On BBC Radio 3
Hitomi and I have been interviewed regarding dreams and their relationship with reality.
Our answers have been featured on a Behind The Ears Programme for BBC Radio 3.
Hitomi and I have been interviewed regarding dreams and their relationship with reality.
Our answers have been featured on a Behind The Ears Programme for BBC Radio 3.
All throughout my life I have been able to look at people and see amazing and unique powers that they seem to be mostly unaware of, or they seem to be using them (or be used by them) in unconscious and distorted ways.
Almost everyone had a bit of unrecognized and alienated super-man or super-woman in themselves, almost tired of trying to come out, locked in the prison of a – more or less – dull but socially acceptable identity.
The conflict between the true self and social self is not something new in the world of psychology, but it is a most unknown topic to the public at large.
In ancient days, rites of passage were employed to awaken individuals to their true nature. This led to the death of the child identity, in order for the true self of an adult being to emerge.
In today’s consumer society we have many people going around with no clue of who they are, focused on protecting their infantile social self that never got a chance to develop and accommodate their true identity.
This is why truly great people are a thing of the past, and instead we celebrate and worship the mediocrity of celebrity and politicians.
At the same time, everyone on this planet has the potential to be a great man or woman, including yourself. Yes, you! You have it in you and probably it has been crying to come out for a long time now.
In the Japanese comedy movie ‘Survive Style 5’, Vinnie Jones plays a psychotic hired killer. He tends to ask pretty much everyone he meets – including a piece of broccoli – one question: “Whot is your purpose in loife?”.
He really gets mad and violent when the answer does not reflect the truth of that person, and/or if that person is wasting their life away.
If you were confronted by this fictional character, knowing fully well that you have no control over what he may do next, and that you are already as good as dead, what would your answer be?
Nobody can tell you the truth about yourself. But through exploratory interaction with technology such as ours, you may find cracks in the shell of untruth. This may open the way for looking at yourself, your life, work, and relationships from a more flexible perspective than you were used to. Eventually your truth will emerge from within, as this shell of untruth gets cracked open more and more until it falls out completely.
To better understand the concept of know thyself, imagine a world, very much like ours, with the only difference being that nobody knows how to walk. Walking has not been invented yet, and everyone just crawls. People in this world have normal bodies like everyone else in the our world, but they have discovered and perfected crawling technology before figuring out how to naturally get on two feet and walk.
Therefore, in this technologically advanced civilization, from an early age, people are connected with advanced robotic devices that make them crawl around comfortably. All lifestyle, art and commerce are build around the fact that crawling is the only way to move around.
Imagine being born in this world. Now imagine that at some point – as a child – you tried to reach some object and ended up walking a few steps. Then, next day you took few more steps and so on to the point that you were getting quite good at it. But then your aberrant behavior would have been strongly discouraged by your parents and your peers, so eventually you’d forget all about it, especially after getting your crawling prosthetics.
In this metaphorical scenario, to learn more about who you really are and what your power is would mean to remember your walking experience as a child, to own it and to develop it into a full walking ability. This, in turn, will inspire others and possibly, if the world is ready, will lead to a change in the world.
Now try to expand the notion of walking to other things. Here are some examples, please feel free to add more. The list is infinite, and many unique abilities can emerge through combination of basic ones.
It is not something you normally think of, but Science has came about because of human’s wonder and awe of nature. You can almost imagine one of our ancestors on a sea shore (or mountain ridge) watching transfixed the sun setting over the horizon and thinking ‘I want to know, to understand, to become a creator in this magnificent spectacle’.
Of course there will be those who say that it came out of the need to survive. Nothing could be further from truth. The scientists of even not so long ago, in the 18th and 19th century were calling themselves ‘natural philosophers’ and usually they were affluent enough not to have to work for a living. This gave them plenty of time to study nature and do what we now call ‘science’. The term scientist was used to designate a working class person and it was for those doing the lab assistant job.
Fast forward to the modern day… and the scientists are still here. But the natural philosophers (or “men and women of science” as they also called themselves) seem to have become an endangered species. This may be because the financial and industrial interests who later started dictating what will be researched or not, have not been interested in the bigger picture and the good of all, but just their own. As such they only needed executors. Intelligence, but not wisdom.
A similar process has happened with the value system of our society, our education, and ultimately with ourselves. We became smarter, but not wiser. Wisdom, imagination, true creativity (as opposed to ‘commercial creativity’) has been relegated to the subconscious, taking a far second place to using our wit for the pursue of material wealth.
And where has this led us to? A world in crisis, a social system in agony, continuously trying to fix what can’t be fixed anymore.
The solution is simple. Let go of the old. Try to see the truth, the bigger picture.
