When we add this visualization system to the hero's roadmap that we'll unpack in the course, the two coming together is articulating the roadmap of your own development. You have to remember wherever you are right now, as an ordinary person, you and I, we both feel very stuck. To really get the benefit of this course you have to be brutally honest and articulate in front of your own mind and in the mirror, how stuck you are in some place. Then you have to look at why that is. There has been an unconscious process of prior experiences that you have internalized to be you and what you expect from reality, and you are unconsciously projecting that on reality.

In a way, you're just in a rut, bouncing up against reality with your prefabricated expectations of rejection or of missing out, of not being asked for and being neglected. That's already happening. The clearer and crisper and more vivid you are about how that's already happening, you can then plot out what it would be like to consciously recreate a new storyline. Then impregnate that in the crucible of your visualization so that there is a muscle memory deep in the unconscious. A seed deep in the unconscious that you can call out of. I don't think this happens spontaneously, I think there's a very slow burn. In the grand scheme of things, if you see that we have just been living countless lives in this rut. That's how effective they say the tantras. In one single lifetime they say that you can become a Buddha. In one single lifetime, because you have planted the seed of already being a Buddha and then created the conditions for it to ripen in this present lifetime, which is fantastic.

The clearer we are, the more authentic we are when we get to the course and all the stages of the Hero's Journey, once we map our setting out, our ordeal, our victory and our return, then in your own visualization practice you can actually plant little seeds or suggestions and have micro moments of experiencing the world in a different way that are really impregnated on your consciousness.

Does it sound that far out? The value of Joe [Loizzo's] body of work is trying to take the tantras and and make them accessible by throwing upon them the lens of neuroscience and psychotherapy.  Because ordinary people that see deities and people monkeying around with mantras and bowls and whistles and malas, people get freaked out by that stuff and they think it's a ton of mumbo jumbo. It creates an upsurge of suspicion at the very least.

But if you can present it just that way, as I have very quickly, you can start to see that there's at least some coherent rationale to it. It's not just pie in the sky. There is some mechanics to it. We'll go further into the mechanics of the seven limbs but I also want to just throw out there that this is not how the Tibetan tradition presents itself. This is a through a scientized lens. We need that extra little pacifier so that we don't get freaked out.

Personally, I'm growing more curious. On a global level, there is increased interest in the more mystical dimensions that transcend any scientized version of what's happening. I think we're recognizing that there are inherent limits with the scientific worldview which we've already discussed as our main thrust or rationale. In other words, the very paradigm that would insist that it has to be scientific has its own blindspot. That's what visionaries like Rupert Sheldrake will insist. The fact that we have to provide a scientific rationale based on quantitative measure of brain in itself has its own inherent blind spot. It has become its own false idol.

My thesis in Gradual Awakening is that paradigm, that insistence and that assumption that that's the way the world is, if that's allowed to continue as the fundamental ground of our assumptions, we will only be able to get so far. We will still be existing within the realm of a materialistic paradigm in which there is death and nothing beyond. If you start to imagine how the Dalai Lama sees this, the Dalai Lama can sit with scientists and they can have this level of conversation and then he can be a true Vajra master with his own constituents and and say things like there are actual agencies, there are dimensions to life beyond our perception. There are fundamental energies in our body that are beyond the measure of scientific evaluation and investigation.

With a growing interest in plant medicine, for example. Everybody knows about ayahuasca out there. The average Joe is having an Ayahuasca experience and under that powerful condition what is happening is that there's a radical breakthrough and what is that radical breakthrough? The permeable wall that is being broken through is the very one of the materialistic paradigm and the materialistic set of perceptions that all there really is, is what we can perceive with our senses. Under the influence of that powerful medicine there is a breakthrough, through the doors of perception to see that there are other realities than these. I think that is very powerful and compelling. That there are shapes, energies, dimensions, worlds, agencies even, beyond this level of reality and that one could actually call them in. One could ask for their guidance.

I've told this numerous times, the Dalai Lama escaped Tibet at a particular time that was predetermined and whispered to him by way of an oracle who is in touch with other dimensional agencies, that forecasted when the opportunity window would be for him to escape from the oppression of the Chinese. That oracle is a land bridge between the material realm where science reigns supreme and netherworld which is the domain of all mystics, of all traditions.

Why not begin to hold that both are equally valid in their own domain? That is an an interesting start. I'm not saying that the scientific paradigm is useless or wrong. What I'm saying is that it's useful, but only within its own purview. The Newtonian perspective and the quantum perspective don't have to be mutually in contradiction. Both realities can live simultaneously.

More from Return with Elixir here.