Qultura is based on three basic premises or central mystical principles. These are:
- All existence is change, all existence is relationship.
- The environment creates, the individual (organism) grows.
- All trauma and suffering arises out of separateness and division.
The whole point of developing a Qultura method is to develop what is known as a 'meta-physic' or an existential dimension to your life through developing a process of awakening, a spiritual journey, which enhances your existing life experience and gives it a deeper significance and meaning. Out of this awakening process you should be able to develop a narrative or story based on truth which you can use in any aspect of your life.
There are no rules to follow, nothing you really need to believe, because it's assumed that as an adult this is not the first time you've attempted to develop a meta-physic or existential dimension to your life. You may identify as a follower or a believer as a religion, be it Chrstianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism or some other religion or belief system. This is not an issue. Qultura is about the mysticism and mystical principles, which you might have missed or not been taught. Whether you follow a religion or not is not the issue because there is no right way or wrong way to go about developing a Qultura method. There is only what works and what doesn't work for you.
The Principle and the Process
Existence is a principle. Creativity and interaction is a process. This is the 'how?' and 'what?' what of life. Everything in existence has a principle and process. The universe has a principle and process. This planet has a principle and process. A tree has a principle and process. You have a principle and process. So too does everyone else. Asking "What?" gives you a principle. Asking "How?" will give you a process.
Now this is an important part and is key to understanding your principle and process (and that of everyone else. Normlly we think of 'self' in terms of our Ego, which we assume to be the sum total of our consciousness. But if you think of yourself in that way it may be difficult to understand what is principle and what is process. In terms of Qultura your Principle and Process is thus:
- Principle
- Your principle is the sum total of your consciousness in the present moment in time. This includes your focus of conscious attention (which roughly translates to your Ego), your conscious awareness, and the much deeper and far more extensive subconscious which merges with the consciousness in your environment.
- Process
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Your process is the sum total of your physical existence, i.e. the sum total of your experience of living existence in terms of your whole life and incarnation. Understand that Qultura accepts reincarnation as a given, and you go through different incarnations or life cycles. But as you can only perceive consciousness through energy, the basis of all physicality, you are only consciously aware of this current incarnation and life cycle. Your process takes in all aspects of your physical life, i.e. your physical body, your sense of self (Ego), your direct experiences of life (the Felt Sense of Immediate Experience), thoughts, feelings, emotions, everything you think, do and say, and everything that is physical including beliefs, concepts and so on.
Your process is also known as a karmic process because it is based on karma. Karma is memory, action, desire, emotional and physical attachments, energies, choices and consequences. We will go deeper into karma and what it's about in the webpage 'What is karma?'
- Mind
- Mind is the space between the principle and process just as mind is the space between what you perceive as you and everything else which you perceive as not you. Keep in mind that space is what connects everything and defines relationship.
As you can see in terms of Qultura Principle is essentially consciousness, Process is physical and energetic and mind is space. If you're working your way through this section as a kind of walkthrough or introductory guide this should become clearer to you over the next couple of webpages. However please keep in mind that energy and consciousness are two completely different things. Energy is a matter of wavelength, frequency and how it connects to space and consciousness. This is simple. Consciousness is not. It's mysterious and we cannot understand, define or explain it. All we know is that we can perceive consciousness through energy and physical means, i.e. our senses.
Much of what consciousness is about is your awareness and being connected to what's going on around you. If you're asleep then you are relatively unconscious so you're not aware of what's going on around you. If someone hit you over the head with say a baseball bat and knocked you out likewise you would be unconscious. Obviously when you're awake you're conscious and consciously aware, but by how much? Much of what developing a Qultura method is all about is developing empathy and the ability to sense and 'feel' what's going on around you and other people. You're developing important skills and abilities such as the ability to sense and feel things, develop your intuition, feeling, sensory perception, where such things as colour, tone, ambience, apprehension, ambition, and nuance are all important.
The environment creates, the individual grows.
