I am a Los Angeles native. I was born into the Scientology Center(though it was Cedars of Lebanon Hospital at the time). My first memories are of being in Coldwater Canyon and having a unitive experience of the hills, trees and chaparral. I remember thinking I was the hills of Coldwater Canyon. As a child, I dreamt of Coldwater Canyon in its pre-civilized state, without roads and without homes. I remember being at a party with my parents in Laurel Canyon, and being aware of a viscous, primordial reality flowing by outside the windows of the house, while inside, Hollywood types honked on about recent developments in the film industry.

As a teenager, i sat in my father’s palliative care room at Cedars Sinai during the final days of his life. It was an awesomely profound time. The doors into the next world swung open into his room. Once, while I was aware this was happening, a B list Film Director came to visit him, and then proceeded to regale my father with production details of his latest green lit project., while totally ignoring his impending death. “Sean Connery, Meg Ryan,” it was all happening. At a certain point, my father(who was probably taking one of his last ten thousand breaths) turned to me, and whispered quietly, “Get him out of here.” So I did.

After my father died, i left Los Angeles. I thought I would never return. I thought it was Sodom, and the least profound place anyone could ever live. I went to college in upstate New York and graduate school in the Bay Area. But while I was in graduate school, something strange began happening. I started dreaming of Los Angeles as I once had as a very young child. It was not about the culture of Los Angeles, or the people I had encountered there. The dreams were of a primordial Los Angeles. A part of Los Angeles that existed in its natural form, above the city below(which I called “The Flats.”) ) During the dreams, I remember wondering if this was a place that actually existed somewhere behind Beverly Hills and Bel Air, up near Mulholland, or whether it was a dreamscape. There was mountainous terrain, flowing creeks, abundant wildlife, and sometimes melting snow. It was the same dreamscape I experienced as a child, and it left me intrigued. When I recorded these dreams, I always described them not as of Los Angeles, but of “Suncanyon.”

Eventually, I found my way back to Los Angeles and rediscovered the Los Angeles of my early childhood. The verdant nature, the rugged terrain where coyotes, bobcats, and mountain lions roam and thrive. It was still there. Primordial Los Angeles as it has always been, and always will be. The superficial crust of it changes. The developments, and the people who come here in pursuit of their dreams. The fires and the earthquakes continue to come and go. But beneath even the unceasing nature, a primordial reality flows that calls out for the transformation of consciousness that a human lifetime offers. It’s there right now as it was outside that window in Laurel Canyon in 1971. I have written elsewhere(City of The Dead) about the primordial reality of Los Angeles. There is a mystical reality here, a living bardo, that the demands for attention that so many place on the limited real estate of our consciousness, often camoflage.. But right below this push, a mystical foundation flows right in front of us. If you are here, or anywhere, it is there. Don’t miss it. Yoke it.

UNUS MUNDUS

     Science is emerging from a dark age regarding the nature of physical reality, and it’s worthwhile to consider the understanding that has emerged.  Instruments grant us the capacity to see into structure of atoms, the smallest building blocks of physical reality. Amazingly, they look exactly like a microcosm of our solar system.  Yet, these same remarkably sensitive instruments, offer no insight into what holds atoms together.  The physical world turns out to be more like a big thought, or a big dream, than it is a big rock. It is bound together by something fundamental that transcends Newton’s mechanistic model of space and time. The world is not an ensemble of separate bits moving within mechanical laws, but all things are connected by something that transcends of space and time.  That something is widely now accepted as intelligence.  Everything in the world is informed by a deep dimension. Our brain, and our mind included.

     This deep dimension of physical reality is more vibration than it is matter.  There is no ground substance that matter is based on.  The world is a set of variously integrated clusters of vibration, and matter is just how the vibrations appear to an observer. These vibrations are the matrix of all matter and all consciousness. Everything that emerges and persists in the world is a cluster of vibration in that field.  Bodies of all shapes and sizes, from atoms to galaxies, to the bodies of humans are clusters in the field of intelligence.

    What does this intelligence want? Higher expressions of order.  The difference between the DNA of a chimpanzee and a human is less than one percent.  Chimpanzees are capable of many of the same emotions and perceptions that human beings are. The real difference between them is a the human capacity to conceptualize in more sophisticated ways.  There is purpose in the chimpanzee’s consciousness just as there is in a human consciousness.   The intelligence that animates the consciousness of each does so toward the potential of its highest manifestation.  For those who think that these manifestations are random and without purpose, I present the example of a fruit fly.  There has not been enough time since the Big Bang for a random assemblage of the DNA that would be required to create a fruit fly.  Something assembles DNA to become a fruit fly, just as something assembles your DNA so that you can read this sentence.

