The third trip I was completely alone in my study. Again I had several videos and music to use if I wanted to. The Brakhage films again. A movie called "Baraka". I ate the shrooms. When they kicked in I just listened to music for awhile, reflective. Again at one point I listened to the industrial group. One song had a kind of knocking sound. I was sitting in the floor, kind of in lotus position. The knocking song became really real to me. I would pound my fists in the air with the knocks. I was saying without ever consciously intending to say it "LET ME IN!" It felt very tribal. I had respect, I didn't really want to force anything, but I also would not be denied admittance. Again, there was nothing conscious or pre-conceived about how I felt, I had intended to just coast through this trip since I was completely alone for the first time. I was shocked at my own boldness. I was in control in the sense that I knew I could stop all this and just watch videos and listen to music if I wanted, but I was determined for something else..and I didn't even know what exactly. As I watched "Baraka" (I highly recommend the movie) it is basically a movie that shows scenes from around the world. Some are locations, like monasteries and Buddhist temples. Some are wildlife, like a group of monkeys in a hot spring on a mountain in Japan. Other scenes show human events, like tribal ceremonies, etc. Some show tragic things about our world, like the cutting down of the rain forests, and a mass production chicken processing factory. As I watched it, I was let in. I engaged the material of the movie. For years I had been trending libertarian (not the party, just small l libertarian worldview wherein I am mostly responsible for myself because I actually have control over myself, but not completely separate from others. I can influence their thinking by engaging them, but ultimately they are responsible for themselves. To respect that right in all even when they engage in things I don't like or disagree with. Not like murder, theft, rape, etc...those things are ultimately wrong on all levels. I certainly want those things to be dealt with by society in an appropriate manner, but I am mostly against laws for anything that is not directly about a violation of life, liberty, or property, or a threat (directly or negligently) to those things. Other than that I don't think there should be any laws. If you don't like what somebody else is doing just avoid them. But I also realize there are complexities in the social realm. There are people in our lives that we care about and when they do something we don't like, you can't just avoid them. But there is a balance to find. And finding a balance was what this trip was all about. I even got a sense of the pulsing of reality that was intense. Nauseating even. Eventually I stood up and began surfing the pulse just like it was a wave and I was on a surfboard. This activity made the nausea subside. And I felt better when I matched my movements and flow to the flow of the pulse. Still watching the movie, there was a part of the movie where it would show something bad...first was the cutting down of rainforest by bulldozers. Then it would flash to the face of an elder from a rainforest tribe. Even in normal mind the movie was obviously intended to confront people about some of these issues. Then the scene from the chicken processing plant was shown. Thousands of small chicks were fed down a chute into a sorting assembly line. The chicks would eventually be taken to farms where they were raised completely inside, then harvested for food. Even on the factory line some of the chicks would be hurt or killed. They had no control of anything. Then the movie would flash to a scene from downtown Tokyo. People would wait to cross the street when the light was red, but the cars would move on one street. Then the light would change, and the cars on the cross street would move and people would move on the green light for themselves. The flipping back and forth between the baby chicks and the people obviously was meant to convey a similitude, and a commentary about modern life. Another scene was of kids in some Asian factory rolling cigarettes on ancient machines. As it flashed back and forth between between those scenes and the rainforest elder, his sadness about the events was palpable. I engaged the man. I commiserated with him. I expressed my sympathy and our "in it together" aspect of being human. He stared at me. Seriously it was like the man was face to face with me. At times challenging me. Especially my increasingly libertarian stances. I am opposed to socialism of all varieties. But I am also alarmed at certain excesses of businesses and conservative governments. It was like the elder was challenging me that much of this activity should be stopped. And only government could or would stop some of it. But I also argued with him. I am opposed to governments, all of them. They are directly at fault for the death of millions upon millions and many travesties committed by businesses are a cooperative endeavor between the businesses and the governments. Government does not check such activities, it monetizes them for the businesses. I commiserated with the elder about the rainforest cuttings. This I did see as a violation. Just because these tribes didn't have the developed property rights system that modern societies have does not mean they had no ownership rights over these lands. I say ownership rights, but I realize they would refer to it more as stewardship responsibilities. And I agree with them. I am not anti-business, but businesses very often push against what is correct both socially and as environmental stewards. I can't align completely with green socialists who are too much anti-business, but I feel their angst about situations, and commiserate to a large degree. But then the scene would flash back and forth between those baby chicks and the people at the stop lights in Tokyo. I argued with the elder that the comparison only went so far. The chicks had no control (again a stewardship of nature issue..it was a heartbreaking thing to behold) but the humans were each going somewhere that they had levels of intention to go to. Some were going to visit a friend, a high intention activity. Some were going to work, a low intention activity, but they wanted to be paid for their work, a high intention aspect. It wasn't as simple as what the elder (or the movie) was making it out to be. Humans aren't just moving down an assembly line. No, we are not in complete control, but we do have areas we do control, to greater or lesser degrees depending on individual situations and where we are located, etc. We agreed to disagree where we disagreed but to commune together and mourn certain aspects of the world we live in together. It was intense and challenging. I knocked to be "let in" and this was a door guard. Someone to challenge my fitness to enter. I seek what is true. Over the years I have found that the "truth" is extremely hard to find. What is easier to find is what is not true. And people often conflate something true with things that can be proven false, a blending...so that they ARE speaking something true (or something you can't show to be false in any case) but mixing it with something false. And when you point out the falsity and show how it is false, they often point to the part of what they are saying that is true (or that can't be shown to be false) and act like you are attacking that, not what you are actually attacking. And nearly everyone does this. I have sought to deeply parse reality. To divide where division can take place. To point to falsity and call it such. What I have found over time is this...at first my quest for truth gave very little fruit, because it is hard to prove something true...but I moved on to finding what was demonstrably false, a much easier proposition. But then the third stage of this many year long endeavor began to take shape, not by intention, I started trying to find what was true, moved into pointing out the false (at least for myself, I didn't engage others about it in the beginning), but then I started to notice a similar effect to a concept in the world of art...negative space. I took an art appreciation class at one point and a bowl of fruit was set before us and we were told NOT to paint the bowl of fruit, but to paint the space around it, the negative space. By pointalizing so many things that were provably false a kind of negative space was forming. At the end of the art exercise the bowl of fruit was obvious even though you had not painted anything of it, but only what was around it. You knew there was a bowl of fruit there, even though you had never touched the bowl of fruit to the paper with your brush. After years of philosophically examining reality and putting everything to questions I could see something. I still cannot put my finger exactly on a point of truth and tell you "THIS is true." but I can say, "To everything I know, the truth is somewhere in this area, not over there, that is false. The truth is somewhere HERE." I was engaging these concepts directly with the keeper of the door. He was not dismissive of me and I knew I would be let in. But this trip had exhausted me and I was coming down. The coming trips become more and more spiritual. I know this mostly happened in my head. I didn't see with vision anything unusual, or feel any strange ways. Except that the movie was the instrument for the keeper of the door to assess my fitness for entering. It felt real. It still does. It was intense. I didn't know what I was getting myself into, but I knew it was right that I enter. More in coming trip reports.
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