Holotropism

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I’ve recently been reading some of the work of Ken Wilber and Stan Grof. For a long-time fan of Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell, it’s been interesting to find these guys—both still alive—who carry the torch in a world that has become darkly materialistic and where rationalism appears to be going off the rails. I became familiar with the work of Grof and Wilber a long time ago and kind of forgot about them during the last 20 or so years, but I recently rekindled my interest in connecting with their decidedly non-materialistic approaches to the ways we perceive the world. In 1967, working with Abraham Maslow and others to create a fuller picture of what it means to be human, Grof coined the term transpersonal psychology.

The need for a new kind of psychology grew in part from Grof’s work with patients under the therapeutic influence of psychedelics such as LSD. When the government outlawed the use of these substances, even by doctors, Grof found another way for patients to access the transpersonal realms for healing. He named this other way, Holotropic Breathwork. With its capital letters and legal trademark, the name kind of rubbed me the wrong way. It seemed a little pretentious and just another of the countless avenues of spiritual entrepreneurialism we see today. Not that there’s anything wrong with protecting your ideas—I’m all for copyright protections—but I did have to overcome an ingrained skepticism to learn more about it.

In trying to find out more about this weirdly named thing I found a local guy on Grof’s Holotropic Breathwork Community named Jimmy Eyerman. Looking into it a bit more, I found a podcast interview where Dr. Eyerman discusses the HB process. Although I’d read Grof’s definition of “holotropic” and had a basic understanding of the word, its meaning really sank in when I heard Dr. Eyerman talk about it. Simply put, the word means “movement toward wholeness.”

I think it sank in because I finally related the word holotropic to similar words I already knew from long-ago botany classes: phototropic (the tendency of plants to reach into the light) and geotropic (the tendency of roots to reach into the earth).

Dr. Eyerman has led something like 11,000 people on HB journeys, and in the podcast he talks about some of the experiences they’ve had. Meanwhile I’ve been reading Grof’s Psychology of the Future and getting more insight into the HB experience. As I learned more about HB, something kind of stuck in my craw—it’s temporariness. It seems that an HB experience is similar to a psychedelic experience in the sense that it can often be just that, a wild experience, a visit to a place you come back from and more or less forget about. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but it seems like a half-step, like doing something inspiring on the weekend, only to feel stuck in drudgery the rest of the week.

That idea got me back to Wilber’s discussion in his book Integral Psychology of “states” versus “structures.” If I read him right, Wilber held that a goal of psychological evolution is to integrate the “states” into “structures.” Experiencing a state would be like realizing, briefly, that you had two arms. The next time you might realize you have two legs—and hopefully you didn’t forget about your arms during the interim. Eventually you realize you have a whole body, and if you play your cards right, that realization sticks, and now you have a fully realized structure to get around in.

The structure isn’t static like a building because time isn’t static. A structure in time is a process, and adjustments can be made to the structure to improve the process. Now the leap: What if holotropism, the tendency of one’s structure to reach toward wholeness, is as fundamental a process to humans as phototropism and geotropism are to plants? Why fight it?

This idea got me to thinking about the little bit of shamanic journeying I did back in the ‘90s with guys like Michael Harner. In shamanism, your drum is the horse you ride into the shamanic journey. I think writing and photography can be shaman’s drums as well, leading one into new ways of seeing the world. I see photography as being more primal than writing since images are its language, but I think rational writing can complement the primal art of seeing—and one of these days I hope to figure out how to do that.

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Season's Turning

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I usually count it a good year if there are waterfalls and mushrooms at the same time the bigleaf maples are turning yellow. Some years there isn't enough rain before all the leaves have fallen and turned brown.

Looking back at some shots from November 2013, I saw that High Marsh was completely dry. My wife and I hiked past there yesterday and found it full and croaky with Pacific treefrogs.