     So what does this science have to do with the experience of the reader?  Each person’s consciousness possesses a maximum potential by design.  The intelligence behind the structure of the universe, and the structure of both your body and the consciousness it houses, has designed you for the highest expression of your potential and your comprehension. .  It is a willfull act to ignore the presence of this intelligence and its intention for you, at any time.  This is where the descent from maximum expression begins.  For most of us, this breakdown results from our unwillingness to sense the intentions and presence of this intelligence, when we  substitute the circumstances that our consciousness perceives at any given moment,  and the concepts our perceptions give birth to.  Other times, we substitute a memory of another time when we were also distracted from the presence and intention of the intelligence that designed us. That is the only distance between the intelligence we are constructed of at our deepest level and our awareness.  This is the riddle of our existence, or in zen, the koan. It is an exercise well worth undertaking either conceptually or experientially.  This is the antidote from what ails us in both our bodies and consciousness, both personally and collectively.

HOLOGRAPHIC YOU

                                                                                 THE ECLIPSE OF THE SOLAR KING

        I’ve been asked about the eclipse a lot the past month or so.  Mostly by people who are interested in it as it relates to Astrology.  For many people it is personally relevant in relationship to their natal chart.  I have told many how difficult it is going to be for Donald Trump, and if you get in touch with me, I’ll tell you why.  But if you want a tidbit, I’ll just say this: If you’re going to present yourself as a King, (“Nobody has ever been as Presidential as me, except maybe Abe Lincoln,”) you better have some real King roots(like Lincoln, Mandela,  Martin Luther King, or the Dalai Lama) when the plug is pulled on your ability to project yourself by the intelligent mechanics that animate all things. If you don’t, your second generation, wealthy Queens fantasy of being King, will be exposed. Especially if you thought you could anoint yourself by wearing a faux platinum crown,  and trimming your “palace” in 14k(maybe) gold.

                                                                           EVERYBODY’S ECLIPSE

       Human beings have been mesmerized and terrified by solar eclipses since their first experience of them.  For a few minutes everything they’ve assumed about how the Sun illuminates the day is called into question.  Without astronomy it would be a terrifying experience.  With it, it is still awesome in it’s mystery intimations that it is probably better addressed by Astrophysics.  But for today’s event I would suggest a symbolic perspective.  Let’s posit the question, “What do we assume daily about ourselves that could be completely thrown into absolute question?”  I think most people’s basic assumption revolves around the source of their identity in historical narrative derived from memory.  But what if this assumption is rooted too shallowly?  What if our consciousness extends out beyond ourbiographical memories, and will continue extending beyond where our brain anchor them in physical life?  What if we become aware of our non physical, non spatial, non historical origins while we are alive? How does that change how we view ourselves, and everyone else?

                                        YOUR BRAIN TRANSLATES YOUR CONSCIOUSNESS INTO PHYSICAL REALITY

     Carl Jung had a remarkable theory about the brain that linked eastern and western models of consciousness, with current Neuroscience, and Quantum Physics.  His theory existed a lifetime before MRI’s or CAT scans existed it to verify it. The brain, was like a radio receiver.  It was a physical structure that contains and transmits the energy of consciousness into physical reality. Just like a radio doesn’t create the Beatles singing “Ticket to Ride,” your brain doesn’t create you.  It’s a physical apparatus that animates and projects your consciousness into physical reality. Illuminating reality like a light bulb containing electrical energy transforms that energy into light.   Consciousness, like the light radiating from a light bulb animates all you experience both internally and externally.

                                    MAPS OF PHYSICAL REALITY ARE CREATED BY YOUR BRAIN AND NERVOUS SYSTEM

      The world you perceive is an approximation constructed by your brain according to the information provided by your nervous system.  Your brain synthesizes a three dimensional model using the information provided by a nervous system which branches out from your brain into the world.  What is seen, heard, felt, smelled, felt and tasted is synthesized by your brain into a model of reality according to its’ best guess of what all theinformation means.  As a submarine periscope reveals what is happening above the water by bouncing images off mirrors onto other mirrors until the image reaches an eye, your brain creates images and concepts about the world that are its’ best guess resulting from the multiple streams of information provided by your nervous system. But this model is and has always been just a guess.
QUANTUM PHYSICS AND THE NATURE OF REALITY
The physical universe is a wave that has been spreading out from the big bang for 13.8 billion years. Quantum Physics has proven that physical reality breaks down into smaller measurables than atoms, and perceived solidity is an illusion.  Many branches of Buddhism and Taoism say the same. Your brain perceives what is a wave as being solid to fit its concepts of reality, provided by its’ information gathering tools.  A nervous system composed of stable physical matter describes stable physical matter as though that is the ultimate reality.  It’s a mythology each of us lives by. Remember Mike T.V. being transmitted between the camera and the receiver in Charlie and The Chocolate Factory? Well you and I may be being transmitted into a physical receiver as well.  That receiver is the brain. Mike’s mom panicked when she saw this happening to Mike, but Willy Wonka was ok with it, because Willy Wonka was a trickster, and the trickster archetype reveals whereconcepts about reality come up against reality itself.  Pan(the Greek God who brings panic) was also a trickster, and delighted when people walking at dusk mistook a stick for a snake, and gave themselves a fright with their concepts, revealing the fear of the unknowing that gave birth to concept in the first place.

