The Generals (FEEL-ANSWER)
Fructify Essential Elements of Living (FEEL):
- Breathing
- Sleeping
- Eating & Drinking
- Dreaming
- Walking
- Thinking
- Working & Playing
- Loving
This is a necessarily short list, since it consists of those things that we cannot not do (essentials, get it?). Thinking covers all sorts of imagining, conceptualization, meditation, and problem-solving. Loving may include sex for certain ages and periods of our life (Sex is essential for the continuation of the race but not, contrary to popular opinion, for the continuation of the individual). Strictly speaking, a person can exist without walking (my father did), but it is neither optimal nor natural to do so. I include it as a central means of being and connecting with Nature.
Connecting to Nature, within and without, is what all of these essentialities pertain to. While a human today can exist without working—as children and old people often do—it is only via a total dependence on others, and usually via the interventions of government, corporations, and technology. Nature itself will not support us until we do the necessary work to assist it in doing so. Working also includes forms of creativity that overlap with what we call play. For children, play is work (learning about the world), and for adults, work can (and ideally should) also be playful.
The goal of FEEL is to fructify, optimize and enhance the eight essential elements of living via the augmentation of awareness.
Contributions from Early FEEL-adopters
What I would like to explore and convey about essential elements of living: ways in which we can attend (give attention) with honesty and care as a means to freedom and understanding
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Living is family and community, it is shared skills and knowledge, creation and wealth.
Living is conflict and resolution, it is differences and sameness. There should always be places to hide should you so wish.
There should be places to be yourself without judgment however feeble or strong, clever or tired one is.
It is food, dancing, caring, fighting & competing (for fun & personal development), growing and enhancing.
You need to challenge people for them to learn and grow, you need to encourage and recognise abilities in people even if they don’t recognise them themselves, you need to encourage weak abilities if a person enjoys the fruit of theirs regardless how small.
You need to accept exceptionality and greatness and lean on it, support it and not find reasons to be envious of it.
Security and intimacy are a foundation stone; by security I mean safe from abhorrent harm within and outside.
And intimacy with oneself and a partner.
That is how you bless the world
Ancestral & Natural Sentience to Wholly Experience Reality (ANSWER)
This is trickier to formulate as it requires a subtle shift from the (self-evident) essentials of living to a hidden template for wholeness, health, and goodness that supports these behaviors and “raises them up” to a higher order of efficiency, purity, and wisdom. (We might call it the Old Earth Order.) There is an element of faith and imagination in making this leap from “animal” functionality to “angelic” purpose and design. (Note that all the eight EELs are shared by our animal brethren, with the possible exception of thinking.)
On the other hand, that there is an innate wisdom and intelligence in Nature, and that some forms of behavior are objectively healthier and more harmonious than others, is also somewhat self-evident. Yet it does depend on a willingness to let go of compulsive and automated behaviors that seem essential to us, because of generations of bad habits. These are the negative ancestral patterns that both result from and exacerbate a loss of sentience, a numbing and a clenching of the nervous system that is both accumulative and potentially a vicious circle.
Optimizing the eight EELs and thereby improving our experience of existence—learning how to fully live—centers around the body (ours) and its place within Nature, on the one hand (the present), and our own blood and ancestry, on the other (the past). This latter—since it corresponds with existence before we were born—“transcends” what we think of as Nature (physical reality) by encompassing the “mystical dimensions,” where “the dead” (including or especially our own ancestors) “reside.”
Strictly speaking, however, this is an error that is symptomatic of a lack of sentient awareness: we also exist physically in this other realm, even as the ancestors live on in our blood, flesh and bones. As long as we are insentient to this deeper aspect of our being, an element of faith and imagination is needed to bridge this gulf in our own awareness.
The goal of restoring ancestral and natural sentience to our lives is the goal of becoming embodied, which is to be fully aware of our existence on every level so that we can wholly experience reality as it is, and ourselves as we are. The enhancement of the eight essential elements of living—which Dave Oshana calls increasing goodness—is both a means and an end. As a process, it naturally and inevitably extends, not only inward and backward to the ancestors in our cells, but outward and forward to the lives, perceptions, and experiences of every sentient creature in existence, including those not yet born.
