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hiba's avatar

I love what you write and also really enjoyed this season ! I thought the same about Laurie’s ‘epiphany’ - it felt like she was more ‘humbled’ after her experience the night before but there was no real questioning of herself, no real honesty. And her friends didn’t need to question themselves either which I would have enjoyed seeing!

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Gregory Pettys's avatar

Well played Hiba. You covered a lot of ground here. What really stands out to me, to also reference the late Chogyam Trungpa, is the need to "Abandon All Hope Of Fruition". In this bardo we find ourselves in, traversing through this awkward in-between space where we can't seem to find our ancestral, geographical and/or mythological bearings so we cling to whatever exotic cherry we can get our hands on, whether it be yoga or yage, if we are ever going to truly mature spiritually as a society than we will need to get rid of the idea that we are going to gain anything from these efforts at all! The goal is not so much to "advance" as it is to remember again how to see. And hopefully see clearly enough that we stop spending so much time seeking in the first place and just get to work feeding the hungry, planting some trees and making beauty for a time beyond now.... Of coarse, a core question here is, what is "spirituality" in the first place? It seems to me it's simply the quest to learn how to feed. That's it. To keep alive that which feeds. In other words: To learn how to know how to ask the right questions and and how to fall in love with what She Who Gives Us Life loves. Because it isn't about our own personal liberation and certainly not about us "finding ourselves", unless finding ourselves means becoming, as my mentor, Martin Prechtel says, "an elder worthy of descending from". The White Lotus went about as far as any modern weekend plant medicine journey could. It was what it was, which wasn't much. The hardest pill to swallow I think, for our hyper-individualistic world of impatient consumers of "experience" is that this work is intergenerational. i.e. we likely won't live to see the fruit of what we plant here now. And that's ok. Thanks for this, Hiba. I really enjoy your work. Gods willing I'll get some paid subscribers of my own eventually so I can pay you what you deserve! :) Oh, and enjoy Simons book! It's fantastic!

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