Pagan Blog Project: Grokking it

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#paganblogproject, 2013PBP, cauldron of consciousness, consciousness, experiental validity, grok, pagan blog project

Grok means to understand so thoroughly that the observer becomes a part of the observed—to merge, blend, intermarry, lose identity in group experience. It means almost everything that we mean by religion, philosophy, and science—and it means as little to us (because of our Earthling assumptions) as color means to a blind man.

Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert Heinlen

Perhaps one of my favorite made-up words, grok was coined by science fiction writer Robert Heinlen in Stranger in a Strange Land.  If you haven’t ever read the book, you should pick up a copy next time you hit up the library.  I won’t promise that you will love it (it was okay), but its a (modern) classic, and you should give it a go.  Anyhoo…when you grok something, it means that you intuitively understand it so deeply, so profoundly, that you become part of it and it becomes part of you on both a figurative and a literal level.  The ultimate end result of “grokking” is to become something that is greater than the sum of its parts.

Check out this week’s posts!

Paganisms are mostly experiential religions.  Orthopraxy (right practice) is generally emphasized over orthodoxy (right belief). We Pagans vary a bit in whom or what we choose to worship, though the vast majority of Pagans seem to view deity as  polytheistic, and/or earth-based, and/or Goddess-centric.  There is also a bit of variety in how we connect in our individual Paganisms–with the self, and/or with the earth, and/or with deity, and how that connection informs our experiences.

Ultimately, what we believe informs what experiences we seek to have, and the outcome of those experiences further inform our beliefs.  But this isn’t a closed, stagnant circle–I talked before about how I think that each of us are ‘cauldrons of consciousness‘, and that “I think it is here, in the place between the firing of neurons, the flow of electrons, the transmission of neurotransmitters, and the conceptualization of the experience that our experiences with the Divine occur, whether it be in the making of magic or the encountering of deity.”

How and what we grok is a product of this bit of mystery.  Our preconceptions, our ideas, our logic, is changed by what happens between the firing of our neurons, what happens between the transmission and reception of neurotransmitters, between the experience itself and our internalization and conceptualization of that experience.   Those experiences become part of our Paganism and part of ourselves and our souls.  They embed themselves in our psyche, in our consciousness, and ultimately, becomes how we grok the self, the earth, the divine.  What each of us groks (or not, and how) is highly individualized…and equally valid and authentic of an experience, whether we are polytheists, dirt worshippers, Goddess devotees, or something else all together.

Pagan Blog Project: Divinity=EverythingEnsouled

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2013PBP, animism, consciousness, ecosophy, nature, pagan blog project, pantheism, polytheism, Spiritual Bioregionalism

In weaving, the warp is laid down first, lengthwise, and generally on a frame of some sort.  The weft is then woven, over and under, up and down, line by line, to create an entire piece of cloth.  They are so integrated that to remove either the weft or the warp completely destroys the fabric that has been produced, leaving it in a tangle of threads.

As an allegory, I think this describes perfectly how the material and immaterial (definition #2) weave together the fabric of the Universe.  So much so, that I don’t see a division (in the final product) between the physical reality of the universe and the non-physical reality of the universe.  There is a difference, yes…but not a division.

In a previous Pagan Blog Project post, I talked about a reoccurring theme on this blog, the idea of loving where you live.  I worship (and by worship I mean that I celebrate, revere, honor, adore, devote myself to, make offerings to, and regard with awe and deference) nature (and by little-n nature I mean rocks and trees and lakes and ponds and birds and crocodiles and slime mold and slugs) as the physical body of Nature (and by big-N Nature, I mean The Big Mystery, aka The Divine, aka The Universe, aka Nature’s Consciousness) through the language and symbolism of deity (and by deity, I mean individual gods like Zeus or Brigid).

Admittedly, the idea of nature worship can be an idea that is not without its difficulties,  difficulties that  another blogger has tackled pretty thoroughly (if you click and read any links, read these two!).    But this post really isn’t about that.  This post is more about how, when I talk to nature, Nature often talks back.  And how, when I talk to Nature, nature often talks back as well.  And how I have chosen (or been chosen) to interpret deity/divinity in a particular way.  How we have all been chosen to interpret deity and divinity in particular ways, rooted in our own independent and individual experiences of them.

D is for Divine

Last time, for the PBP, I talked about consciousness.  The ultimate question of consciousness is the question of how the physical processes occurring in the brain (such as those that occur when sensing an event) transform into the subjective experiences of the person?  What makes the firing of neurons, the flow of electrons, the transmission of neurotransmitters become something that is unique to each person, that can ultimately be seen differently, felt differently?  So far, this is a question that is unanswerable by science–not because we lack the technology or understanding, but because it is largely untestable.

