The Mundane, Mystery, and Metamorphosis

An Open Exploration of Some Problems with Modern Society

Those who have been following my journey will know that my stories run much deeper than just a personal return towards health. We have pondered together the hidden mysteries of science and nature, considered the ills of our modern society which leads to so much dis-ease, and argued the need for change. During this time, I have changed, become much more aware, much more open to possibilities, found a belief in love, experienced much deeper things, discovered the power of words.

Yesterday, I gleaned two powerful words to summarize the two ends of this transformation process.

Mundane and mystery.

I now see that one of the problems with modern life, and a possible reason why there is so much illness, is because we have become so frozen, stuck in the mundane: lives of drudgery; slaves to the clock and the daily rhythm; living in states of hopelessness. Tomorrow-and-tomorrow-and-tomorrow the same as today, without any light at the end of the tunnel. The stressful commute to work, surrounded by stressing people, at the start of the day, and the exhausted commute home again, surrounded by exhausting people, at the end of day.

I am going to suggest an anti-dote to this is to re-centre mystery into our lives as a way to overcome the monotony of the mundane, as an alternative to all the self-destructive addictions we are currently using to escape it. I just mean embracing a sense that there is more than this to life, that there is room to grow and explore, and that there is more to discover about each other, ourselves, and nature.

I make the case that a sense of awe and wonder is vital and literally life-giving for us humans, and by cutting ourselves off from mystery, and living mundane lives, we are destroying our health. Especially for those of us high in personality trait Openness, the mundanity of the modern world is probably slowly killing us.

Indeed, Christopher Bergland, in his Vagus Nerve Survival Guide series in Psychology Today, explained how awe and wonder are Vagus Nerve stimulating - this is the part of the nervous system responsible for calming, detoxing, and lowering inflammation in our bodies and brains. Cutting ourselves off from mystery is literally cutting off a potential source of health.

When was the last time you really looked up at the night sky from a very dark place, and felt in awe of it all, and realized again your true place in this universe? For me, it has been years, the light pollution where I live simply doesn’t allow it. This is just one of the ways we have cut ourselves from regular doses of awe and wonder in our modern world.

The mundanity arises wherever mindless bureaucracy holds sway, which is just about everywhere these days, and not only wherever the reductionists, the small, humourless, mediocre people have taken over, but also where the very rich and powerful have chosen to interfere and circumscribe our lives. It exists in our art, science, politics, entertainment, education and elsewhere.

Mystery is associated with living in the moment, while the mundane with simultaneously living in regret of the past, and in fear of the future being the same as today.

I awoke from a dream about regeneration with another “M” word gleaned.

Metamorphosis.

I accept now that my own Parkinson's Disease is a necessary chrysalis stage, a transition between a mundane life, to a life embracing mystery at its heart.

I see now I lived my pre-diagnosis mundane life haunted by demons of my past, both apparent and hidden, what I have since learned from Lilian Sjøberg are body memories of stressful episodes, while I was also forever putting my present on hold, waiting for futures to unfold: a new job, a new town, a new life. I never knew the now or paid mind to the moment. In the end, all the fearing, all the running away from past events, and all the waiting and planning, put me into a state of hibernation.

Yet, in the very small windows of life when I briefly emerged from my frozen state, I began to write, and, in doing so, discovered the truth about flow: existing fully in the present, and the bliss which derives from it.

As this sleeper now awakens, I know that my happiness is in the sunshine of the now and the moonlight of the moment. I have learned to trust implicitly the insights and intuitions which come to me in flow states, and to write them down, record and share them.

Here.