This is the important bit and it's related to the second basic premise of Qultura. Dream weaving is about awakening through an expansion of consciousness and an increase of awareness, particularly environmental awareness. But part of the awakening process when it comes to dream weaving and Qultura is also somewhat counter-intuitive. Insight comes when you are unconscious.
The clearest example of this principle is sleep. What happens when you sleep? You dream. What do you dream about? Well often you dream about something which is somehow connected to you or your past memories. You cannot control what you dream about. Dreams happen spontaneously, randomly. Something similar happens when you daydream. You are unconscious with regard to what's going on around you. You're not paying attention. But see whether you're daydreaming or dreaming while you're asleep things come to you. You get ideas, feelings, certain memories are triggered, Your focus of conscious attention is switched off, and you're drifting in a kind of mental wandering.
What this means is that you cannot determine how or even why you develop conscious awareness, or even if you develop conscious awareness. You can try but whether or not you actually develop conscious awareness and insight has got nothing to do with your conscious will or intent. Let's remind ourselves of two more examples (which are also in the 'About' section) where we see this principle in action.
Let's start with the first example of losing something. Let's say you've lost your keys, your smartphone, or something else. So what do you do? You look for it. You check your pockets. You check your bag. You wander round your home while you're trying to remember where and when you last saw your item. So you still don't find it while you're wandering around and looking on all the visible surfaces, tables, the kitchen worktops, chairs, the sofa, and so on.
But you still don't find it, so you start looking in less obvious places. You start looking behind the sofa. You look in your bedroom. You look under the pillows. You look under the duvet. You start pulling furniture about. You start looking in drawers and cupboards. As you're looking you start feeling more and more anxious and start considering whether you lost your keys or phone outside. You keep looking and looking, but still don't find what you're looking for.
So eventually you reach a point of despair and give up. You say to yourself "Maybe it will turn up somewhere." and you go do something else. How many times have you actually gone off to do something else and, when you're not thinking about it, you find the item you were looking for in a fairly obvious place? How many things have you found in your life when you weren't actually looking for them?
Let's look at the popular saying 'practice makes perfect'. Say you are learning how to do something by following a method or a technique and you keep trying and failing. So you keep trying and trying, and failing and failing. Say you follow a recipe for something and it doesn't work out. Or if you can remember back to your childhood when you learned to swim or ride a bicycle. You keep trying and failing. So you reach a point of despair and start to believe that you're never going to be able to achieve success. Maybe way back you believed yourself to be the one weird kid who was never going to be able to swim.
But then when you give it one last go before giving up you succeed. You're able to swim. You're able to ride a bicycle. That what you were making according to a recipe turns out exactly as it looks in the picture.
You manage to succeed but you do not know how you did it or managed to achieve it. You succeeded but you don't know how. You cannot explain it.
"To truly know the world look deeply within your own being. To truly know yourself, take a real interest in the world."
Presence of mind and community participation
Let's bring to mind a quote by Rudolf Steiner, philosopher, theosophist and writer who understood the nature of developing conscious awareness. Following any sort of method or belief system does not result in higher consciousness. There is no higher or lower consciousness. There is only consciousness. The only question is whether you are open and receptive enough to be able to perceive it. The Qultura system is designed in such a way that with mystical awareness presented as a set of principles and the provision of access to a community, development of conscious awareness through a process of awakening is inevitable.
There is no other way round this. You cannot develop conscious awareness if you are clinging to any specific model of reality or belief system because you are constantly judging everything as to whether it fits your model of reality or not. From this you get not only the assumption that you understand reality (when you don't) but also ignorance. In choosing to remain ignorant your level of conscious awareness will remain the same while everything around you is changing. In order to develop conscious awareness - something which you cannot control in any way - you need to go through the process. Become familiar with the mystical principles, participate in community, and maintain an open mind. Dream weaving is based on interaction and relationship, but for it to work you need to ensure that you have the basis. The basis is mystical awareness, community participation and an open mind.