Chasing Iridescence; through the sense fields of perception
On the venerable connections we can form with our world as we coast the avenues of consciousness and reality
Endless fields of perception
“Perception here is not just what you perceive but the whole act of perceiving — the interaction between consciousness, the sense organs and the sense fields, or the objects of perception” - Chogyam Trungpa
Terence McKenna had once described a curious pursuit of his: “the iridescence that you get when you break open ore-bearing rock, or the iridescence that you get when you capture certain kinds of butterflies in tropical environments, or the kind of iridescence that you get when you mix potassium perchlorate in sugar in a hot-sauce pan and ignite it.”
This iridescence, to him, symbolized the sparks of possibility found within the folds of the fabric underlying our perceivable reality — those clues pushing themselves from the edges of the permissible and probable.
It’s not exactly hard to interpret what he means, assuming the right kind of perceptions are employed.
Fittingly, this pursuit seems to start and end within the confines of one’s own subjective stream of consciousness, for no other purpose than to cultivate a supreme kind of perspective.
But in itself, that purpose is absolutely everything; it’s the difference between a melancholic crawl through a weighty existence or an upbeat saunter along the peaks and crests of an indescribable experience.
It’s the assumption of a superior kind of agency.
It has taken me all of my 34 years to figure out one of the more subtle truths to our existence, something I keep excavating hint by hint, whether it emanates from the dense and impenetrable concepts of physics or from Eastern writings that have to be re-read a hundred times over: that our perceptions and our perspectives transcend everything in this world, in all the right ways and all the wrong ways.
If we’re lucky, we can catch onto this fact early enough that we can begin to calibrate our trajectories of meaning accordingly.
In doing so, we’re able to pursue the kind of existence we want most — one that’s either beautiful, moral, powerful, adventurous, virtuous, resourceful, wise, discerning — you name it. That we have as much freedom as we do in choosing any such type of existence is astounding in itself.
The other beauty of it all is that the certain iridescence that McKenna searched for is not really to be found within the glints of rarity that pour out of ores or shine off of the wings of exotic insects — it’s all around us, in everything that we interact with — it’s layered into the very essence and structure of the physical world around us.
We can see it, smell it, hear it, taste it, touch it, and sense it because it’s a reflection of that which emanates from ourselves. Like moths to a flame, we’re drawn to it.
And as much as it is outside of us, sensing it is also dependent on what’s synthesizing inside of us. So while this certain magic can be found in everything that we interact with, it’s also founded and grounded in everything we are.
More exciting is that, once we’re aware of it, we can amplify and synchronize, refine and harmonize, so that our navigation along these winding avenues of an enigmatic world become all the more effective.
The hardest part, it seems, is to get over a rather nuanced dichotomy.
Transcending [and synchronizing] the duality
There’s a difficult perceptual line that we have to navigate daily; the internal versus the external, the objective and the subjective.
Both are symbiotic and both have the potential to obliterate one another.
We know that equilibrium is everything — that we can’t either subjectivize or objectivize the entirety of our being.
But the connections between these two, especially those that plug into the intangible facets of existence, mean much more than we generally take them to.
And there’s no shortage of conceptualizations drawn from such connections, either through religious frameworks or esoteric ideologies.
The common denominator between all of them, it seems, is to draw heavily on the appreciation that can be cultivated for our surrounding world, to acknowledge (often via rigorous self-discovery) the ‘magic’ laden within the wrinkles of our knowable existence.
Tibetan Buddhist, Chogyam Trungpa, words it well:
“The experience of sacred world begins to show you how you are woven together with the richness and brilliance of the phenomenal world. You are a natural part of that world, and you begin to see the possibilities of natural hierarchy and order, which could provide the model for how to conduct your life… to live in harmony with the elemental quality of reality… ‘to bring out the brilliant and genuine qualities of your environment and of your own being. So you begin to contact the magic of reality — which is already there in some sense… You see that you can actually organize your life in such a way that you magnetic magic, or drala, to manifest brilliance and elegance in your world.”
It’s not unlike our interaction with the sun. While we know that our host star is responsible for our existence and that we’re wholly dependent on it, we can somehow go a whole lifetime taking for granted the cosmically miraculous situation we find ourselves in; on the other hand, if we fanaticize about it too much, we risk losing touch with our subjective stature.
So a homeostatic balancing act across this fine line is required, and one such way to transcend the dualism — to close the gap between internal and external — is to employ an unrelenting reverence of our reality and our place within it, all to reinforce our fundamental connections to it.
While frustratingly difficult, it’s nonetheless possible.
Reverie for the natural order
Consider the grain of sand at the center of any pearl. To a mollusk, the protective excrement that they exude around an irritant (i.e. said grain of sand) isn’t something to be adorned. To us, however, that fortified iridescence proves expensively captivating.
Perspective is everything, and out of that perspective grow the scintillas of possibility. Like the pearl, everything contains a story; every minute and seemingly insignificant clump of matter or time can be seen as either pointless or pivotal.
We can look at something as insignificant as a grain of sand and grow potent meaning out of it, which in itself is kind of an absurdly powerful capability.
To do so, however, requires a curious kind of awareness, one rooted in our uniquely privileged presence within our reality; a perspective aware of the causal reverberations and in-potentia excitations, intimately connected to reality.
And so the kind of perspective we employ towards our natural world is reflective of our existential positioning — our sequencing, our movement, and our conscious digestion of reality around us.
We’re incredibly mobile organisms, able to navigate reality using our conscious interpretations that help us enact possibilities and pursue opportunities; as we process our surrounding world through the meshwork of our perspective, we occasionally see the glimmering golds of existence.
Those shimmers of gold cultivate an appreciation not only for what they mean, but for what they can mean.
Our reality, every dense square inch of it, is filled with possibility, moment to moment, past to future, future to present.
Touted ad nauseum is the idea that we should integrate with the surrounding space and reality; we should become one with nature or unite with the world in which we inhabit. The depth of such a message isn’t always obvious.
To immerse into every moment and into every fold of possibility; to swim through potential in a way that understands and reveres (not just leverages) the forces around.
Easier said than done, but if actively practiced, it allows one to observe the iridescence of life everywhere, and to conclude that our reality is really made up of some sort of magic that we can’t necessary transcribe, though we can feel.
Accessing this iridescence allows us to to ride an unwavering appreciation of every assembly of matter and every causal chain of eventhood; to become lost in curious bewilderment of an existence full of synchronicity and possibility.
Beyond words
While I’m not happy about using the word ‘magic’ so many times in one essay, it’s probably the most fitting term that can be used to describe that which is cultivated through the right kind of perspective, one that awakens our intimate connection to reality.
That’s really what it all boils down to — the unspoken and venerated interdependence on our host environment.
Chasing those moments that are infused with something completely extraordinary of an appreciation for the world that allows us to be, to do, to feel.
There can be no such experience of that magic without the attention that it deserves. In cultivating such attention, we’re also generating possibility, via the intentions and connections formed with the world around us.
We can identify and pursue potential; we can enact, anticipate and influence change; we can study, we can know, we can remember, we can grow and evolve; we can feel.
That we can be humorful and have the capacity for laughter alone is something almost unfathomably unique to our species.
And that we waste as much time as we do arguing over ideologies or cultural pulsations is, in itself, the comical crux of it all.
In any event, Buddhists, McKenna and others know: our place here is a special one. Our ability to float through this expulsion of cosmic particles with as much awareness as we have is simply indefinable.
We can actually feel our existence, and that’s something indescribable.
