The Ostrich and the Elephant

A blog on spirituality, science, philosophy, ETs, and mental health

Tag: Spirituality

The Great Spiritual Awakening
I believe there is a great spiritual awakening happening on Earth.
If you had told me this ten years ago I would have stared at you blankly and thought you were a bit nuts.
How times have changed.
The reasons for this are many, but I think it boils down to two main reasons: 1. People are ready. People can sense there’s something wrong with the way life is being lived on our planet and they are looking for alternatives; and 2. The conditions are just right now for the spread of information and therefore wisdom to occur (the most obvious avenue for this being the internet). There is a third factor of technology that I will discuss, but I see it as secondary to these first two reasons.
There are two sides to spiritual awakening itself though. One side is about waking up to absolute reality, what Jesus called “God”, and what many others have called “enlightenment”, “self-realization”, or “awakening”. And the other side is the progression of life on our planet: our cultural evolution, if you will.
To deal with the first aspect: A lot of people don’t know this, but there’s this crazy little thing called consciousness which makes up literally everything we experience.
Don’t believe me?
Try and find something in your experience that is *not* made of consciousness (i.e. your sight, taste, smell, touch, etc). Pretty difficult isn’t it?
Well that’s because everything we know of the world IS made of consciousness, according to our direct perception of it. Everything, in a very real sense, is just in your head. And this is now being backed up more and more by modern physics, which for over a hundred years has been suggesting to us that things are not really things until they are observed – i.e. until they appear in consciousness. In fact it suggests that things are not even things when they do appear in consciousness. It suggests our whole world is made up of nothing but consciousness. This is what the Buddhist teaching of emptiness points to – empty of substance.
This is an amazing fact, and often overlooked because of its simplicity.
But people are beginning to take notice. Not just of the physics, but of consciousness itself. People are starting to question more than they ever have, “what is the truth of all this?”
You see, as Morpheus said to Neo in the Matrix – one of the best documentary series ever made by the way 😛 – we’ve been living in a dream world. A kind of trance state created by our minds, which says with absolute certainty that things are things whether or not we are looking at them. Physics says “nu-uh”.
And for some inexplicable reason, there is a massive amount of interest gaining in areas which treat consciousness seriously. Ten years ago you could go to a 10 day silent meditation retreat whenever you wanted; now you have to book months in advance to reserve your spot.
The second part of our cultural evolution and awakening is about ideas and questioning our assumptions to come up with better ways of living. This is the natural selection of ideas which Richard Dawkins coined “memes”. You see this everywhere. How many people do you know who are suddenly interested in the gender pronouns debate? 10 years ago this topic was unheard of. Now, debates are happening all over the place. And, even though it may look crazy and dysfunctional on the surface, what people are really trying to do is make sense of things: refine our ideas so we come up with better, more inclusive ideas.
It may look like not much progress is being made on the surface: Just two people stubbornly arguing for their point of view, but really there is much more going on. People are at least considering the other person’s perspective, even if they won’t willingly acknowledge this during the debate. They are starting to see that there could be some truth to both sides of the argument. There’s a quote which says the progress of spiritual maturity is gauged by an appreciation for paradox and ambiguity. I think this is very true. Take the gender pronouns issue as an example. There is no cut and dried answer to this, just as there isn’t to most questions in society. It’s ridiculous to claim to that gender differences are an entirely social construct, just as it’s ridiculous to claim that social constructs don’t play a major role in gender identification. It’s all about, as Richard Dawkins also once said, “consciousness raising”: appreciating that there may be another side to the story which you haven’t fully understood yet. (note: Richard Dawkins is not a favourite intellectual of mine, but for some reason he popped up twice in one article, go figure).
And the third aspect I mentioned – that of technology. Technology is going to drag us into the 21st century whether we like it or not, and it’s also going to radically change our way of life, as if it hasn’t enough already. The warning that comes along with this is that when a culture develops highly advanced technology, it had better be mature enough to be able to handle it! Which is why I think we are seeing more and more mature debates being held all around the world. People are becoming fascinated with thinkers like Sam Harris, Jordan Peterson and many others. I noted that, off the top of my head, there are not as many influential female speakers, and this is something that will definitely need to change: we need to listen to the feminine more if we’re going to evolve as a spiritually mature, advanced species. Women may not always speak the same language as men; they may not always give your mind as much of a bone to chew on, but their contribution is just as important, if not more important, given the imbalance that currently exists within our society.
So in general I think people are starting to pause and say, “Hang on, this isn’t working.” “Something’s not right.” “Things aren’t how they’re meant to be.” “I’m unhappy.”
And when people start to realise they’re unhappy – or at least, not as happy as they could be – and usually after a long period of wallowing, they start to look for cures. They begin “the search”. They look everywhere for this thing called happiness, in people, places, ideas, things, but never seem to be able to find it. Or if they do, it’s only temporary. This is when a lot of people start to look at the bigger questions of life, and start to look into spirituality. This is the beginning of the end of their road of unhappiness.
Not that enlightenment is just about curing unhappiness. That’s just a byproduct. Enlightenment is about truth. Truth, it seems, just brings a lot of happiness along with it (eventually).
But this transition won’t be easy. There are a lot of hard truths we’re going to have to face up to as a society to make it through this. A lot of really horrible shit has gone down while we’ve all been sleep-walking our way through life. Enlightenment is sort of like shining a torch in the darkness. When you shine a torch, the first thing you see is all the rats, so you’re horrified. But the next part is the part that’s worth it: the rats hate the light so they begin to flee. So that’s all we’ve got to keep doing; keep shining our torches (mostly on ourselves, because as Adyashanti once said, “enlightenment is an inside job”). I won’t go into the details on what these hard truths will be because a. I don’t know them well enough myself yet; and b. my intention is not to fear-monger here, only to raise awareness, so I don’t think it’s necessary to go into the specifics just yet. Let’s just say, to use a quote from Shakespeare: “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” In other words, there have been more things going down on Earth than most people have realised.
My prediction is that we’re going to be in for a very rough ride when we finally start to see all the rats that have previously gone unnoticed, but it’s the first step to a life free of these rats. There’s no other way to go about it. You can’t just keep living pretending the rats don’t exist. Well, you can, but it will only continue the suffering we all experience. As the song by The Clash says, “If I go there will be trouble; if I stay there will be double.”
So we all have a choice now. I say go. Even though it’s going to be painful and difficult, the alternative is much much worse.
Which decision will you make?
In love and light,
Will.
For more stories like this, including mental health, extraterrestrials, and spirituality, please subscribe to my blog, follow my Facebook page “The Ostrich and the Elephant”, or find me on Twitter @willkenway, Medium @willkenway, or Instagram @will.kenway. Thanks!
May 5, 2019
Writing Turned Me Into An Alcoholic Within a Month
Well, I shouldn’t say that. Life turned me into a potential alcoholic, writing just gave me the final push. I had never been even slightly tempted by alcohol as a substance to abuse until I started to write.
Why? Well, I have a lot of anxiety. It’s a long story that goes way back, and I’ve tried to manage it in various ways. An opioid addiction, antidepressants, withdrawing from life completely, and – that’s about the end of the list.
But then I came upon the idea that I was meant to be a writer, of sorts. I felt like I had a lot of things to say, and I felt like they were important. I still feel that way. The problem was: I could barely sit still long enough to type a title, let alone an article.
