In this presentation, given to the Wyoming Psychological Association in Jackson Hole Wyoming at its annual meeting in 1987,  I describe the world-view in which we still live, even now, in 2022,  fully 35 years later. As usual, being the ever-optimistic Sagittarian, I foolishly assumed that, on a collective level, we were about to break the spell of addiction.

I should have known better, given that, at the age of 79, having let go of cigarettes 42 years ago, coffee three years ago, and microdoses of weed, only three months ago, I’m still wrestling with my own, what I call “root addiction” (since two years old): to “the news.”

In this blog, I intermittently focus on the fact of the continuing mind/body split as formalized by Descartes, over three centuries ago; how, at bottom, it’s this split which has made possible the mass formation spell of FEAR, via the Covid plandemic. The factors identified by Mattias Desmet (isolation, lack of meaning and purpose, restless anxiety) all stem from this foundational split in western scientistic culture.

In this presentation, I viewed Descartes in an entirely different manner, by appreciating his little known view of the function and purpose of the pineal gland, which, if we take seriously, could help us re-member that we are connected to our bodies — and so much much more. 

A Metaphysical Approach to Addiction

Excerpt:

Instead of fully Being here, we Know, we Do. Instead of stopping, and listening, and truly feeling the ever-recurring subtle swell and subsidence of our own body’s pain and joy, and that of our mother earth, we fend off those feelings, and treat ourselves as machines. Keeping a stiff upper lip, we pretend it’s all okay. Yet secretly, in private, our mouths open to ingest more, more; we are distracting ourselves from a constant low level anxiety — a soul hunger — via an endless stream of addictions.

The power of the left brain has overreached itself. Asphalt and concrete pave the planet; our dear mother earth can no longer breathe! Pollution invades and corrupts air and water and soil. Defying our deepest animal instincts, we spoil our own nest! Pollution invades our bodies too. Our bodies are corrupted — and since we no longer feel them, we are unaware until it is too late. Our immune systems fail us. We feel we can no longer defend ourselves against what is out there. All the filth, all the fear. The more we fear, the more we stress our immune systems, the more susceptible we become to diseases of all kinds, and the less and less are we able to rally the deep instinctive life force of survival.