding Mind Interview

Jung and Psychedelics

The description: “Seeking the Self, solve et coagula, and when to hang up the phone: an illuminating talk with James DeKorne, author of The Cracking Tower and Psychedelic Shamanism.”

 

11/08/2009

THE REAL MAYA OF 2012

 

The current 2012 controversy spins around the optimist-pessimist axis, with the aggressively positive thinkers disparaging the Jeremiahs prophesying the end of the world, and vice-versa. Most affirmative solutions involve our usual knee-jerk: “We have to [ insert cure here] now!” response to any crisis. I am reminded of the est movement’s “Hunger Project” from 1977 – it was their stated goal to abolish world hunger by 1997, and if anyone expressed doubt about the feasibility of this, they were criticized as “negative” and “part of the problem.” I used to marvel at the entranced fervor of the est proselytizers: they sincerely believed that they were going to end world hunger through positive thinking alone; few, if any, people actually got a meal out of it though a lot of money changed hands. This of course is a form of consensus trance: mass mesmerism via implausible beliefs.

I chose the Hunger Project because it is an easily accessible example of the kind of consensus trance associated with the current 2012 challenge. This is not to belittle anyone’s legitimate concern or commitment, only to observe that there were numerous people back in the day associated with a powerful, well- organized, corporate entity (est), who poured considerable life energy into a problem that any unbiased observer immediately recognized as insoluble at the level it was being addressed. The difference between est’s Hunger Project and today’s vaguely proactive: “We have to [ insert cure here] now!” 2012 strategy is that est actually had some organizational momentum behind it, whereas our current Zeitgeist mandates that whenever four people assemble to address an issue, within the hour they will have split into at least two factions more interested in flaming each other than solving the original problem. Realistically, if we aren’t able to abolish world hunger, stop nuclear proliferation or even heal the Israeli-Palestinian split, how, pray tell, are we going to save the entire third planet in our solar system? Isn’t that a bit grandiose? Couldn’t one’s personal life energy be more profitably focused elsewhere?

The most plausible answer to such dilemmas is to assume a neutral observer’s stance and recognize that these polarities are the pairs of opposites that whirl the wheel of Maya: You can join either the Deva or the Asura faction and spin your wheels to generate more karma, or you can get in contact with your Essence and actually do the work you contracted to accomplish here below. (For all anyone knows, that may include becoming a planet-saving crusader: Mother Teresa certainly wasn’t spinning her wheels!) But I suspect that most of us aren’t quite at her level this time around. Until we commence work on our inner selves (easily as difficult as saving the world, but at least doable) we’ll just continue to buy into the ceaselessly shape-shifting, currently fashionable global “problem” in the illusion that we’re “doing something about it.”

I address these questions and provide a deeper background for their consideration in my book The Cracking Tower, now available from North Atlantic Books, Amazon.com, or your local bookstore. Tell ‘em Jim sent you.