Divine Deception: reflective approach to Reality

We are living in times of churn and turbulence, not just in terms of events but also in terms of how we perceive Reality. We also live in times of information churn and turbulence, when our information-mediated relationship to Reality comes under question.

In ancient traditions, a multi-sensorial, embodied presence in Reality was the foundation of perception. Skills, competence and “knowledge” were built on this foundation. The archetypes that signalled this approach included hunter and robber. Ancient ancestors of Shiva included Rudra as the hunter-robber and other earlier forms as the deceiver or rogue. We cannot come to these archetypes with our usual ideas of logic, which call for linear thinking and conventional lenses such as morality. Neither is it true to say that these archetypes are therefore illogical and immoral—it simply means that we have to approach them through embodied traditions.

The common embodied dynamics of both the hunter and the robber include a healthy respect for the unexpected and uknowable elements of Nature or Reality. When we embody these archetypes, we approach movement with stealth, and with concealment of our separateness. In other words, our ability to camouflage and become one with the forest is vital to our survival and our task at hand.

The wisdom of these practices is the truth about meeting Nature’s deceptive manifestations with our own manifested and embodied intelligence of the same quality. We match Nature and in so doing is revealed the teaching that helps us co-create or co-exist with Nature. This embodied practice teaches the respectful, careful, multi-sensorial, aware, presence that matches Nature’s own mystery and unknowability. In our usual mind-dominated intelligence the unknowable is nonexistent because there is an assumption that everything can be known. However, for the hunter-robber Divine, and for the Goddess/Nature Reality, the unknowable is the sensation that places all of Reality in its true relationship with each other—that of co-creative unity.

This important practice reveals to us that the nature of a reflective approach to reality is embodied. And this reflective approach is vital to ascertain our intimate presence in Reality, because it is that intimacy which opens up our unity with Reality. The experience of unity or communion with Reality/Divine/Goddess is not a statement that is provided by someone else, it is our own intimate and embodied revelation.

In this video I share some elements of the practice of Divine Deception. I do this in these times as I feel it is vital we return reflection to its embodied inquiry as it was proposed in ancient traditions that pre-existed many of our long-standing mind-dominated approaches. And, at a more fundamental level, it would appear that we have to return to reflection itself as a practice rather than an information-mediated passivity that saps presence and passion from our everyday lives.