I started living with my dad for reasons that relate to my first blog post on here: “My disastrous spiritual awakening”, and he was a drinker. Not a come home and yell at everyone in the house type of drinker, but a drinker nonetheless. I was never very attracted to it. It didn’t seem to be my drug of choice. I had the occasional beer with him, but that was about it.
Then I started writing, and found it only compounded my agitation and inability to sit still. So I’d have a beer to calm the nerves. Then two. Then, over the period of a day, eight. One month as a “writer” and I’m already a cliché. Hooray.
The irony was, I was actually kind of prolific during this period. And I produced some fairly okay writing. It really did seem to help the writing process for me in a way that my other coping mechanisms – coffee, anti-anxiety pills etc – didn’t.
In “The Way of the Superior Man” (which is a great book, and everyone should read it, male or female), David Deida refers to alcohol as a feminine substance. He didn’t delve into why this was, but I imagine it’s something to do with getting in touch with your emotions – and with my experience now I wonder whether that’s true. Maybe it dulled my emotions just enough so they were manageable enough to engage with.
I don’t think I’m going to keep up this alcohol-fuelled writing thing for long though. I don’t see it being a viable long-term method for personal success. I’m not at a point where I feel I can meditate every day, but I’m doing other work with a couple of people which I think will help a lot with my state of being. I’ve got some akashic (I still don’t really know what that means) trance/hypnosis sessions lined up with a great guy at “Alchemical Child”, and I fortuitously met a woman in a health food/spiritual store that I had a great connection with, so I’m looking forward to delving into my subconscious a bit more with these people. I think that will really help. I’m also booked in for a 10 day silent meditation retreat up here in Queensland which I’m in two minds about attending, but I’ll feel into it closer to the date to see if I’m ready for another one of those (they are intense).
I’m still on “leave” from my main spiritual teacher: she has cut me off completely as a way to force me to stand on my own two feet and not use her guidance as a crutch, which has been… frustrating at times, but I understand why she’s doing it.
Fingers crossed I can get through this period and come out the other side a more functional human being.
But still, as always,
In love and light,
Will.
For more stories like this, including mental health, extraterrestrials, and spirituality, please subscribe to my blog, or follow my Facebook page “The Ostrich and the Elephant”, or find me on Twitter @willkenway, Medium @willkenway, or Instagram @will.kenway. Thanks!
May 2, 2019
I’ve Been Accused of Being in a Cult
Cults are an interesting phenomenon, and they definitely do exist. From Charles Manson to Jim Jones, there’s no shortage of examples of these charismatic yet deluded figures leading their followers, desperate to believe in something, off the proverbial cliff.
But the word cult gets bandied around a lot, and often in a very casual manner.
So what really defines a cult? Well, for me, the defining aspect is when the teacher becomes more important than the teaching, and the teachings are defended blindly against the weight of evidence against them.
Now, just to get my side of the story out of the way first – I’m definitely not in a cult (said every cult member ever). As a former science student, the idea of any type of belief, scientific or otherwise, is anathema to me. Beliefs, I believe (hehe), are the opposite of the scientific and true spiritual method of making observations based on direct experience. And direct experience is ALL we ever have access to in determining truth, so using something other than direct experience to guide our lives seems pretty silly to me.
Which is why it is so strange to me that I, of all people I think the least cultish person I know, have been accused of being in a cult.
The cult I’ve been accused of being a part of is the one surrounding my spiritual teacher, Isira, and the organization supporting her teaching, Living Awareness.
It seems that any time two or more people gather around a common spiritual cause, it’s automatically labelled a cult. But what did Jesus say? (another person who was accused of running a spiritual cult) – “Wherever there are two or three gathered in my name, I am there.” This is also probably why Buddhists hold sangha (spiritual community) to be the most important aspect of spirituality – because we learn more from our interactions with others than we ever could just going it alone.
The irony is, I’m only ever accused of being in a cult by people who have never heard my spiritual teacher give a talk. Their knee-jerk reaction is: “Someone’s teaching you something that is not (yet) the norm in society?” – CULT! Anything that is the norm in society – science, politics, medicine, etc – they’re all fine to have teachers for, but nothing esoteric, nothing that isn’t easy to understand. This really is ironic because there is so much more cultish behaviour in these fields than in any spiritual field I have personally encountered. Although I do consider myself lucky in that sense – I had a good, skeptical, scientific training before ever becoming interested in spirituality, so I was always quite cognizant to never believe stuff just for the sake of believing in something.
Which is what I think all cults, spiritual or otherwise, really boil down to: belief. In my opinion beliefs should not exist. From a scientific perspective, a belief is something you form when you say, “Okay, we’ve had this result, we’ve seen the evidence, we can make a conclusion now and stop any further investigation into the matter.” Why would anyone ever want to do that? In that sense I think beliefs have no place not only in science but in society as a whole. They are just psychological crutches people use because the world is so complex and the psychological need for humans to have some guiding principles is so great that we’re quick to latch onto anything that we feel gives us security.
People think we NEED beliefs of some kind in order to function, but we really don’t. Casual beliefs, like the belief in time and space (they don’t really exist the way we think they do, so yes, these too, are beliefs), are fine to have and to use in everyday situations. So long as we acknowledge that they are indeed beliefs, and don’t actually represent the true nature of reality.
I realise I’m asking a lot. Letting go of beliefs is a TOUGH road. The reason being is that our thoughts are so tied in with our emotions. They are inextricably linked to them. So to let go of a belief is not just to let go of a belief, it’s to let go of the feeling attached to that belief. And to do that, we need to experience that feeling in its raw state. Hence the resistance. We often think, “If we could just make sense of the world… if we could just finally get that last puzzle piece that fits everything into place then we’d have a full picture of how the world worked and we’d be *secure*.” We could finally relax.
Well, I don’t think it’s ever going to work like that. As I’ve mentioned in previous blogs, I don’t think our minds really evolved to understand the true nature of reality. They evolved for relatively mundane tasks like picking berries, having sex, spotting predators, etc etc. We’ve done pretty tremendous things with this very limited brain of ours, don’t get me wrong, but in terms of understanding absolute reality – not a chance. As I mentioned in one of my previous blogs, it’s a logical impossibility for a system that operates within a system to fully understand the system it operates within. This is what Einstein’s theories of relativity were all about – it is all relative to the particular observer, at their particular reference point in space-time.
But this principle applies just as much to our regular lives as it does to what we could call “Einsteinian post-modernism”. I’m not arguing that we completely throw out tradition and culture – a lot of things are here because they do, more or less, work, and serve a function.
Just don’t fall into the trap of thinking you’ve discovered the ultimate answer to something, because, you know, around the corner there’s always something waiting to say, “nah, that doesn’t describe me.” It’s a little bit like women – if you try to figure them out you’ll come up against a LOT of problems, and they will certainly let you know about them.
So what to do in a world we can never understand fully? Well, the same thing we do with women I think. To borrow a quote from the legendary Oscar Wilde: “Women are meant to be loved, not understood.”
Love in the face of not understanding is the key that unlocks all the doors in my estimation. Because when you think about it, love is really the end goal of everything we are aiming for anyway. Everything we do, ultimately, is to find and experience more love. So why not just skip the whole process and start with love itself, the place we’re all really aiming for anyway?
