So yes, all that said, let’s get down to the point, the glitch moment. Ready?

Everything you sense, everything you experience, is a hypnotic suggestion. Every trip you have ever taken, even across your home from your living room to your fridge, is a head trip. You have never had anything but head trips.

Normally, your brain has very little reason to break out of it’s business as usual habits. The glitch moment (and people are often set against having them) is when that chain of hypnotic suggestions from your body and brain is disrupted. Any sudden startle does it for a little bit, states of extreme emotion or exhaustion. Ever get so angry you couldn’t be angry?

Yes. This is the glitch moment. You can induce them. Meditation can do that as long as it isn’t too well rehearsed. Aggressive behaviour either enacted by yourself or expressed toward you from another source. The potential list is a long one. This is the reason they sent young people on vision quests, or rites of passage or initiation. Otherwise, no matter how much they might be told of their group or cultures wisdom, they would never really understand it.

What do we most often comment on when we learn something entirely new? That it is new. That it’s nothing like we have previously experienced or expected. Is this not so?

They seem to almost torture a young initiate to get them past the brains habits. The brain itself doesn’t like to learn new things unless it’s made to. It always pigeon holes anything new in with something old. So when they hear the secret to personal enlightenment say, they might come up with something really strange like, “It’s like doing the laundry?” As amusing as these conclusions sometimes are, no, it’s not like that. It’s not like any of the language that people conventionally use in any culture. This was the original meaning of the term mystery as it referred to initiation into mystical experience. No words. Taoism is full of comments on how the true Tao cannot be described, how it can’t even be named. They aren’t just being mystagogues, claiming mystery for its own sake, there is a real and concrete truth behind their assertions.

Yes, hence the power of zen koans as well. Yes. Language itself reinforces the hypnotic state. It keeps the brain looking for things it expects to see, because it expects to see things it has words for.

So zen is basically working on inducing glitches? It is, yes, right down to the zen master wacking you on the back with a stick. In your experience, have you ever met someone who spoke poorly, but was very perceptive?

Enlightenment is a glitch? It is, yes. The great wheel is just your brain churning through it’s business as usual. So you have met someone who spoke poorly but was highly perceptive?

Not that I can recall. Being highly perceptive motivates someone to find words for what they see and hear for the same reason a child does. It is what motivated me to delve so deeply into religion, philosophy, science and the rest, even art. Though I developed no productive art skills, I am well versed in the theory of art.

Your thoughts are welcome. Be well friends.

Travis Saunders
Dragon Intuitive
~science,mysticism,spirituality~