                                                   THE ILLUSORY NATURE OF IDENTITY RESULTANT FROM HISTORY

      Your brain has been organizing your experience as best as it has been able from the moment you were born. It hasn’t always been accurate, and the narrative you’ve constructed about your historical identity is actually still very malleable. If your brain’s best guess about what was going on around you, conditioned a limited identity and understanding of the world, and your place in it that wasn’t entirely accurate.  What If your historical recall of yourself, and who you were in relationship to your family, your peers, and culture is not static and set in the stone of memory, but as fluid as physical reality itself?  Your historical and personal narrative can be re-explored, and re-conceptualized, perhaps in more beneficial way.  Rather than anchoring your identity to a limiting historical illusion, your identity can be an ever evolving experience.  Things which your brain missed or reinterpreted in your past, can be found or re-imagined in the present, if only you allow for that possibility to turn static seemingly intractable facts into fluid evolving present possibilities about the real source of your identity.

THE PRIMORDIAL BRAIN

   Depression is the epidemic in our current world.  Fifteen percent of the prescriptions written by doctors are anti-depressants.  In March 2017, the World Health Organization declared that depression is the leading cause of ill health and disability worldwide. More than 300 million people are living with it, an increase of more than 18 per cent between 2005 and 2015.  Drugs and alcohol are being self administered in a tsunami of off label self medicating.  The opioid addiction and overdose problem(as many people die every three weeks from opiate overdose as died in 9/11) usually begins with chronic pain(one of the ways depression camouflages itself). Scratch at the surface of any addict(or any addiction) and what you will find underneath is a depression.

     Depression is a disorder of the brain, whose structure is a result of two million years of evolution.  It is composed of roughly 100 billion neurons.  That’s a big number isn’t it?  Does it remind you of anything?  The milky way, the galaxy that contains our Sun(and our Earth), has roughly 100 billion stars in it.  So let’s look at this synchronistically for a moment.  A human brain has roughly the same number of neurons as our galaxy has stars.  Coincidence?  If it is, it is an unusual one.  But for the sake of imagining the purpose of our brains, let’s assume that it isn’t.  Let’s assume that these numbers are two acausal coincidences united by meaning.  For the purpose of this essay, let’s posit that a human brain is a localized representation of the galaxy it inhabits, and is designed to navigate it.   It makes you wonder about the brain’s purpose, and about how form follows function.  This same manifestation can be seen anytime you are outside.  Look at plants or trees, whether you are in a city or in nature, and you can see localized microcosms of our galaxy. The intelligent patterns that dictate the growth of the branches and leaves of trees, is a localized fractal representation of the same energies that give shape to galaxies and universes.   Those patterns are outside your window right now, and those patterns are inside your skull.

     So what are our brains designed for? How have they been used to shape their current structure, and how are they being used in our modern world that so many people are needing medication solely to function day to day.  A brain is designed to decipher the messages provided by the nervous system that springs forth from it to gather information from the environment.  It uses this information to construct a hologram for itself of its’ place in time and space according to the information it is being provided. It sees, it smells, it feels, it moves a body. The brain makes judgements to avoid threats and it pursues benefits.  That is what it has been designed for. Every brain does this differently, and we can assume that every brain creates a unique hologram.  Art, in all its forms, has always been the expression of the individual hologram.  But how is our brain being used today?

    Our brains have been designed by eons of engagement with our physical environments.  To remember and make mental maps of where we have been, and to imagine where we are going.  To track animals that we may wish to eat, and avoid those that may wish to eat us.  To sense an approaching change in the weather, and to determine how many hours of sunlight are left in the day. To be able to intuit from the unconscious communications of a previously unknown person whether they intend us benefit or harm.  Our brains are designed to decipher our environment to maximize the chances of our survival.