In conclusion, keep using your ideas so long as they are useful, just be careful about turning them into beliefs of “that’s just the way things are”, because sooner or later in this incredibly complex world of ours, you’re going to run into a situation where it doesn’t fit.
And as for my “teacher”? Well, if she suddenly started to not make sense or act a bit cuckoo, I’d be out of there in a jiffy. So far, that hasn’t even been close to happening, so I’m quite happy with hearing her wisdom for the time being.
As always, in love and light,
Will.
For more stories like this, including mental health, extraterrestrials, and spirituality, please subscribe to my blog, follow my Facebook page “The Ostrich and the Elephant”, or find me on Twitter @willkenway, Medium @willkenway, or Instagram @will.kenway. Thanks!
April 26, 2019
The Best Spiritual Teacher on the Planet!
As I’ve mentioned in previous blogs, I’ve listened to countless spiritual teachers on my seven year journey into spirituality. The number of hours spent listening to teachers on youtube would be easily in the thousands. But one still stands out head and shoulders above the rest: my teacher of the last three years, Isira.
Now, that is saying something! Some other spiritual teachers I’ve listened to I have absolutely loved; the main other one being the American teacher Adyashanti. I used to tell my friends he was the first man I ever loved. Kiran Trace (from Mystic Girl in the City) once called him “the shit”, and it’s hard to really top that description of him. He is an incredibly good teacher.
But, as he says himself, he’s very much a “wake up” guy – he’s not a “how to live your life better guy”. And he describes his teaching method as being very “broad strokes”. Which is fine. Wake up guys are great – they wake you up! It’s also fine being a broad strokes teacher: there’s no use getting into all the nitty-gritty of spirituality when you’re just coming onto the scene; you need someone who can lay it out in general terms so you get an overall picture of what spirituality is all about.
My gratitude to Adyashanti is out of this world. If I saw him in person I have no doubt I would have tears in my eyes. He helped me along the way SO much.
But, and even though it pains me to say this because of how much I love Adyashanti, I still found someone better. Someone deeper. Someone with more breadth of understanding. Someone who could talk to anyone and offer them advice for exactly where they were at, and exactly what they needed to hear.
That teacher is a woman called Isira.
Now, I’ve mentioned this in a previous blog before, but for those who haven’t read that: When I first came across a video of Isira, I didn’t really “get it”. I came away thinking “she seems like a nice lady”, but that was about it. There was no deeper recognition. Then, about a year later, a friend recommended her to me again so I went along to one of her satsangs (a Sanskrit term meaning “association in truth”). This time I got it. This time I felt her presence, and it was powerful.
I remember walking into this room with all these people seated facing an empty chair at the front of the room. Then Isira came in, dressed all in white (“what’s with the white?” I thought to myself), and sat down in the chair. She scanned the room in silence, welcoming everyone. Then she got to awkward, little me, at the farthest side of the room, as far away from the centre of the action as I could get (this was always my preferred place in all situations). She looked me in the eyes and I instinctively looked away, embarrassed. After a few moments I looked back up to see if she had moved on, but she was still looking at me, with the same warm, welcoming face I originally saw. She wasn’t going to let me get away with my shyness.
The satsang was a success, I guess you could say. This time I got a glimpse into what she was about. I felt her presence and was uplifted all the way home.
There was an announcement that the organization was looking for volunteers, and almost immediately I began volunteering. I was the technical equipment storage and transport guy, and eventually became the tea-maker for Isira’s one-on-one consultations on Saturday mornings. I sort of fancied myself a bit like the kung-fu master who guards the Oracle in the Matrix, albeit much less skilled in martial arts. All I really did was mix tea.
I was fascinated by this woman, as many who meet Isira are. I had never met a truly enlightened person in person before, so I watched all her actions, analysed all her movements, looked at her through squinted eyes trying to figure her out. Trying to see if she really was as enlightened as she seemed.
The difficulty was, you see, she wasn’t your typical mountain-top, rag-wearing guru. She lived life. She enjoyed food. She had preferences. “Do enlightened people have preferences?” I thought to myself. Well, I guess it makes sense. She is human after all, and she’d much rather I hand her a cup of dandelion tea than a cup of dirt.
You see, the idea of spirituality has become so disconnected from everyday life we think there are only two options: you either choose the world, or you choose enlightenment. You can’t have both. Isira seemed to have both, which raised a lot of questions for me. Does she still like nice things? Does she still have relationships? Does she still have sex?? I found out the answer to all these questions was yes, which gave my mind more things to ponder.
Hmm, so it’s possible to be enlightened, and still live a completely full life in the world. That sounded pretty good to me. Most of the previous teachers I had listened to had been mostly male, and mostly just spoke about the importance of “waking up to absolute reality”. Isira talks about that too, but in equal measure she talked about issues in the world. I found that really exciting. Enlightenment didn’t mean you became just a nobody, it meant you became even more fully your natural self. Sure, the natural self was seen from a perspective of absolute oneness, but it didn’t discount the relevance of the manifest world – it celebrated it. To me it appeared she had achieved the goal I came to think true spirituality stood for: to become both fully human and fully divine.
Now, I didn’t always like Isira – in fact, sometimes I hated her!! I was so enraptured by this woman’s presence and energy that my ego wanted her attention and love to be focused on me as much as possible. Obviously this is not only an unreasonable demand on anyone, but Isira would never let us get away with these silly ego trips. She always kept herself at a slight distance because of this. Sometimes I interpreted this as her not liking or not loving me enough, but really it was just her way of making sure she wasn’t pandering to our egos, thus making the problem worse. When you spend any amount of time around Isira, your ego gets some harsh lessons. In fact, it is sometimes even hard to be around her because of this. Some people really can’t take it and react negatively to it, projecting all their blame onto her: e.g. “she’s a fake teacher!”; “she doesn’t really care!”; “she’s only interested in herself!”; etc, etc, etc. (all these examples are examples which came from myself 🙂 ). Because you see, the thing is, when an ego comes up against someone whose ego has been thoroughly removed, it can turn pretty nasty. I remember at a retreat once a woman said: “I thought I was a nice person, but I wanted to kill you! And you just responded with the same love you always did.”
I’ve got to be honest – as I’m obviously not completely free of the ego myself, there’s still a part of me that desires this attention. This can still make my ego very annoyed, and I think that will remain until I am completely free of my egoic attachment to her.
To this day it still surprises me that Isira is not more well-known than she is, but I think there are a couple of reasons for this: firstly, she has not had much of an online or youtube presence until just recently; and secondly, and maybe more significantly, I think that as in my case the old saying holds true: “When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.” When I first came across Isira, I wasn’t “ready” for her. I wasn’t resonating on a wavelength that was close enough to be able to really get her. That changed for me in the year between seeing her video for the first time and then attending one of her satsangs. And I think this will happen on a collective level as well. I think humanity may be getting nearer and nearer to be ready to be able to hear Isira, and to be ready for the message and energy she is here to contribute.
All I can say finally is, I can’t wait! I’m greatly looking forward to a time when people en masse start to see who Isira really is, and what she is here to do.
As always, in love and light,
Will.
For more information on Isira, check her out on youtube, or visit her website at www.isira.com
For more stories like this, including mental health, extraterrestrials, and spirituality, please subscribe to my blog, follow my Facebook page “The Ostrich and the Elephant”, or find me on Twitter @willkenway, Medium @willkenway, or Instagram @will.kenway. Thanks!
