In a time where neo-liberalism and science dictate how we are allowed to think, feel, speak, and move, our phenomenological realities have become restricted to the materialist, the evidence-based, the usefull, the efficient, and the appropriate. It has alienated us from alternative sources of knowledge, including (based on Braud, 1998):

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• proprioceptive and kinaesthetic information about one’s inner world, 

• bodily knowings

• tacit knowings

• intuitions

• a mode of knowing through being or becoming the object of one’s enquiry

• meditation & deep contemplation

• knowledge through silence and emptiness

• knowledge through various altered states of consciousness

• accessing one’s dreams

• using all faculties of the imagination

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Without access to these sources of knowledge, we can’t see reality but through the reductive lenses of the dominant external and internalised power structures. By limiting our access to this knowledge and judging it as not valid, contemporary neoliberal-scientific society suppresses the “imaginal”. 

 

The “imaginal” refers to an experiential world at the interstices between the empirical reality that comes to us through the senses, and the imaginary world that is a projection of our fantasy. In the middle lies a razor edge of real imagination, a potential expressions of a deep connection with reality that goes beyond the sensorial. It is the birthplace of dreams, visions, mystical experiences, collective experiential fields, and intuition. Prior to sense-making, expressed in a language of symbols and images, it gives access to true insights in ourselves and the world. Simultaneously real and unreal, fact and fiction.

 

At House of the beloved we propose to harness the conceptual mind’s full potential without succumbing to its dominance. To revel in our collective exploration and comprehension, without confining life to the boundaries of language or logical expression. Going beyond verbal truths, and instead, orchestrating events that reveal reality. Prioritizing shared practices over shared beliefs. Immersing ourselves so deeply in the intense experience of being alive that the pursuit of meaning naturally fades away. (Karen Armstrong, Joseph Campbell, Gilles Deleuze, Martin Heidegger, Abhinavagupta)

 

To open our mind in this way, requires a process of dying. To die means to let go of all qualifications, of all stories about yourself and the world. It makes fears and preferences become groundless, because without stories, nobody is there. It opens the gate for a deeper calling: that a life may be revealed through your body and mind. A skillful death brings life. You learn to live life dangerously: fearless and in complete surrender to love. And when you are finally summoned, pregnant with aliveness, you can fall backwards into Death’s warm embrace, fully satisfied and without regrets. (Jean Klein, Gilles Deleuze, Osho, Marie De Hennezel)

 

Ok, but how can I do this?