We hiked from Rock Spring to Barth's Retreat via the Simmons Trail, then made the short connection east to Potrero Meadow to pick up the Kent Trail down to High Marsh. Dodging newts along the High Marsh Trail we eventually reached Bare Knoll where we took in the spectacular view and stopped for a snack before continuing to Cataract Falls (down considerably since my last visit), then looping back up to Rock Spring.

As we hiked past the bigleaf maples above Cataract Falls yesterday I knew I wanted to return to poke around with my camera today. I was lucky to find the West Ridgecrest gate open when I arrived at Rock Spring a little past 7 a.m., so I drove out to the parking area above Laurel Dell to save myself some hiking time.

Little or no rain in the forecast, so I figured I'd better not try to wait a week.

I don't usually go out of the city twice on a weekend, but this was a rough week. Two doses of Mt. Tam seemed like a minimum treatment to prepare me for the coming workweek, to getting back to the so-called real world, where the majority does not rule and where the most surreal politician in my life just got handed the keys to the Oval Office which I'm sure he's eager to take for a joy ride.

It's going to be an interesting cycle in the life of our country.

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Integral Photography, Pt. 2

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The day after I finished reading Ken Wilber’s Intergral Psychology, and despite the fact that it was a Sunday, the mail carrier brought me another book, Integral Ecology, which weighs in at about 800 pages. Obviously, the “integral” idea can be applied to different fields of endeavor, so I got to thinking about its application to photography. (Integral yoga, which started this line of thought, was an early 20th century invention of Sri Aurobindo, whose ultimate spiritual awakening occurred while he was in prison.)

The integral in photography would be the finished photograph, a structured combination of compositional elements (which includes not just things, but tonal and textural values, etc.). In nature photography, the compositional elements can be intricately diverse, and it’s the photographer’s task to unite those diverse elements into an image that works.

One of the key principles of the integral idea seems to be unifying what Wilber calls the “Big Three,” which are Aesthetics, Ethics and Science. So in the process of bringing compositional elements into focus, an integral approach to photography would combine all three. Aesthetically, we decide what to include in our composition. Ethically, we decide against harming our subject or telling a significant lie about it (no image is the thing itself, so small lies or truth-bending for the sake of aesthetics is inevitable). Scientifically, it certainly helps in nature photography to know your subject, but even more simply, it helps to know your equipment.

I'm not suggesting we try to shoehorn the practice of photography into any kind of philosophical or practical framework, but it can be interesting when a seemingly random puzzle piece actually fits the picture.

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Integral Photography

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I heard a weird noise when I got out of my car in the Sunset Point parking area. I thought the radiator fan might still be running, but that didn't check out. Then I thought there was a huge bee's nest in the ground in front of the car, but that didn't pan out either. I finally looked up in the sky and there it was, a drone. I can only hope it's not the beginning of a trend up there.

Before heading up the mountain I made a quick check at Redwood Creek down near Muir Woods. The water's probably still too low to entice any salmon upstream.

I read another interesting book over the last couple of days, called Integral Psychology by Ken Wilber. I like his idea of nesting stages of growth for human consciousness, where each successive stage integrates a broader, deeper, more conscious outlook on the world. Unfortunately, like a flower that doesn't quite unfurl properly, a person's consciousness can also hit roadblocks and dissociate instead of integrate, and thereby leave some aspect of potential growth behind.

Childhood dissociations are probably fairly common and can lead to lifelong debilities and constrictions of one's true nature. The good news is those dissociated aspects can be retrieved and integrated in adulthood, even as new growth stages continue to unfold throughout one's life, offering opportunities for renewal even in old age.

So here's to getting older and expanding my consciousness, not my waistband.

I could probably have spent the whole morning doing photography in one small area. There were so many mushrooms popping up that the composition possibilities were endless.

I wondered if this fly was feeding on the spores inside the puffball since the hole that opens up to release spores is right about where the fly is.

But I think the fly was just perched, not feeding.