April 25, 2019
The Difficulty I Have Sharing My Story
A lot of the time I would prefer to be this cat.
I’ve always been a very private and quiet person. That is just my nature. I think most of my friends would say I’m pretty entertaining when you get to know me (if sometimes annoying), but in most unfamiliar situations I am often painfully shy. To give you an example, once I was asked to read something at high school, and another student yelled out “speak!” – because I just very rarely said a word, ever. I would just hang around and listen – or in my later years when things got worse, hide away in any place I could find. This would often be sitting eating my lunch in the toilets at lunch-time. It was that bad.
So, writing my story publicly is not something that comes easily to me at all. I’m not even a well-known writer and it is already causing me a great deal of anxiety just to share my story on Facebook and Medium. So it was always going to be difficult for me to write what I wanted to write. But this became much worse when the story I was going to tell became much worse.
You see, I had just quit my job as a gardener to pursue what I thought would be a career in writing because for some reason it felt like it was what I was meant to do. I had no idea whether it would work out or not, but I felt like I had a lot to say, and I felt that it was important that I share it.
Then, as any of you who have read my first blog post, “My disastrous spiritual awakening” will know, my story suddenly became much worse.
I was no longer – as I had anticipated – just going to be writing about science and spiritual awakening and the extraterrestrial reality – I was now going to be writing about a horrible event that happened in my life.
This made me question whether I could even be a writer. It took me nine months after the event to finally put my fingers to the keyboard and start typing. The ironic thing was, I was just about to sit down and start writing when the event happened nine months ago, so it really wasn’t something I was expecting at all.
I spent a long time in hospital with nothing to do but ruminate over what had happened and question everything about what I was doing and what led me to that point in my life. I initially thought my blog would be a hopeful, inspirational blog – a tale of suffering to triumph over suffering through spiritual awakening – but now my story contained this very ugly episode. I thought, “I was meant to be on a path of greater understanding and bliss and wonder, and I ended up assaulting my housemate and spending three months in a mental hospital – how did my “spiritual awakening” go so horribly wrong??”
My story is difficult to share in a number of ways. Firstly, as I mentioned, I’m a painfully shy person. I hate being the centre of attention, and if the attention is negative attention that’s twice as bad. Secondly, my story now contains something horrible, which, if I’m going to be an open and honest writer as I intended then I have to share it. Thirdly, my story contains weird stuff that a lot of people won’t understand and will likely judge me for. Hell, I would have judged me for it five years ago. And lastly, a lot of people are going to think I’m just some crazy loon.
That’s a lot to deal with, especially for someone like me. It’s why I’ve been smoking, drinking, and taking anti-anxiety pills like there’s no tomorrow in order to cope with the angst of it all. I guess I’m just going to have to get over that and get used to it.
But I’m still going to write, even though I’m terrified of it, because I still feel it is what I am meant to be doing. Nothing else in my life makes sense except to write and tell my story as openly and as honestly as possible.
I still believe that spiritual awakening – and by spiritual awakening I mean recognizing the oneness and interconnectedness of all things – is the most important thing in the world, and probably the only thing that will save humanity from itself. So that’s enough of a reason for me to get over my own internal fears and keep writing. Because I believe this to be true.
It’s not going to be easy, but I’m still going to do it. All I can hope is that people see my intention is always positive – that I am doing this because I believe it’s the best way I can contribute to society, and that all I’ve ever wanted is a more open, more loving, more connected world to live in for everyone. A world based in understanding and compassion instead of division and hatred. One based in love instead of fear. And I believe it is possible. I’m not even there yet myself – it is still a challenge for me to always try to maintain that state, but I truly believe, to end with the words of Arundhati Roy: “Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.”
As always, with love,
Will.
For more stories like this, including mental health, extraterrestrials, and spirituality, please subscribe to my blog, follow my Facebook page “The Ostrich and the Elephant”, or find me on Twitter @willkenway, Medium @willkenway, or Instagram @will.kenway. Thanks!
April 23, 2019
The Problem With Science
Do you want the good news first or the bad news first?
I agree, always start with the bad news first.
Okay, so, here’s the bad news:
As a former science student myself, I have a great respect for science itself and the principles behind science. The problem here is not so much with science itself, but with scientists. They’re human after all, and us humans always try to understand things, so we inevitably make assumptions about the world based on what we think is real. A lot of this we then turn into being just a collected body of knowledge we hold onto as “the way things are”. Scientists really do their best to try and avoid this, but they are definitely not immune from it. The psychological need for understanding runs deep, so when something is unclear, we usually latch onto whatever seems most reasonable.
And well, things are not always as they appear. The very foundations of the type of science many scientists fall back to by default — the Newtonian, cause-and-effect type of science — has been on tremendously shaky ground for over a century since the advent of quantum physics. You see, the deeper you look into our universe, the stranger it becomes. Cause does not always precede effect. Things appear to not really be things at all.
And this is why scientists are so confused by quantum mechanics — it’s because they’ve taken legitimate observations about how the world can behave in given circumstances (this is fine, there’s nothing wrong with this part of science), but then the problems start: They begin to construct models out of this for how the world is based on these observations, when there is no evidence for the models themselves, only for the observed phenomenon (our sense perceptions) behaving in a certain way.
Scientists have thus built castles in the sky.
But look, you can’t blame them. We actually need these castles to a degree. Even though it makes absolutely no sense from a quantum physical standpoint, when you turn the handle of a door, it almost always opens. It’s pretty magic the way that happens when you consider what’s happening at the quantum level of indeterminacy. It’s almost enough to make you think we live in an intelligent universe! (the anthropic principle is usually used as a rebuttal against this, but the probability of us standing on top of infinity is… effectively zero, so I wouldn’t exactly call that a strong argument)
But as I was saying — we can’t walk around all day not using any constructed models otherwise we’d be non-functional. But as humans — and scientists are almost always humans — our minds grasp for understanding. We think if we understand the world better then we can make it a more enjoyable place to live. At a very subconscious level, we look for security in understanding. And we can achieve that to varying degrees. I still think the answer to true happiness lies within each and every one of us, not in the external conditions, but the external conditions are still relevant to a degree.
So, scientists, use your models, make your predictions, engage in behaviour in accordance with these predictions, but just don’t make a belief system out of them. Beliefs are the antithesis of science — they are what form when you’ve decided you have an answer and stopped looking at any more evidence — but it’s what humans default back to almost every time. The reason being is that not having belief systems is very unsettling; it feels like we’re on very shaky ground (which we are). We need to get used to that. The future of physics is not going to get any simpler to understand — time and time again quantum weirdness has reared its head and it’s here to stay. We have to accept that our brains most likely didn’t evolve to have the capacity to understand our universe at its deepest level. Our Newtonian brains can’t stretch that far.
So, have some humility. Admit that we might just not be able to understand how the universe really works, but give thanks for the fact that even though it makes absolutely no sense from the perspective of quantum mechanics, at the level of the world humans generally interact in, things still seem to work as though they do, more or less, make sense.
In other words, become a true scientist. A Not-knower. A Maybe-so-er. Someone who observes the universe and attempts to make predictions based upon those, but who never says they understand the way something works, because you know what, around the next corner there could be something that says, “nah, I don’t behave like that. I don’t fit that model.”
