The Emerald

For 98% of human history, 99.9% of our ancestors lived, breathed, and interacted with a world that they saw and felt to be animate. Imbued with lifeforce. Inhabited by and permeated with forces, with which we exist in ongoing relation. This animate vision was the water in which we swam, it was consciousness in its natural dwelling place, the normative way of seeing the world and our place in it. It wasn’t a theory, a philosophy, or an idea. It wasn’t, actually, an -ism. It was felt experience. It was, simply, how things were. Which is why it has been commonly understood across the entire world for all of time.

Spontaneous expressions of gratitude on this Thanksgiving Day, and a look at the role that gratitude plays in consciousness, community, and cosmos. 

Light, within nature, has always drawn us in, held our attention, and revealed marvels through its variegated displays.  Coleridge said that the “eye is to light like lover to the beloved.” Light and human attention share a very deep relationship. And with our attention increasingly drawn towards a luminous focal point that is manufactured, it becomes more and more difficult to experience something essential that exists in the meeting point between us and the light of nature around us. This meeting point has been envisioned as a place of revelation, of germination, of ideation,  and as the home of the imaginal itself.  At this meeting point,  the architectures and harmonies of nature reveal themselves to us and we see right into our own relationship with ourselves, each other, and the world — and so it informs our perceptions of truth, ecology, art, beauty, harmony, and justice. All in that little place where the light of our attention meets the light of the natural world. 

Who remembers Medusa? Hair of snakes, gaze that can turn to stone, beheaded by Perseus… that Medusa. She's in the news again, because a sculptor has re-imagined the story of Perseus and Medusa as a tribute to the #MeToo movement — and this time, Medusa's the one doing the beheading. Some have embraced this re-telling, but the founder of #MeToo has spoken out strongly against it, saying that #MeToo isn't about vengeance or simply 'turning the tables.' Lost in the current dialogue is the sacred place that Medusa actually holds in the original myth. The original myth is not about Medusa 'losing' and Perseus 'winning.' Like so many myths, the story of Medusa is about deep cycles of nature, sacrifice and regeneration, and in these myths the place of the 'slain one' — whether Medusa, or Vrtra, or Ouranos, or Ulu — is the heart of the myth. In this episode we dive into the story of Medusa and find her original power as the slain-creatrix, the primordial goddess herself, who through her unending involutions leads us to eternity. And we explore how when myths are bent to fit modern narratives about punitive justice and socio-political issues, we lose out on the beating, animate heart of myth, which, like nature itself, doesn't always fit into neat boxes. 

The defining characteristic of the postmodern capitalist world is a cycle of decontextualization for the sake of monetization. It happens everywhere — with the products we buy, the food in our grocery stores, and the spiritual traditions we import from other lands. Modern Yogic and Buddhist practices have been removed from the deep context of their original practice — and often what is lost in the process is the living, breathing, animist heart of tradition. This episode explores how consciousness naturally exists in context — mythic, animate, communal, and cosmic — and looks at the consequences of this deep loss of context on our minds and our world. 

Conspiracy theories abound these days. The Yoga and wellness communities have come under fire for being particularly prone to indulging these theories. Yet the teachings of Yoga ask us ultimately to look deeply at the difference between focused presence and spiraling mental agitation. This is how, in indulging conspiratorial world views, the yoga world is overlooking a profound treasure that lives at its very core. For right at the heart of yogic teaching is perhaps the greatest conspiracy of all — a conspiracy that resurfaces throughout the ages in traditions everywhere. The ability of the the individual to find freedom from panicked reactive thought and find peace and presence here and now. Through this inner work comes the agency that the conspiracy theorists so deeply crave — the agency to find center, and act from a place of focus to navigate chaotic seas effectively.

Honey was revered across the ancient world — found in Egyptian tombs and Chinese apothecaries and referred to glowingly in ancient Sumerian medical texts. The myths and stories that come to us from the ancient world are soaked in honey. Honey is certainly a remarkable substance. But is that enough to explain the presence of liquid nectar in myth upon myth upon myth? There are strange commonalities in the myths and stories about nectar and honey. The association of honey and immortality. The descriptions of cascades or rivers of honey or nectar. Honey described as luminous dew. Associations of honey with rapture and prophecy. Associations of honey with sound and with particularly effulgent qualities of light. When we delve into the myths and stories, we find that the prevalence of liquid nectar in myth can only lead to the conclusion that the honey being spoken of is experiential — it is a nectar of felt experience. Specifically, the nectar of heightened awareness, of trance. Today on the podcast, we steep in the honeys of consciousness, and find a common vision of luminous, sonorous liquid that pervades mystic discourse around the world.

Human beings have a complicated relationship with want. For some traditions, desire, want, or longing sits right at the heart of creation itself, providing the spark that sets the universe in motion, and is inherent to what it means to be human. Yet unchecked want has also resulted in untold suffering for people and planet. Renunciate traditions have put forth practices and philosophies designed to get rid of the want altogether. But is getting rid of want even possible? Is longing inextricably part of the fabric of reality, and to deny it is to deny existence itself? In times like these when we face unprecedented global crises, perhaps we need to harness this primal want in service of life and nature rather than deny it.  In this episode we follow the fascinating history of one Sanskrit word — Kāma, desire, longing — in order to shed light on humanity's intricate relationship with want, ultimately finding ourselves at the feet of the Goddess of Longing herself, whose temple and traditions speak to a universe that is built upon a deep substrate of longing, and who encourages us to harness longing rather than deny it. 

These are mythic times. And what are we called to do in mythic times? What is the deep mythic transformation we are seeking? Often the mythic journey requires something very simple of us. Often, it asks us to cultivate the simple acts of paying attention and remembering. Remembering, in a chaotic age, who we are and what we want, what we truly long for. This episode of The Emerald draws upon the bhakti — or devotional — traditions of India and their profound relationship with longing to explore the idea that what we are longing for is to enact the cycle of longing itself. That we are wired as humans to enact cycles of longing, crisis, and release, and if we don't find ways to internally enact this cycle through ritualized longing, we enact it through the urgencies and crises of the external world. Steeped in fairy tales and the devotional songs of longing and monsoons, this episode seeks to rekindle a loving relationship with the world, a relationship from which ultimately profound change will come.

Wonder of wonders, words have started arriving for my 13-month old son! Their arrival is a deep reminder that words are more than detached concepts — they are somatic, they invoke, they carry with them the power and potential of transformational magic. Speech, or voice, in the Vedic vision is the goddess herself, and poetic discourse is a river whose ultimate promise is to allow us to 'step in tune with being', or to 'find the angel' that lives between us and another.  Yet these days we are inundated with millions upon millions of words, words that live removed from the somatic and communal context words once bore. And perhaps the further the word gets separated from its rapturous, somatic core — isolated and treated as a symbolic end unto itself rather than part of a continuum —  then the more public discourse, and even social movements themselves, become self-referential abstractions that are solely based on the shifting around of written words. Today on the podcast, we take a journey from the primordial deities of the word through Jay-Z and Rudolfo Anaya to understand the true transformative potential of words.