“Culture is a mass hallucination, and when you step outside the mass hallucination you see it for what it’s worth.” – Terrence McKenna
We had some fun yesterday…
(see: “This is a public service announcement“)
…But I don’t want the deeper lesson to get lost:
Axe body spray is for jabronis.
And, also, dulling our senses through…
– Colognes, perfumes, soaps, and other fragrances
– Over-seasoned and over-sauced foods
– Excessive use of technology
– Excessive thinking
– Cannabis, alcohol, and other drugs
– Violent / graphic / erotic imagery
– etc.
…Dulls our experience of life itself.
Here’s the equation:
1. We experience life through our senses
(smell, taste, touch, sight, sound, intuitive, kinesthetic, etc…)
2. The modern world stimulates the crap out of our sensory system
(doom-scrolling, covering food in salt and sauces, your nightly “computer time” ritual…)
3. Our senses become frazzled, dull, and unable to actually sense life itself.
(for the spiritually-oriented, this could be directly translated to “less-spirit”)
It’s not hard to see:
Just cut out salt for a week, then try salting your food as heavily as you do now and enjoy the head explosion.
(we did this at our retreat in Costa Rica last week and the first bite of salt left more than a few people teary-eyed)
Or you could cut out screens for a week, then scroll TikTok for 30 minutes and see if you don’t feel like your mind has been poisoned.
Of course, the answer isn’t to remove stimulation entirely.
Stimulation is fun.
Just cut back a little (or a lot) and see if it doesn’t become even more fun, once your senses wake back up and you start to feel human again.
Or, at the very least:
Leave the damn cologne at home.
Happy Friday 🙂
-T