And that is what has happened for the last 100 years. In the early 1900s, the universe said, “nah, you guys don’t get me.” And the scientists responded with, “Yes we do, yes we do, just let us think this over some more.” And the universe said, “nah, you really don’t get me.” And scientists have been struggling to pretend ever since.
I’m not saying stop trying. Definitely keep trying. I’m just saying I don’t think our brains evolved to be able to understand the universe at its deepest level. We’ll just be encountering weird shit that makes absolutely no sense to us, and we’ll just have to throw our hands up in the air and say, “Well, fuck, this science tool is really useful, but it’s not going to give us the ultimate answer to life, the universe, and everything.”
Because how could it? How could an investigative method *within* the system it’s investigating ever claim absolute knowledge about the nature of the system itself? It’s a logical impossibility.
So I think it’s time for scientists to acknowledge this and say, yep, we won’t ever get ultimate answers, but at least what we’re doing here is pretty damn useful for us.
There’s a great video on what I’ve discussed here by a youtuber called CollegeBinary where he does 3-minute videos on various philosophers and their theories. The one he does on David Hume is exactly what I’m trying to say here. It’s a great video; very entertaining and very short. Well worth a watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r3QZ2Ko-FOg
Or, for a more detailed look at Hume’s work, here’s a video by The School of Life: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HS52H_CqZLE&t=28s
And now for the good news (alright!!!)
There is a solution to all this, and it solves all these dilemmas — it’s called the “biocentric” (or consciousness-centric) universe, championed by Robert Lanza, whom the New York Times called one of the three most important scientists alive today. His approach — coming at the universe from a consciousness standpoint instead of a inanimate physical/energy standpoint — explains away every single problem quantum mechanics has thrown at physicists for the last century. As Lanza says: “It becomes clear why space and time, and indeed the properties of matter themselves depend on the observer.”
His book, “Biocentrism: How Life and Consciousness Are the Keys to Understanding the True Nature of the Universe”, is a fantastic read and in my opinion one of the most important books ever written. He’s not a great public speaker, so I’d really suggest buying his book (it’s very easy and enjoyable to read), but for those who don’t, here he is at the Science and Nonduality Conference giving a talk on this subject: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zI_F4nOKDSM&t=259s
And I’ll let Robert Lanza take over from here…
Thanks for reading, and happy sciencing!
For more stories like this, including mental health, extraterrestrials, and spirituality, please subscribe to my blog, follow my Facebook page “The Ostrich and the Elephant”, or find me on Twitter @willkenway, Medium @willkenway, or Instagram @will.kenway. Thanks!
April 21, 2019
The Importance of High Vibrational Music
“Where words fail, music speaks.”
~ Hans Christian Andersen
Growing up through my twenties I mostly listened to one band over and over again. That band was headed by a guy called Conor Oberst; the band name was Bright Eyes.
A lot of people considered this “emo” music because he was indeed very emotive, but he was different from the emo genre in a big way: He was uplifting. There was hope in his music. Not to mention he’d been called this generation’s Bob Dylan because of how great a songwriter he is.
Here’s one example out of pretty much any song I could choose:
“The Bible’s blind, the Torah’s deaf, the Qu’ran is mute
If you burned them all together, you’d get close to the truth
Still they’re pouring over Sanskrit under Ivy Ieague moons
While shadows lengthen in the sun”
Beautiful right? Yeah, that’s what I thought.
Or maybe this one:
“ I had a lengthy discussion about The Power of Myth
With a post-modern author who didn’t exist
In this fictitious world all reality twists
I was a hopeless romantic, now I’m just turning tricks”
Like, what the fuck. How good is this guy? And those are just the first two that popped into my head out of the thousands I could have chosen.
There used to be a facebook group called “Conor Oberst has more talent in his little finger than I do in my entire body.” There was also one called “Conor Oberst is my boyfriend”. I joined both. Actually, I did more than that — I wore a shirt with “Conor Oberst is my boyfriend” on it to a festival once. It got mixed reviews.
And sure, his voice was often quivering, he often sung like he was scared to sing, but that’s part of what touched me so deeply about him; his vulnerability and his rawness. And even though a lot of other people found him depressing, I didn’t. I saw past the quivering fragility and saw the fervent spirit inside him. The same goes for Leonard Cohen. Yeah, it’s sometimes sad music, but it’s the beautiful kind of sad. Not just sad for sad’s sake, but sad for honesty’s sake.
I heard about a study on death metal music recently. I’ve never been a fan of death metal at all; I couldn’t understand how people could enjoy listening to that type of music, but apparently they do. All I hear is rage and darkness, and I don’t want to feel that. But the fascinating thing about this study was that people who reported liking death metal said they didn’t feel anger or darkness when listening to it — they felt peace and joy.
Peace and joy while listening to someone scream like the devil? Apparently so.
And, contrary to what a lot of people claim, listening to death metal doesn’t make you more prone to violence.
Here’s a link to the audio discussion on this: https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/lifematters/the-curious-joy-of-death-metal-music/10514754
I guess this is what we love about music. It evokes emotions in us that are otherwise unexpressed. And music is a very healthy way to do that. So I’m not against death metal or its fans, because I now understand where it’s coming from — it’s coming from a place of truth for them.
But it’s easy to get trapped. It’s easy to just have one type of music you listen to that you listen to all the time even when it’s not really what you’re feeling inside. I’m sure death metal fans don’t want to hear the devil’s voice every minute of the day, just like I don’t want to hear Conor Oberst’s voice every minute of the day. Sometimes I actually much prefer silence to music. It changes all the time. And so should our music — so it accurately reflects what we’re feeling in that moment, and so we don’t get stuck in a set pattern of feeling because we just always happen to have the same playlist on repeat.
This is why I have now broadly expanded the types of music I listen to. I’m still not a fan of death metal, but I now appreciate where it’s coming from. And my musical tastes over the years have now expanded tremendously. It used to be just sad, beautiful songwriters. Now it’s everything from Rudimental, to Kali Uchis, even to some chill EDM. (Okay, I guess my taste hasn’t changed THAT much. But it’s still constantly expanding).
My point with this article is that, because music has such a powerful influence on our emotional states, I think we should try and be more conscious of those emotional states when we’re listening to music (or when we’re in silence), so that we’re not reinforcing an emotion we don’t want, but we’re also not avoiding an emotion that is there and needs to be expressed, lest it comes out in unhealthy ways.
As John Cusack’s character said in the movie “High Fidelity” (yes yes I know it was a book first blah blah I’ve even read it so bite me) — “Did I listen to pop music because I was depressed, or was I depressed because I listened to pop music?”
I think the answer is a little bit of both, John. My advice is: Listen to what speaks to your soul, whatever that is, at any point, but don’t get stuck there because you just always put on the same type of music.
Which brings me to the main topic of the article: high vibrational music. I’m now on the look-out for music that’s positive and inspiring that matches where I am at in my life right now. There are a few I’ve found: The self-titled Radnor and Lee album which is so good I made a whole post on to itself (link here:
https://theostrichandtheelephant.com/the-best-spiritual-album-i-have-ever-heard/ ), Rudimental, and a few tracks here and there that I really resonate with. An album called Known Odyssey I’ve also liked, which is a bit more new-agey but I’m beginning to appreciate that type of music more too, and it has some beautiful piano compositions. I’m still only on the beginning of the journey in finding high vibrational music though, so if you have any suggestions please leave them in the comments and I will check them out. Thanks!
