Tayken in Quarantine: Death, Dharma & Ecstatic Pandemics

Well...

What a difference a quarter makes. When I decided to get back to writing these updates, I couldn't have predicted their alignment with the pressing of a giant fucking global reset button; the likes of which very few of us have ever experienced. Even to write such a thing is quite strange indeed.

Alas, here we are sheltering and stir crazy. As Wheal recently wrote, perhaps Goethe said it best: Until you know the secret, ‘die and become’ you will remain forever a stranger on this earth. 

So perhaps it's worth asking––do you feel more alive or more like a stranger? Honest question...and timeless tune :)

We're all intimately tied to the physical toll this virus has taken on us as it ricochets around the world, and for anyone whose lives and loved ones have been affected, the losses are unimaginably tragic.

But there’s a second wave of often unspoken loss, orders of magnitude more profound (imho, and also likely the effective altruists) if we start assessing what else is dying around us––routines, recreation, relationships, plans, projects, professions...Purpose.

It all feels as though it's coming undone in this impossible new normal we find ourselves slowly trying to live and love into. While counterintuitive, if not existential, perhaps the only answer is to die and become.

There are endless opportunities for us to practice letting go of what we thought was us, what we assumed was ours. What we took to be certain. And when we survive it and emerge unscathed, perhaps we'll be reborn; immortal. As the late great Terrance McKenna so poetically put it, we can leap into the screaming abyss only to find that it’s a feather bed.

So while C-19 doesn’t fit the casual definition of a thrilling ecstatic state, it absolutely fits the technical definition of ex-stasis, an act or practice that takes us out of, or beyond ourselves. We are living(dying?) in an ecstatic pandemic.

Right now... in this very moment...we all get the chance to practice resurrection.

Jordan Hall, someone slowly emerging for me as something of a psychoprofit (similar but distinct from a psychonaut), said, “the task ahead of us is impossibly large, and therefore impossible to solve with additional, even heroic efforts. It’s like Thor’s Hammer, it is infinitely heavy. It can only be lifted by Thor himself. No amount of effort by the wrong person can budge it. So the only solution is to find your hammer––find what’s yours to do and go and do that. Everything else is wasted effort.”

Whack! That was a Thor-sized hammer to the heart for me.

For Buddhists, it’s the notion of seeking refuge in the Dharma–– or that which is uniquely yours to do. If this update offers you anything, take a moment to stop, take a few unencumbered breaths, and consider your purpose as a newborn.

Ok, on to the good stuff...

Taykentots I'm currently snacking on:

• Sum: 40 Tales from the Afterlives, Eagleman (a Derek Sivers recommendation)

• The Coronation, Eisenstein (you've invested 10 min. in much less)

• It's Time to Build, Andreessen (Q: What do you think we should build?)

• Ecstatic Perception, Wheal (how might we move towards a polyphasic society?)

• Music: Shakey Graves - Roll the Bones

I always love hearing back (and always reply), so don't hesitate.

With ❤️ (distance) & skepticism,
~Tayken