The wisdom is there, in everyone of us, even though we forgot how to get in touch with it.
Going into the subconscious to reclaim our truth and our solutions for the future – can be difficult, but it is possible. All that is needed is honest intention, and being open to receive.
There are also many tools that can facilitate this process. Traditional tools like Mindfulness Meditation and Yoga, martial arts like Tai-Chi and Aikido, and others.
The tools we create at Technosophics use computer/mobile technology for this purpose, and do not require any difficult practice or special environment. They are for everyday people leading everyday lives.
Dream-e made it into the Top 5 – paid apps on Amazon.com, in the Lifestyle – category.
I was on my way home from a late night dinner with my friends while I was in Japan back in March. The train hit someone at a platform, and we were trapped in the train for about 40min until they sorted out the accident, the police arrived, etc.
It was hot and muggy inside the train and I was getting thirsty. I was also really regretting that I hadn’t hear ‘the little voice’ in me earlier that day. Before I left my work place to go to the dinner, I was pouring some water into my small water bottle. I only filled it half way, not wanting to carry a heavy bottle, thinking ‘I’ll be able to get some water at the restaurant, then I’ll be well on my way home .’
At that moment, a rather clear voice came into my ear, or so it felt like; ‘you might have an unexpected situation. Fill up the bottle!.’
The voice I heard was what is called ‘intuition’. These voices are trying to reach us all the time, but it gets muffled by the voice of the mind / reason (like it happened to me), or negative emotions such as fear. I knew about the importance of listening to such voices, but this little incident was a sign that I should be more serious about it.
Your body also holds wisdom and information that your mind cannot capture. For example, if you are not sure about a project, a place, or a person, try closing your eyes, make your mind blank for a moment, and pretend that your body is a pendulum. Notice the slightest tendency of your body. If it moves forward, it’s a Go. If it moves backwards as if retreating, it’s a No. You might also feel expansive or warm in your body if something is good for you, and when your body contracts or you feel a bit sick, you will know that it’s not good for you. Of course it’s up to you to also value your mind’s opinion and negotiate between the two.
Listening to the body in the end allowed me to come home safely after they finally let us out of the train — I had to make a couple of more choices rather quickly, as I missed the last train on my normal route.
What I experienced is not such a big thing compared to difficult situations people are experiencing nowadays. It’s as if we are constantly in the unknown and we cannot rely on the knowledge from the past so much anymore. In a way, the urban life has become like a life in a jungle. I’d say it’s worth it to start bringing awareness to our intuition and reviving and sharpening our ‘animal instinct’
It is said that a big astrological event happened on Feb 4th this year, i.e. Neptune entered into Pisces. I don’t know much about astrology unfortunately, but my understanding is that for the next 14 years, themes such as spirituality, dreams, healing of soul, art, religious feeling, etc. will be coming more and more to the foreground in our awareness.
Many of you may have already noticed this tendency in the past few years. My feeling is that we will see an increasing number of business organizations, individuals and groups that feature all kinds of ‘spiritual stuff’ of both good and poor qualities so that each of us need much discernment in order to sift through them.
One of my teachers, whom I regard as practicing ‘well-grounded spirituality’ said the other day something that left me with an impression. According to him, we are in a phase where we have to wrestle with all the seemingly negative things in ourselves, tasks we haven’t completed, emotions, our shadow parts, etc.; that going through such process may feel heavy and make us feel as though we’ve gone backwards on our spiritual paths. However, actually, working on such things as well as dealing with everyday tasks such as cleaning and cooking, ARE in fact spiritual. The last part actually reminded me of zen teaching that includes everyday chores as integral parts of its spiritual practice.
Speaking of shadow parts, for the past week, so many people around me have been telling me about nightmares and nightmarish experiences they’d had (actually almost on the same day) and wanted to know what they might mean. For almost all of them, one of the background messages of such dreams and experiences seemed to be ‘to get in touch with the power behind what they regard as something negative and scary, and to use it wisely.’ As we enter this new phase, you may find the messages and information that we need for our personal and spiritual growth are knocking on our doors louder than ever before through dreams, synchronicities and daily encounters. We are often afraid of what may be standing behind the door, but you may be in for a pleasant surprise when you actually open it.
In my opinion, who you are is not your personality, or what you think about yourself.
In order to know who you are you have to expand your current identity to integrate your subconscious or unconscious potential, those parts of you that you may not be very aware of.
At Technosophics we focus on this ‘digging’ into the subconscious in creative ways, to bring up and integrate these disowned parts of ourselves. Then, by giving them a voice and a role in our lives, we can achieve a more authentic, more rich existence.