     Here’s what our brains aren’t designed to do.  They’re not designed to cope with trauma, whether from childhood, or later.  Physical, sexual, or emotional abuse causes consciousness to repeatedly cycle within a limited area of utility.  If trauma occurs it’s difficult to cycle out of the area of the brain that stores it, but it is possible, and more importantly desirable.  The brain is also not designed to deal with the structures of modernity. It is the only brain in the mammalian kingdom that has been required to do this. But urban environments are something our two million year old brains have been engaged with for just a millenia.  Cars, our major form of transport have been with us, for less than a hundred years of our two million year evolution.  Streets, urban grids, artificial lighting, all of these things are very recent additions to our experience.   But if you really want to look at the most recent addition and the biggest challenge to the functioning of our two million year old brains look no further than the tool you are using to read this essay, the personal computer.

     Personal computers have been a part of the human experience for less than 30 years of our two million year odyssey.  They have usurped numerous functions that used to require an engagement with the world outside your screen.   Recall the last time you stepped outside to check the approaching weather, rather than looking at a forecast on a computer.  Shopping, which once required at least navigating a civilized grid, has now been usurped by a computer screen.  Our news, our purchases, but worst of all our relationships have all been funneled through the experience of the personal computer.  Facebook, Instagram, and other social networks have become substitutes for the challenges posed by real experiences with our acquaintances and our friends.  People wishing to meet and date other unknown people no longer have faith in a chance encounter(though there is no such thing). Instead they search on their computer for people who appear to be appealing and in need of social or sexual contact.

     More and more our days which have been designed to be experienced through the use of an expansive neural network which is a localized manifestation of the galaxy in which we live, are being exercised in a smaller and smaller domains.  Experiences that once required all our senses and all the brains capacity have been reduced to sitting, typing, looking at a screen and processing pixilated information.  You want to find the source of the depression that cradles the modern world in it’s arms, this is it. .  A brain structured like the galaxy, sits staring at a fifteen inch screen, in search of meaning and purpose.  The antidote for this is a brain returning to utilizing its’ capacities and reconnecting with its’ origins.

THE PRIMORDIAL

  I have been asked recently several times what the Primordial in Primordial Astrology means.  The Primordial is the foundation of all reality.  Taoism, Dzogchen(an ecstatic sect of Tibetan Buddhism), Alchemy, esoteric systems, East and West, as well as quantum physics, base their understanding and their technologies on granting access to Primordial Reality. The conditioned mind whether it be experiential or conceptual springs from a lifetime of habits used to perceive the world, and reinforce identity.  The conditioned mind camoflages the Primordial with a continuous narrative wave composed of personal history, preferences and dislikes, and conventional descriptions of reality, that become accepted as an ultimate description.

     The ego(or I)experiences itself as a historical instrument of continuity.  It is a trail of crumbs dropped through the forest of time that conditioned consciousness follows as close as it can back to its origins at the beginning of this life.  It remembers, and organizes its history in order to understand experiences in the present, and extrapolate into the future.  It is a useful illusion in both the construction of its experiences, and the defensive conditioned state that results from being buffeted by the waves of life.  It perceives and makes choices to keep itself within an aperture of experience that is predictable.  Most of what occurs outside its preferred experience is ignored whether it be inspiring, frightening, or causes it to question its presuppositions, however limiting they may be.

     In order to show the elusive nature of Primordial Reality, I’d like to use the metaphor of the perceivable universe.  Imagine the conventional reality that is experienced by the ego as all that is illumined by the Sun’s light.  All that is seen, heard and felt by the instruments of physical perception inform the ego of its place in time and space.   But once the Sun moves to the other side of the earth, a vast universe full of a billion stars, many larger than the Sun itself, emerges from the background that was blanched out by its rays. But there are other challenges to experiencing the Primordial, just as there are other challenges to seeing the four hundred billion stars in the Milky Way, beyond the natural veil of sunlight.  If you are in, or near a city, light pollution radiates from it’s homes, businesses and streetlights, and obfuscates the Milky Way and the infinite spaces beyond it, in the same way that  conventional thinking about reality, reinforced by family,  peers, media, and culture, hide the Primordial Reality that is actually the source of everything. .

      Conventional thinking is based on the notion of living in a mechanistic universe.  Actions create reactions. A cue ball strikes a pool ball and its released energy sends it in a predictable direction.  Such is the logic of our self narrative. We are who we are because of the details of our history and how it  causes us to feel and think about ourselves and our world.  The historical information provided to us by our nervous systems is usually all we know about ourselves, and the world.  But when that narrative is quieted, aspects of consciousness emerge that have been drowned out by history, memory and the narrative that conditions our thinking and feeling.   Allowing that aspect of consciousness to emerge into awareness can be the most dynamic experiences a human being can experience.  From the corners of the room, a seemingly forgotten reality arises into awareness that seems to have been forgotten, but was there all the time, waiting to make itself known.  How is this presence contacted?  That is for another essay.