But I think it’s also important to remember, with all this talk of sound and music… as someone has probably said once, silence itself is the most powerful sound you’ll never hear.
Or, as in The Simpsons when Lisa is at a jazz bar and the patron next to her says: Ugh, sounds like she’s hitting a baby with a cat.
And Lisa says: You have to listen to the notes she’s not playing.
The patron: Pfft, I could do that at home.
Thanks for reading,
In love and light!
Will.
For more stories like this, including mental health, extraterrestrials, and spirituality, please subscribe to my blog, follow my Facebook page “The Ostrich and the Elephant”, or find me on Twitter @willkenway, Medium @willkenway, or Instagram @will.kenway. Thanks!
April 21, 2019
The best spiritual album I have ever heard
This story was originally going to be titled “The importance of listening to high vibrational music”, but I felt that this is such a good album it deserved a post all of its own. The album is the self-titled album “Radnor & Lee” from Australian musician Ben Lee and American actor Ted Mosb… I mean Josh Radnor… the lead character from How I Met Your Mother.
How these two people (one of whom has never played an instrument) ended up coming up with the most inspiring, soul-touching album I’ve ever heard I will never know, but somehow they did it.
As some of you may know from one of my previous blogs “My disastrous spiritual awakening”, I ended up in a mental hospital for 3 months.
These places are not fun. Not only are you in a mental hospital, you also have literally nothing to do all day but ruminate on how you ended up there and pace up and down the corridors.
The one thing we were allowed (no mobile phones, no internet, no coffee) was a small mp3 player, which was the one saving grace in this oppressive environment.
During my three months there I almost did nothing but pace up and down the corridor listening to this album, which gave me some reprieve from the soul-crushing monotony of life in a mental hospital.
Also, as some of you may be aware, I had just had a partial spiritual awakening (my spiritual teacher called it a kundalini awakening), so I had enormous amounts of energy flowing through my body and no way to let it out in that environment. This led to me, for 3 months almost non-stop pacing up and down the hallway either in silence or listening to my mp3 player. I joked with the staff that I think I had done about as much walking as the girls from Rabbit Proof Fence.
For those who don’t know that reference, it is a beautiful but sad story about a young aboriginal girl, her sister, and her cousin, who were taken (part of the “half-caste”, “stolen generation” as it’s known in Australia) from their families to be integrated with “civilized” Western life and have the aboriginal blood bred out of them. These three girls didn’t like that situation, so they decided to make a 2,400 km (1,500 mile) journey along a rabbit proof fence to be reunited with their families. It took them nine weeks of walking to return home, despite being tracked by a professional aboriginal tracker, the girls managed to cover their tracks effectively and stayed in hiding with their families once they made the journey back.
I’m quite sure, in my 3 month stay in hospital, that I did about as much walking as those three girls, while listening to mainly just one album on my mp3 player — Radnor and Lee’s self-titled album. And also a little bit of Kali Uchis’ Por Vida, which is also a *great* album. I feel I learnt a lot about women listening to that album.
But back to the Radnor and Lee album, aside from some Bright Eyes music, I haven’t found any music that has touched me so deeply or inspired me so much.
A couple of songs you might like to listen to are:
“Be Like the Being” — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rPsmoWn7ZQ
“Still Though We Should Dance “— https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lEN8Tn1MmCQ
And “Falling Upward” — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpLhFFNBqSg
And here are a few Kali Uchis songs thrown in for good measure:
“Sycamore Tree” — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAaE8CmOf9k
“Lottery” — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrtIJK1SfcY
“Ridin’ Round” — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUANL9WoB90
So I just wanted to say a public thank you to Ben Lee and Josh Radnor (and Kali Uchis) for helping me get through one of the most difficult times in my life. You three people made is *slightly* more bearable in that horrible place.
So, thank you, and I hope your albums spread far and wide so other people can experience the same thing I did with it.
In love and light,
Will.
For more stories like this, including mental health, extraterrestrials, and spirituality, please subscribe to my blog, follow my Facebook page “The Ostrich and the Elephant”, or find me on Twitter @willkenway, Medium @willkenway, or Instagram @will.kenway. Thanks!
April 19, 2019
The “Voices” I Was Hearing
Preface
I was going to delete this post because I thought it made me sound a bit “crazy”. There were a lot of crazy things happening at the time of my kundalini awakening/psychosis, and at this point 2 years later I still haven’t found out the exact truth of what happened to me. Nevertheless, I have decided to keep this post up because it at least displays some of what happened to me and the process I went through trying to work out the truth of it. I feel I will work out the truth of it in the coming years, but as of this moment I still haven’t. As always, thanks for reading. 🙂

The post
As some of you may be aware if you have read some of my previous blog entries (in particular “My disastrous spiritual awakening”), I had a spiritual awakening event with some very unfortunate consequences which landed me in a mental hospital for three months.
Part of what I will be discussing in this blog is my diagnosis there, and part of it will be my first-hand experience of the symptoms. Some of it may be repetitive where necessary for those who haven’t read my previous blogs.
First, let me get my version of the events out of the way. I believe, based on my reading of other people’s experiences, and my spiritual teacher also telling me this is what happened — I had what they call a “kundalini” awakening. Kundalini is a Sanskrit term which refers to a usually dormant coil of energy located at the base of the human spine. In most humans this is coil of energy is usually suppressed by all our bodily conditions and thoughts (as emotion and thought are interlinked). In some people, and for various reasons — some out of intention, some out of types of yoga practise, some seemingly out of the blue, and some, like mine not consciously intended, but as a result of a particular yogic exercise I was doing while at a meditation weekend event — this energy can become activated or released.
This energy is known as “Shakti” energy — what is often termed the “Divine Feminine” energy that moves through the entire universe (and therefore, by inclusion, all humans).
When this energy wakes up, lots of things can happen. If you have a very light karmic load and are a very easy-going person, it may be a relatively smooth experience for you. If you do not have a light karmic load, or have a lot of resistance to life, as I did, it can be (and still is to this day for me — nine months later) a very challenging experience. To this day I find it difficult to sit still. I have to take anti-agitation pills and drink a beer or two just to be able to sit down and write this. I’m smoking about 20 cigarettes a day just to calm the nerves (stupid I know but what can you do). It’s an energy that I’m still trying to integrate properly, and, judging by other people’s experiences, this can take a number of years. In some circles this is known as “kundalini syndrome”, in others it is known as “kundalini psychosis” — these are just labels for the types of experiences people can have while going through this experience. Here’s an article by a guy who does great work especially with sexual energy called Mantak Chia on “kundalini psychosis” and the importance of grounding your energy so it doesn’t get stuck up in the head and cause these symptoms such as voices or hallucinations: https://realization.org/p/mantak-chia/most-effective-cure-for-kundalini-psychosis.html
I highly recommend his work on harnessing sexual energy — something I was working on (also called “no fap” on the internet) before this big shift happened in me. The two may have been related — i.e. the buildup of sexual energy may have resulted in my kundalini being awoken. I haven’t been able to maintain my no fapping trial because the energy in me has been too intense I’ve just needed to get everything out, but I highly recommend doing no fap as a spiritual practise, the benefits are tremendous. I may make a post on that later, but I don’t feel I am an expert on it just yet so I would suggest listening to Mantak Chia for that stuff, or there’s a great guy on the internet called “Gabe Dawg” who’s a kind of spiritual motivational person. Great guy and very much on the path of awakening, so I highly recommend him.