In my post, I talked about ourselves as a “cauldron of consciousness”, that I think that the place where we meet That Which Is Divine, however it chooses to reveal itself to us (or how we are able to interpret it) is here, in the space between sensing something and experiencing it.  For me, deity is nature–it is rock and tree and sea and sky.  It is also Nature–as Rock and Tree and Sea and Sky.  They are separate, but so tightly woven together that they are one.  For me, my experience of deity has worn into my brain an idea that isn’t quite animism, or pantheism, or polytheism, but  contains elements of each.

When I go to the beach and make an offering to Psamathe, I am honoring the beach itself–the convergence of the physical elements and magical ones, as much as the Nereid of Greek mythology.  I believe in a Divine Universe, woven  into the physicality of the physical universe, where everything is ensouled.

This post is a contribution for the Pagan Blog Project. Be sure to check out the other contributors, and enjoy!

Pagan Blog Project: The Cauldron of Consciousness

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consciousness, pagan blog project

I assume we all believe that bats have experience. After all, they are mammals, and there is no more doubt that they have experience than that mice or pigeons or whales have experience. I have chosen bats instead of wasps or flounders because if one travels too far down the phylogenetic tree, people gradually shed their faith that there is experience there at all…

…Now we know that most bats (the microchiroptera, to be precise) perceive the external world primarily by sonar, or echolocation, detecting the reflections, from objects within range, of their own rapid, subtly modulated, high-frequency shrieks. Their brains are designed to correlate the outgoing impulses with the subsequent echoes, and the information thus acquired enables bats to make precise discriminations of distance, size, shape, motion, and texture comparable to those we make by vision. But bat sonar, though clearly a form of perception, is not similar in its operation to any sense that we possess, and there is no reason to suppose that it is subjectively like anything we can experience or imagine….

Our own experience provides the basic material for our imagination, whose range is therefore limited. It will not help to try to imagine that one has webbing on one’s arms, which enables one to fly around at dusk and dawn catching insects in one’s mouth; that one has very poor vision, and perceives the surrounding world by a system of reflected high-frequency sound signals; and that one spends the day hanging upside down by one’s feet in an attic. In so far as I can imagine this (which is not very far), it tells me only what it would be like for me to behave as a bat behaves. But that is not the question. I want to know what it is like for a bat to be a bat…

…Even if I could by gradual degrees be transformed into a bat, nothing in my present constitution enables me to imagine what the experiences of such a future stage of myself thus metamorphosed would  be like. The best evidence would come from the experiences of bats, if we only knew what they were like.

~from the essay “What is it like to be a bat?” by Thomas Nagel

Consciousness is a tricky idea.  If you don’t believe me, read this article (if you are interested in more, check out the author’s scientific publications).  One of the ideas that is discussed is the idea of the “easy problem” of consciousness versus the “hard problem” of consciousness.  The “easy problems” aren’t necessarily all that easy, but they are problems with testable (and therefor scientific) answers–how do we see/hear/feel/taste/smell and integrate those senses, how do we explain our feelings or observations, how do we regulate behavior on the basis of sensory input and observation, how do we know if we are asleep or awake? The “hard problem”, on the other hand, is one that might not have an answer that can be given by science…how does the physical processes occurring in the brain–the firing of neurons, the flow of electrons, the transmission of neurotransmitters, transform into the subjective experiences of the person?

Consciousness: the having of perceptions, thoughts and feelings; awareness. The term is impossible to define except in terms that are unintelligible without a grasp of what consciousness means… Nothing worth reading has been written about it.

~Stuart Sutherland

Consciousness is something that I think Pagans should spend some time thinking about.  Probably lots of time, if they have the chance…  Because I think it is here, in the place between the firing of neurons, the flow of electrons, the transmission of neurotransmitters, and the conceptualization of the experience that our experiences with the Divine occur, whether it be in the making of magic or the encountering of deity.  What is actually going on in that moment, I have no idea.  Nor do I think that it ultimately matters.  What matters is what we do with it, what we create starting within ourselves, and what we create as we move outwards from ourselves, into the world and into the universe.

‘Consciousness’ is a word worn smooth by a million tongues. Depending upon the figure of speech chosen it is a state of being, a substance, a process, a place, an epiphenomenon, an emergent aspect of matter, or the only true reality.

~George Miller, ‘Psychology: the Science of Mental Life”, 1962

All of us, I think, are cauldrons of consciousness. Cauldrons for consciousness.  What makes us who we are is the *something* that is  between sensation and experience.  And that *something* is where the magic happens, within the magical vessel of us.  Our cauldrons are where our magic happens, regardless of how we choose to interpret and frame it for our own understanding.  And what we brew in our cauldron, in our consciousness,  matters.

And yes, I also think the magic happens here…or should I say that I think more powerful magic happens here.