I ended up hiking a short loop off the Cataract Trail, following a deer trail uphill and into more woods.

It didn't rain at all, but it was quite drippy under the forest canopy, though not so bad that I needed my umbrella. I just had to be careful not to get drops on the lens.

I headed out to a magical Bolinas Ridge vista point just to take it in, then had to jog back to the car to get my camera. I don't think I'd been out that way in a long time. It was good to see a little bit of green grass starting to come in.

Out near Druid Rocks I got to thinking about Wilber's model of integral psychology and wondered if reconnecting with and integrating the lost parts of one's true nature and continuing to open up to new layers of consciousness might be reflected in someone's art. You probably can't separate the two, since you'd be growing as an artist right along with other aspects of your life. I guess we just have to keep all the channels open and the energy flowing, and see what happens. 

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Mt. Tam O'Shanter

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The wind blew as if it had blown its last;
The rattling showers rose on the blast;
The speedy gleams the darkness swallowed,
Loud, deep and long the thunder bellowed:
That night, a child might understand,
The Devil had business on his hand.

Before him the river Doon pours all his floods;
The doubling storm roars throught the woods;
The lightning flashes from pole to pole;
Nearer and more near the thunder rolls;
When, glimmering through the groaning trees,
Alloway’s Church seemed in a blaze,
Through every gap , light beams were glancing,
And loud resounded mirth and dancing.

Warlocks and witches in a dance:
No cotillion, brand new from France,
But hornpipes, jigs, strathspeys, and reels,
Put life and mettle in their heels.
In a window alcove in the east,
There sat Old Nick, in shape of beast;
A shaggy dog, black, grim, and large,
To give them music was his charge.

(excerpted from the Robert Burns poem)

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Cataract Falls

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The water's flowing nicely in Cataract Creek. It was raining when I set out down the trail, and I took a leisurely stroll along the creek, taking in the refreshing sights and sounds of the rainy season's arrival.

With nothing to hinder me, I flowed with the water.

Every now and then something would catch my eye. I took a lot of photographs that didn't make the cut. I just liked being out there so much I didn't want to rush.

Unfortunately I forgot to bring any food or water. I drank from the creek a couple of times, but I sure wished I'd remembered to bring a snack bar or something. I decided to go no further than Upper Cataract Falls. I'd somehow spent about three hours getting there. It took about a half hour to return to my car.

Quite a few people were on the trail, trailing kids and dogs and friends and family members. Everybody head-to-toe in rain gear. I should say almost everybody. One young man was hiking with no shirt on, feeling his oats. A couple young ladies had me take their picture with a phone camera down here at the base of the falls, then they leaped across the creek and scrambled up the slick rocks to the top of the falls. The season is autumn, but the rain brings everyone back to life. Standing at the fence near the base of the falls, the scent of bay laurel was sweet in the air.

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Contentment

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Back in my Navy days, when I was 18-22 years old, my best friend and I read a lot of Hemingway. We wanted to be world travelers and great lovers and suck the marrow of life. Our nemesis: contentment. To be content was to be marrow-less and inert. Fast-forward to middle age, and one day I realize I am content. Dammit.

I was content--but not really. I still had a hankering for adventure. Not climbing Mt. Everest or anything. Maybe get married. Take vows and keep them. Get a more meaningful job and stick with it through thick and thin. Enforce a modicum of physical toughness by getting regular exercise and eating right. Start a blog and keep at it even when you think you're running out of steam. Stuff like that.

Sometimes you have to put energy into the system to break out of the rut of contentment. Sometimes energy comes into the system from the outside, from the demands of work or marriage or what have you. Either way, life has a way of kicking contentment's ass, and when that happens, when we insist on keeping our contentment, the result is depression and other nasty afflictions of one's spirit.

So I was thinking about this stuff as I was biking home from work last night, and I realized I had a photo from last Sunday's outing to Mt. Tam that I could turn into a kind of kid's story about contentment. It all starts with a seed.