Anyway, some of the symptoms that can be experienced with kundalini syndrome are: physical symptoms, such as spasms of the body due to the energy movement; some can relive past traumas that have been unresolved; some can have visions (real or imaginary); some can hear voices. I had all of these, as well as a near constant agitation in the body, so that I couldn’t sit still properly.
My teacher told me that I had a lot of resistance, but also that I was moving through it all very quickly (likely as a result of the previous seven years of studying and practising techniques for spiritual awakening). But even then it was, and still is, intense for me. It’s a daily struggle to cope with the energy, and I’m not exactly a poster boy for a spiritual person at the moment. Meditating for an hour only to get straight up and have a cigarette and a coffee isn’t exactly the image you see at yoga camps, hehehe. But even meditation for the most part has been too intense for me to do, it seems to amplify the agitation. I’m mostly just drinking a heap of coffee, smoking a heap of cigarettes, drinking a bit, and taking a lot of anti-agitation pills. I think my local chemist is concerned, but my situation is a bit hard to explain to her: I can’t exactly say, “You see, there’s this Divine Feminine energy that runs through the entire universe, including me and including you… etc etc…” I imagine that would be met with a blank stare and a concerned call to my parents. (Note: some may say my agitation is linked to my high coffee consumption, but it isn’t. We weren’t allowed coffee in hospital and the energy was just as bad while I was there.)
But anyway look, even to call this the “Divine Feminine” energy is just label, but it’s the same reason we call “Mother Nature” *Mother* Nature — because this energy can be tremendously life-giving and nourishing, but it can also be very brutal and uncompromising (ever heard the term “hell hath no fury like a woman scorned?” Yeah. That kind of hell.) It’s the play of duality. For there to be light there must be its opposite: dark. This is what the Sanskrit word “Leela” refers to: The Divine Play.
I’m getting a bit sidetracked here because there’s lots to talk about, but back to my original point – when this energy woke up in me it was *intense*(!!!). There was a time I was walking down the street with a friend and my body suddenly did a 90 degree spasm so my whole top half was horizontal, and he was like, “dude, what the hell is wrong with you?” I tried to explain it to him and he has a bit of knowledge of the area so he kind of got it. But that degree of intensity lasted weeks. Before this all happened I also thought I was getting messages — in particular relating to a future partner of mine which I won’t go into much detail on because I don’t know if it’s true and it involves someone else so I’d prefer to keep them out of this story at this point.
During this period though, is when I started “hearing voices”, although “hearing voices” doesn’t really describe it well, it was more like I was receiving thoughts that weren’t my own. It wasn’t an audible hallucination; they were just thought forms that appeared to come from someone other than myself. Some I knew — my spiritual teacher for example — and some I didn’t — this future partner person for example. At one point it also felt like I was connecting with what I would call “cosmic consciousness”, as if I was talking directly to “God”. And I don’t really believe in God as an entity type thing, but more as the innate intelligence of the universe. The innate intelligence that lives inside each one of us. As Jesus said on the cross: “Is it not written in the Scripture I have said ye are all gods?” You don’t hear that quote coming from Christians too often do you… they like to keep godhood only for Jesus. *eyeroll*
But anyway, because of these symptoms I was diagnosed by one doctor with schizophrenia, another doctor said he couldn’t be sure, but we all agreed that what I had was a psychotic episode, we just disagreed on the cause. I tried to do a lot of research on schizophrenia and listen to other people’s experiences but mine never seemed to really match up to theirs very well. I never felt like I was being bombarded with thoughts — it felt like a normal conversation. And the only time it was ever “negative” was when I would come into contact with certain people who had very dense, negative egos, and I felt like I could feel their energy, which came to me in these thought forms as well. That only happened three times though, the rest was entirely positive or neutral, just like a conversation with a friend except they weren’t physically there, although I could also *feel* the energy of the person while these conversations were taking place, which is how I “knew” who it was coming from.
Now, I really don’t know what to make of all of that. I don’t know if I have schizophrenia — I don’t really believe I have — but I also don’t know if it was psychic communication — I haven’t been able to verify that yet with the people I felt I was communicating with. I am also open to the possibility that this kundalini awakening opened up aspects of my subconscious that needed to be integrated, so these “other thoughts” were in effect re-integrating disconnected parts of myself that I had previously closed off. I really don’t know the answer to these questions, all I can say is that I don’t really feel that I have schizophrenia. And my gut feeling is that a lot of people are in the same boat as me — having had a significant spiritual awakening (albeit sometimes with very unfortunate consequences as in my case) they have been labelled as schizoprenic or psychotic. The interesting thing was, in the hospital I was in I met more people I would say were spiritually switched on than I ever have in the outside world. Maybe that was because it was a place we could have deeper conversations, but I don’t think that was all it was, I think there is a link between spiritual awakening and having what some people would call psychotic breaks. Just look at Suzanne Segal’s story — she “lost her self” getting on a bus one day and was terrified and had no idea what had happened for 10 years! Counselor after counselor couldn’t help her out. All she’d had was a spiritual awakening with no one to guide her through it. It must have been terrifying for her. Her book is called “Collision with the Infinite” if you’re interested in reading it.
As a side note, I also believe there is a great awakening taking place on earth at this time, and I think that it would be very wise for governments to invest a lot in mental health care because I think things like this are going to be happening more and more. Hopefully it won’t be as bad as mine, but that’s my prediction.
I’m not sure if there’s a whole lot more I can say on this topic, as it sort of depends on what happens in the future — i.e. if my future predictions about this partner comes true, then I’m inclined to think it was psychic communication with her; if not, I’m inclined to think it was either kundalini psychosis, schizophrenia, or aspects of myself that I was re-integrating.
Just as a last note, I was also experiencing *crazy* levels of synchronicity at this time. I was seeing double numbers everywhere, even other people around me were like “whoah that’s weird”. And I was like, “yeah it is fucking weird!!!!” I did a science degree at university so I’ve always been a very skeptical person, but it was happening some days up to 90% of the time and I was thinking “this can’t be real!” Others have described similar things. One time I was at lunch with a friend talking about how I was seeing double numbers everywhere, and the three times I looked at my phone to check the time it was on a double number. I said, “Dude, check this out, it’s just happened three more times, what are the chances of that happening while we’re talking about it!” I did the calculation: 1/10 x 1/10 x 1/10 = it’s a 1/1,000 chance that it could be coincidence, but the fact we were also *talking* about it at the same time — what are the odds of that??? Stuff like this was happening *all the time*.
There have only been two times since hospital that I’ve heard the glimmer of a voice — they died down around the time I went into hospital. One was when I was worrying about my hair falling out from stress so it looked like I was going bald and the voice (which seemed to come from this future partner) said, “Oh Will, I don’t care about that”. The second time was also seemingly from this future partner where it asked if I would marry her. The connection I felt I had with this person in conversations before made my reply: “I would marry the fuck out of you.” So again, I may be crazy, but I’m also just going to wait and see.
In conclusion, this whole area is something I don’t really feel I’ll have much more clarity on until time unfolds and whether the messages I felt I was receiving come true or not.
Only time will tell.
And I promise I’ll let you know either way! 😛
As always, in love and light
Will. ❤
For more stories like this, including mental health, extraterrestrials, and spirituality, please subscribe to my blog, or follow my Facebook page “The Ostrich and the Elephant”, or find me on Twitter @willkenway, Medium @willkenway, or Instagram @will.kenway. Thanks!
