Shamanism for the Age of Science: Awakening the Energy Body - Kenneth Smith 2018
Conditional Energy Fields
Closing in on Fundamentalism
Fundamentalism is a type of behavior with common characteristics regardless of the context or setting. It results from a type of cohesion: specifically, a conditional energy field characterized by inflexibility.
When a number of facts are logically woven together, a picture of the world emerges, which might be a concept, theory, or entire world-view. In order for the picture to be useful, it needs to have a boundary, whether the size of its frame is small or vast. Therefore, closure—the aspect of perception that closes off a viewpoint—performs a vital role. However, when the picture is not only closed off but also placed inside an unventilated box, difficulties with learning and imagination arise. If we dismiss awareness of another model, perhaps one even more expansive, by confining it to the conditions of a smaller picture, then we suppress the new point of view. We then force all information to abide by the logic of the status quo.
An interesting example can be found regarding the Eastern concept of qi, for which mainstream Western culture does not yet have an equivalent term.1 Not having this concept in our inventory prevents our forming an appropriate image and allows us to easily dismiss the existence of an energetic life force. To avoid this difficulty, we need a picture that includes flow, movement, openness, and discernment along with closing off. Otherwise we only reflect upon what is already known and do not grow.
On a more expansive scale, each stage of awakening reflects a new baseline, a larger picture of the world. At the beginning of a stage, the next stage is foreign. Time and training elevate the baseline through altered and discrete altered states until you experience major shifts of cohesion, such as realizing the world is not flat after all, or that the world is first and foremost comprised of energy.
Conditional Energy Fields
When you are locked in a specific cohesion, you can’t see anything beyond the conditions that formed it. You reside in a world of mirrors as the self-validating effects of models aptly demonstrate. A model restricts what is under examination and the parameters of perception. It also defines the interpretations and results. This applies to whether you’re focusing on an experiment, a religious theme, or an entire worldview. The stockroom of mirrors that both created the model and was created by it can tie perception into a little ball or point the way to unveiling more of the universe. If the mirrors don’t let in light from other cohesions, other models, other worlds—all of which begin to form from altered states—then you are at the basis of fundamentalism. In short, a person with a fundamentalist cohesion—formed by religion, politics, business, healthcare, or anything else—is lost in a model that governs behavior rather than serves as a tool to enhance behavior.
As a result, your conditional field causes you to bend that which is being experienced into preexisting form. The field then prevents you from listening, recognizing, and adapting to new data and relationships. And it engenders castigation of those who may challenge the model as any challenge to the prevailing dogma is seen as heresy. The life of Galileo serves as an example; he spent the latter part of his life under house arrest for calling attention to facts that lay outside the accepted version of reality. For a variety of reasons, then, it is critical to learn how to use models, not be used by them. Reality is best used as a tool to help navigate life, not as something to lock you within a concrete prison.
Like the ancient mariners of Homer’s day who either succumbed to or sailed free from the seductive and treacherous sirens, everyone who makes the voyage of infinity will find themselves having to navigate the world of mirrors, an enlargement of your personal stockroom. There simply is no other choice. The stages of ontological development offer channel markers to guide awareness, to groom and focus consciousness rather than to close it off arbitrarily.