MEDITATION: Welcome to the Party
INTERACTIVE: Three Views of Reality
OK, for this weekly instalment of our monthly exploration of devotion, we’re going to explore what it means to be goo-goo ga-ga in love with the hottest sexiest meanest and most ass-kicking entity in all of reality – that is, reality itself, aka the existential wrapper thing that you, me, and everyone seems to find themselves inside, now and always, for reality just keeps on being real. What could it mean not just to love this beastie, but also to treat “it” as both intelligent and in constant communication with us? Can one have such a view without being committed to an asylum, or being roundly mocked by your boring social scientist friends? Maybe, maybe not.
We begin with a simple welcoming meditation to set the mood, then for part two, we’ll imagine ourselves into three very different conditions: a “spiritual” condition of experiencing ourselves as living in an inherently meaningful magical world, a “rational-humanist” condition of experiencing the world as a largely indifferent clockwork, where meaning is something we must find and create for ourselves, and finally an agnostic condition of having no idea how the world really is, but living inside our humble not-knowing anyway! Forget what you really believe – in this practice you get to explore believing all three, one after another, so you can see for yourselves what gifts – and challenges – each offers up for your particular temperament.
And then, of course, we make a robot dance party.