Contributions from early ANSWER-adopters:
Welcome to the oldest and strangest place in the universe: Your Body.
Welcome to Old Age Spirituality where you are invited into reality.
A place where you own your senses and can cut down veils to make new clothes.
Breath in to explore the history that is deep inside, breath out to release and let go.
ANSWER is a place for you to explore what you were never taught but have always known.
It is a place for food, for songs, companionship, learning and healing.
Explore and collaborate in the Galaxy of one, whist the world outside plays at space exploration.
ANSWER is a support network for those in rising tides and barren lands lost to the winds of change.
Hold out your hands and reach back in time with those who are ready to exit.
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Rough and drafty ANSWER Mission statement:
A constellation/network of channels, each channel created/led by an individual or group, offering content that embodies/reflects/projects/amplifies an inner light of authentic inquiry and/or discovery. Channels can offer a variety of topics, but all share a commitment to exploring/knowing the self through exploration of the subject matter.
Content offered should be meaningful to the presenter, and can comprise a major project in that person/group’s life, or be something profoundly mundane.
Ancestors? Not sure how ancestors fit in—maybe in the discovery of patterns/habitual behaviors, walking the railroad tracks.
The principals of Dave Oshana are exemplified and embodied by the approach to each project/topic, and made explicit by a channel specifically about the Enlightenment Transmission, its practices and bodywork.
The overarching theme is of letting go of habits and patterns that comprise the self by becoming aware of how these are physically embodied, and consciously releasing them.
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A space to explore, connect, and share experiences that will help one become aware of sensations and thoughts, both harmful and caring, that are always present, but seldom recognized.
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Being, one can’t fail to Become.
The Specifics (GRASS-HORSE)
Galician Restoration of Ancestral Sentience Settlement (GRASS)
Though most if not all of the work of FEEL-ANSWER is currently online, the goal, over time, is to move the focus away from technology and into a natural environment, to allow for the most essential element of all: direct interaction with other human beings in Nature. Simply put: it means getting back to our own natures by being together in Nature.
To this end, a property is currently being sought and developed in the region of Galicia, Spain, both as a living space for me, my wife, and cat, and a future retreat center for souls wishing to participate. The space will be selected and prepared to host at least 20 people for future retreats (plus space for camping in summer), while also allowing for the developing of neighboring properties and land, for participants who wish to join the project on a long-term, residential basis.
The overall purpose of the settlement is to establish a communal living space (not a commune) that will be somewhat along monastic lines, combined with rural farming that will include some, or even all, of the following:
- Mules (for transport)
- Bees (for honey and wax)
- Goats (for milk and cheese)
- Chickens (for eggs and meat)
- Fruit trees
- Trees for firewood
- Garden vegetables
The location should be close enough to a populated area for all the conveniences, as long as these hold up and while it is still practical to rely on them (i.e., until the full crackdown and/or zombie apocalypse). If we are lucky, I anticipate we have five years, during which the groundwork for self-sufficiency can be laid. Total self-sufficiency may not be necessary even in the event of a total collapse or military clampdown, however, as there are still tiny rural populations in Galicia that produce their own food for private consumption. Building good connections with the locals is central to the success of this enterprise. This work has already commenced.
The property should be far enough from neighbors (and their dogs) for tranquility and privacy, as well as not too close to any trafficked roads, pylons, or cell towers (though it will have electricity). Most likely, there will be no fibre optic internet or Wi-Fi coverage, which means relying on 4G satellite routers (as I am now). Although this means Wi-Fi, it also gives the advantage of being able to turn it off when not using it, such as during retreats, and thereby being in a Wi-Fi free area.
The centrality of this “grass-roots” practical project to the larger, more esoteric FEEL-ANSWER can be summed up with the term “Earth-Awareness,” which encompasses both our awareness of the Earth, and the Earth’s awareness of us. It is entirely directed towards and dependent on a making conscious of the invisible support of Nature, and of developing a living relationship with the sentient body of the Earth, thereby both receiving and returning its Love.
Some connective elements:
- Connecting to our ancestors entails connecting to their way of life, namely the eight EELs that have been consistent throughout our ancestry, all of which center around a working relationship with Nature, both inner and outer.
- Farming the land, raising animals, and the rural existence that makes a working relationship with Nature central to our survival and well-being is also consistent with how our ancestors lived, for thousands of years.