The seed drops out of the bay laurel tree and bounces when it hits the ground. It bounces into a little depression on a big rock. It thinks how nice this little bed is, and it lives like that for a couple of months before it feels a stirring within. WTF? it asks. (Hey, I said "kind of" a kid's story!) The little peppernut likes things just the way they are, so nice and comfy. But then the winter rains come, and the peppernut thinks it's going crazy for a minute. Something weird is happening! Over the next couple of days, a little root comes out and burrows into the little bed of dirt. The peppernut stands up on its root and says woohoo! It likes the view. A couple of cotyledons pop out, and of course as time goes on, the peppernut goes from seedling, to sapling, to full-grown tree making flowers and peppernuts of its own.

By this time it has given up on contentment. For one thing, it lives on a rock! All those bay laurels in their thick juicy soil have it so easy! Okay, they have problems of their own, but none of them had to make it while living on a rock. Living on a rock made growing up a lot harder, and it took a lot longer. Sadly, many peppernuts that land on a rock don't get to grow up into a flowering tree at all.

So tip your hat the next time you walk past a bay laurel growing out of a rock. We're in this wild world together, after all. It's fine to rest on your laurels, but you don't want to rot there.

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Choice

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They used to say humans are the only animals who use tools. Then someone noticed monkeys using tools and even ravens using tools. I haven’t kept up with all the animals that have been discovered to use tools, but I often think about the underlying question of what basic attributes set us apart as human beings. Until recently, everything that occurred to me fell short. Other animals think and learn and remember, and they feel pain and pleasure and emotion, and so on.

Then I wondered if humans are the only creature that can be honorable or dishonorable. Many animals can be cunning, but it seems to me their cunning is in the service of their true nature. A wolf doesn’t wear sheep’s clothing, but it probably would if it ever became as clever as a human. You’d never need to ask an animal what its code of honor is. I’d like to ask our presidential candidates what their code of honor is. What are the top three to five ideals they have lived by? Do they have a history of working for public benefit or private gain? Can they make a joke at their own expense or do they make jokes about others? Do they take responsibility for their mistakes or do they make excuses and rationalizations?

At around 7:45 this morning I heard a sudden loud holler come from the woods across the way. I was on Bolinas Ridge at the Serpentine Power Point and looked north to see where the noise had come from. The shout was so loud that I thought there must be a rambunctious hiker on the Cataract Trail. But as the sound sank into my brain cogs for further processing I realized the sound had come from a coyote. A couple minutes later the coyote howled again—and yes, I mean howled! It was soon answered by other coyotes with howls, barks, yips and whatever other sounds coyotes make. Icing on the cake of a gorgeous morning.

I thought of another potentially distinct human trait. Humans feel shame. Many years ago, I took an emergency medical technician class where one of the EMT instructors told us that sometimes people who choke on their food, even in a crowded restaurant, are found to have wandered off and quietly choked to death. The EMT said some people feel ashamed to have food stuck in their craw, so they go off by themselves to try to cough up the offending chunk, only to asphyxiate and die alone in a stairwell or restroom stall.

I suspect there is no such thing as a wild coyote that feels shame. I’ve seen dogs that appeared to feel shame, but I figure it was humans who did that to the dog. So, perhaps humans aren’t the only animals that feel shame. But they might be the only animals that inflict it.

Being honorable and dishonorable, bestowing praise and inflicting shame—these are probably uniquely human traits. Part of our true nature. But maybe at an even more fundamental level, humans are the only animals that face such dichotomies in their lives, and are therefore the only animals with the power to choose to act one way or the other.

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Invitation to Salmon

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The season's first rains are sending invitations to all the salmon waiting in the deeps off Muir Beach. Redwood Creek has cut through the sandbar and is riffling into the sea. I didn't see any salmon trying to make a dash for it on Sunday morning, but the tide was still too low to fully connect creek to ocean. When it gets higher, who knows? 

