Cambio & Conexión: What We Get is What We See & What We See Is What We Are

[Randy Eady]

Folklorically said to improve vision on many dimensional levels, Amaranth plant is a resistant, fast-growing pseudocereal used as the main crop by the Aztecs in Mexico and cultivated by other Caribbean & Mesoamerican civilizations.

Connection is the most essential human trait (and one bound to and expressed by Nature) – it determines our behavior and our level of well-being.

Cruelty, in the most felt manifestation, is generally the result of a sense of disconnection, while “goodness” always stems from some form of connectivity.

Unfortunately, the most disconnected people often are the ones gravitating to positions of power, which leads to “pathocracy,” the most common form of government during the 20th century. Disconnected societies manifest along patriarchal lines and treasure hierarchy while cherishing war, conflict and conquest. 

 

Connected societies are egalitarian, democratic and, while not always harmonious, are peaceful. We can measure both social progress and personal development in terms of how far we move along a continuum of connection.

At the most essential level, we are always interconnected. Altruism and spirituality are the felt and lived experiences of our fundamental connection. Regaining awareness of our spiritual firmament is the only way by which we can live in harmony with ourselves, one another, and the world itself.

Yet is a diatribe about mystical experiences akin to “sending a kiss by email”? Is there a way to abstractly wrap our hands around communicating such experiences, and making attempts to rationally or scientifically explain mystical states? How would we categorize or sort out what experiences count as “mystical?” 

 

Of the variety of such experiences, how can they be explained? Only on physiological and psychological grounds?  Or is there a transcendent reality contacted during mystical experiences? If transcendent, how does this reality appear, and how different is it to different people? 

 

Even more so how are such experiences described if they are ineffable? And what difference might there be between a mystical experience and the ordinary experience of our everyday world?

 

Scholars across disciplines observe while esotericism and mysticism seem inextricably linked and experienced – both revolve around a perceptual field of cyclical approval and disapproval that is a harbinger of spiritual shift and change.

 

Mysticism seemingly (and foundationally) embedded with the spiritually esoteric, as such, comprises a key facet of religion, along with informing the highest agencies (we can perceive) in how social, cultural, intellectual, and artistic creations signify these changes.