"Culture is not your friend, no matter what your culture is. And this is sort of not a Politically Correct thing to say, because in the present ambience, (sort of, those who haven't gotten the word) there's a lot of attention to recovering our ethnic roots and to expressing our unique ethnicity, and so forth and so on -- I think that's the beginning of understanding. But all terms that stress ethnicity are words applied to groups of people. Have you ever noticed that? Have you ever noticed that you're not a group of people, you're a person? So you may be "Jewish", you may be "Black", you may be this, you may be that but there is no obligation to take upon yourself the generalized quality of these things, because the generalized qualities belong to thousands of people examined at a time. If you misunderstand that you become a caricature. You act out your ethnicity as a caricature.
So culture is not your friend, ideology is not your friend... Who's your friend? Well, to my mind, the felt presence of immediate experience is the surest dimension, the surest guide that you can possibly have. The felt presence of immediate experience. Feeling is primary. All rationalization and intellectualization and analysis is secondary, and comes out of culture. No matter what your culture is, it has answers. Cultures thinks up answers. So a child asks its mother a question, like, "Where do we go when we die?" or, "Why does Daddy go to work?" Cultural answers are always provided, but nobody knows the real answers to these questions -- that's outside of culture. So coming to terms and fully expressing your culture is like a stage in development. And then beyond that lies the aspiration of the felt presence of immediate experience, and its implications. It's a very hard thing to deal with and to do when you are poisoned with ideology. And ideologies are very difficult to deconstruct and rid yourself of through a simple talking therapy of some sort, through simply trying to work it out. The best antidote for ideology is to raise the intensity of the felt presence of experience to such excruciating levels that it simply vaporizes ideological illusion. And this is what psychedelics are for, I think. And it also explains (if you've ever wondered) the incredible phobia of these things on the part of the establishment, the incredibly deep alarm that these things trigger in people" - Terence McKenna http://www.salvia-divinorum-scotland.co.uk/quotes/mckenna/cultureisnotyourfriend.htm What do you think? -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups ""Minds Eye"" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/minds-eye?hl=en.