I seem to miss the brief spawning season almost every year, but I'll never forget one crazy morning, probably 25 years ago, when I saw several salmon heading upstream to spawn in Redwood Creek, way up in the back where Muir Woods and Mt. Tam State Park share a boundary. At one point the salmon had to jump up out of the creek and into the mouth of a metal conduit pipe where the water was shooting out like a fire hose, then go-go-go to get through to the other side and back into the less insane, but still fast-moving creek.

Right here is where Redwood Creek meets the Pacific Ocean. Many hundreds of years ago, long before Sir Francis Drake sailed the Golden Hind past these shrouded shores, young Coast Miwok probably stood right here, or at least very close to here, during the season's first rains, knowing that bounty from the sea was on its way. Of course, the sands of time have no doubt shifted over the years--and there aren't any more grizzlies lurking in the willow thickets--but Redwood Creek has for centuries poured down from Mt. Tamalpais and flowed through Muir Woods and Frank's Valley out to Muir Beach. In the dry season the creek would disappear into the sand before it reached the ocean, just as it does today, and anyone today can still see that it must have been a time for celebration when that sandy dam was breached by the season's first rains.

I drove a short way up Frank's Valley to check the creek where it flows under this old wooden bridge. The railings are covered with lichen, and when a lady jogged across it, the whole thing bounced and swayed. The creek was slowly gurgling along, still quite shallow and clear, not yet singing the song of migrating fish: the splashing of coho as they muscle their red and silver bodies past all obstacles to an apotheosis deep in the forest among towering redwoods, bright ferns and scarlet waxy caps.

An ultramarathon was being run that morning, with the finish line at Muir Beach. Years ago I was out doing photography in the rain, high on a ridge above Tennessee Valley, thinking I had the place completely to myself, when this guy with huge, muscular thighs came bounding up the trail, hardly even breathing hard, running a 50K.

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Simulation

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"Many people in Silicon Valley have become obsessed with the simulation hypothesis, the argument that what we experience as reality is in fact fabricated in a computer; two tech billionaires have gone so far as to secretly engage scientists to work on breaking us out of the simulation."

--Tad Friend, from the article Adding a Zero in the 10/10/16 issue of The New Yorker

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In my opinion as a non-billionaire nature guy, the "simulation hypothesis" mentioned above is a good sign. It means the hyper-rational, hyper-materialistic worldview that's been building for three hundred years or so is about to implode in a glorious reductio ad absurdum. On the other hand, perhaps the four river otters I saw feeding and playing in this stretch of Lagunitas Creek, where it empties into Tomales Bay, were secretly engaged in espionage for the great programmer in the sky.

Not that I think the tech billionaires are entirely wrong, mind you. I think it's more a matter of perspective, or even language. If a young man who eats, drinks and defecates code senses that his life is a simulation, it could seem reasonable in his mind that a computer is behind that sensation. In a sense, he is right. The computer that's behind the simulation he senses is implanted in his own brain. In alchemy, they call that the uroboros, the snake that swallows its own tail.  

I wonder if I could get some kind of reward for straightening them out. At least one of those guys is bound to figure it out sooner or later, assuming they don't just leave the thinking to someone else. I mean, in that case, forget it. How would they know the hired scientists aren't just working for The Man?

I would recommend those two tech billionaires take the red pill, like the ones all over this rose bush. You can't hire scientists to plumb the depths of The Matrix for you. You have to go yourself.

In the end, we're not just bits of computer code. We are objects bathed in light.

I believe we are born with a tendency toward expanding our awareness, our consciousness. Most take the blue pill and live in the simulation. A few take the red pill, or are given it without their knowledge, only to end up getting hacked before they reach the bottom of the rabbit hole. 

Meanwhile, a California bay laurel holds the world together with its roots and its branches.

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