- Our ancestors live on in our blood and tissue, and are experienced by us (potentially) as a benignly guiding influence of inner sense (innocence), as sensations, impulses, desires, preferences, intuitions, and orientations that are intensified and optimized via a response-able relationship with Nature, namely, the awakening and refining of our natural instincts.
- Insofar as our ancestors’ bodies literally became part of the Earth when they died and were buried, their sentience (lived experience) lives on, not only in us but in the Earth itself. We might imagine it to be fused with the innate awareness of the planet.
- Connecting to the ancestors and connecting to the Earth is a single goal, therefore, with two mutually supporting elements. The more we tune into the residual sentience of the ancestors, in our bodies and the Earth, the more aware we become of our natures, the more the residual sentience of our ancestors can be restored. It can then guide us into FEEL: the fructifying of the eight essential elements of living.
- Workshops and human group interactivity, both online and in Nature (live-in retreats), will be dedicated to this single collaborative end: constellating the ancestral networks of sentient goodness, both inside our bodies and pasts, and outside, in our ongoing human relations, towards the future of a fully-restored human collective of sentient goodness.
Horsley-Oshana-Rudolf-Steiner-Ensemble (HORSE)
Lastly, the esoteric teachings that form the theoretical basis for much of this practice. This list is very provisional, and your suggestions and comments are welcome.
Essential Horsley Teachings:
Paranoid Awareness & the Second Matrix
Crucial Fictions, Traumagenesis, Dissociation & Disembodiment
Extra-Consensual Perception & Self-Deprogramming
Liminalism, Liberation through Radical Doubt
Exiting Hell: how to get the world out of you by being fully in the world.
Essential Oshana Teachings:
The Enlightenment Transmission
Embodiment & the Distribution of the Life Force
The False Identity, the Fascia & the Nervous System
The Ancestors & Human Interconnectivity
Restoring the Human Energy Field: Spreading Goodness via Blessings
Essential Rudolf Steiner Teachings:
The dead & the animal kingdom
The nerve endings & internal organs as gateway to the spiritual
Nature & the spirit world
The Angelic Influences
Christ, Golgotha, & the Sun
This area of activity is mostly for online work, articles, podcasts, discussions, and is geared towards a synthesis of knowledge meant to bridge different perspectives and groups: mine and Dave’s, and both with the much larger audience base of Rudolph Steiner, anthroposophy and, by extension, esotericism, occultism, and spirituality “at large” (you know, the world).
At the same time, insofar as these very different-flavored teachings, interpretations, and explorations can confirm, support, and recontextualize one another, the analysis may lead to synthesis, even symbiosis. Potentially, such a cross-fertilization of sensibilities might provide a means to look at the pickle we are choking on from multiple angles, the pickle being that of a self-destroying humanity, a planet caught in the crossfire between warring parts of the collective psyche. If we can become more conscious of the shape and size of what is stuck in our throat, and how it got there, we might just be able to relax and keep still long enough to receive the heavenly Heimlich maneuver.
TL;DR: Three heads are better than one: especially when the horse we are riding is taking us right into Cerberus’ lair.
Last up, what do I want from you, the now-over-and-through the 4th wall and into the play-ground percipient? In a word: input.
If you would like to participate in a group exploration for this project, spanning the spectrum from the deep esoterica of clearing out of all dark spots from the Human Energy Field via natural and ancestral restoration work, to giving feedback on actual properties being considered, just let me know and I will accommodate and incorporate your interest any way I can.
If you want to support this project financially, you can do so by requesting a 1:1 session with myself or simply offering a donation (preferably in euros via Transferwise, which I hear is changing its brand name to Wise this week).
If you want to come to Galicia and help with the renovations and bee-keeping, even better (though there are a number of preparatory rings of fire you must first pass through before edibility for this step).
If you want to help with outreach, creating media and bringing awareness to any of the various aspects of this project, awesome. Spreading the word is one of the most essential and difficult requirements for the success of the Grass Horse Feel Answer operation.
And so on. This is a work in progress, where it goes, depends on everyone involved, and together we may discover the exit from hell and the key to paradise. We may even discover that we are that exit and that key. But no single one of us holds the full answer.