April 10, 2019
What the Hell is Spirituality Anyway?
After beginning my life in a very “rational” and “scientific” (or so I thought) way, when I was 25 my life changed in a big way: I suddenly realized I knew very little. I also realized there was a whole field of inquiry I had previously disregarded – that of “spirituality”.
Spiritual is an interesting term. To me, it doesn’t really mean much, but you have to use some word to describe what we’re talking about, and if we changed it to a new word it would just ruin that word as well.
Having been a science student at university, I was always interested in the biggest questions of life – What is it? How does it work? Where did it come from? – and I thought studying a science degree would be the best way to work these questions out. And don’t get me wrong: science is an incredibly powerful and indispensable method of inquiry for investigating how our universe *behaves*. But… it doesn’t exactly tell us what it *is*.
There’s a very famous thought experiment (philosophers love to have these) by an Australian philosopher, Frank Jackson, called “Mary’s Room”. The short version of this thought experiment is: Imagine you have a girl, Mary, who is born into a black and white room, but she is an amazing scientist. The best scientist in the universe. She knows everything. Mary is like a little human God. But… she was born in a black and white room.
The thought experiment is one of knowledge. In philosophical terms this is called epistemology, the study of knowledge – what is knowledge, and how do we know what we know?
The thought experiment goes like this – if Mary knows everything in the universe, she knows all about colour. She knows all about the electromagnetic spectrum and photons and how the retinas in our eyes receive this information and transform it into electrical signals which are interpreted by our brains, thus producing the experience we know as “colour”. But again, Mary only lives in a black and white room. The thought experiment then poses the question: If Mary leaves the black and white room into the outside world and actually sees colour for the first time, does she learn anything new that she couldn’t have learnt from just studying the physical mechanics of light and nerve processing alone?
In other words, is there anything about life that cannot simply be reduced to its physicality.
The answer to me quite obviously is yes, she learns something new that she couldn’t have learnt if she hadn’t left the room. The thing she learnt was not based in physicality but in experience – what philosophers call “qualia” – the subjective, conscious experience of a phenomenon.
This to me really gets to the heart of what the term “spirituality” is all about: What is our direct perception of life, what is our experience of life, when you take away all the mental labels and models our minds have placed over the top of everything.
Say, for example, you’re eating an apple. You could say you’re eating an apple, but really there’s just this roundish, red, crunchy, delicious (if you like apples) blob of sensation in front of you. Now, obviously to communicate we need to use these labels. We can’t say “could you please hand me that roundish, red, crunchy, delicious blob of sensation on the table there?” It would be a great waste of time. But that doesn’t take away from the fact that all we ever really experience is the blob of sensations, never the actual “object” we call an apple.
As Morpheus said to Neo in the Matrix:
Neo: This… this isn’t real?
Morpheus: What is real? How do you define real? If you’re talking about what you can feel, what you can smell, what you can taste, and see, then real is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain.
The thing is, we live in the same universe that apple lives in, so this also applies to us, and the labels we use to describe ourselves are only labels for a collection of sense perceptions we have called our “self”. To me, this is the essence of what spirituality is really all about. It’s realizing that the labels we use to describe things are only labels, and they don’t get fundamentally to the actual nature of the thing we’re describing. In other words, things are not what we think they are, and we are also not what we think we are.
Try this experiment:

Without referring to your mind for information, and just look into your direct experience, ask yourself the question who or what are you? Your mind may say, “Oh my name’s Greg.” Yeah, but that’s just a name, a label given to you at birth, what were you before you were given that name? Or you might say, “I’m a landscaper!” Yeah, but that’s just your profession… if you changed jobs I’m pretty sure you’d still say you were you. So what exactly could you be if you really go deeply? Well, you might eventually come to the conclusion that you are your mind, but what is the mind? Just a collection of thoughts that come and go. What if you stop thinking? Are you still you then? So it needs to go even deeper than that. You might then start to touch upon that which is in you that never changes, that which is always there, the conscious witness of all your experience.
There is a great video here with Eckhart Tolle guiding someone through this process (the section begins at 15:50) –
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3CunRgjXBk&t=4s
This is why enlightened master after enlightened master has always repeated the phrase: you are consciousness itself! And when you look deeply into all of your experience, you realise that everything you experience is actually made up of this consciousness: sight, sound, touch, smell, taste… the whole world, as far as our actual experience of it goes, is nothing but consciousness. And you are not a separate part of it, you are a collection of sensations, just like the apple.
This might sound depressing to some, but really it is liberating – it means you are no longer tied to any of the mental identifications you had with yourself. All your previous thoughts about yourself, your faults, your struggles, is all just consciousness blobbing its way through existence. And when you start to let go of all those previous thoughts about yourself and the world that you had, and start going with the flow of your direct experience, without the mind getting in the way with its constant chatter, the blobs start to blob a whole lot better. The reason for this is because when you’re perceiving things more directly as they are, rather than through the filter of the mind with all of its preconceptions and belief systems about how you think they are, you are more directly in touch with what is really happening.
In one way, spirituality is a very simple topic. It’s just a case of mistaken identity: we have mistaken ourselves to be the body or mind we perceive in front of us instead of seeing ourselves as consciousness, the witness of these bodies/minds. In another way though, we live in a very large and very complex world, so spirituality can also be a very large topic, and I’m not going to be able to cover everything in one blog post (especially because I don’t know anywhere near everything about it!), but essentially that’s what spirituality means to me – realizing that you really are one with the universe, and that, again, as far as our direct experience goes, the whole universe is made out of what we could call “consciousness”.
It might sound like a big leap to say that just because our direct perception of life can only ever be consciousness that the universe must only be consciousness, but this position is also being backed up by modern physics as well, which, while confusing the hell out of almost every physicist in the world, points to the fact that the “physical” world we think we perceive is actually a construction that depends on the conscious observer of the event. That things are not things until they are witnessed by an observer! There’s a great video on this by someone on youtube called Inspiring Philosophy –
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4C5pq7W5yRM&t=225s. Now, I don’t agree with his religious conclusions at the end – I think he is making a leap in reasoning there that you can’t make, but it is still a great video up until that point.
Probably the best physicist I have found today discussing this topic is a person called Robert Lanza. He was called by The New York Times one of the three most important scientists alive today, just to give you a bit of an idea of how good a scientist he is! He is a much better writer than speaker, and his book “Biocentrism: How Life and Consciousness are the Keys to Understanding the True Nature of the Universe” is a fantastic read and very accessible even for those unfamiliar with physics. But for those who don’t have the time or inclination to read a book, here he is at the Science and Nonduality conference giving a talk on this subject:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zI_F4nOKDSM&t=47s
As I said, spirituality is also a very broad topic and covers a whole range of issues, but this is what it means to me in its most basic form, as a former science student and advocate of the scientific method (the method based on direct evidence!). I may make some more blog posts on the broader topic of spirituality in future but I think that’s all I have to say for now.
Thanks for reading,
Will.
For more stories like this, including mental health, extraterrestrials, and spirituality, please subscribe to my blog, follow my Facebook page “The Ostrich and the Elephant”, or find me on Twitter @willkenway, Medium @willkenway, or Instagram @will.kenway. Thanks!
April 6, 2019

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