Ep 137: Pronoia ~ The Alchemy of Optimism in the Universe's Grand Design

Ever wondered if the universe is conspiring in your favour? Our latest podcast episode delves into Rob Breszny's 'Pronoia',  exploring the radical idea that life is a benevolent force showering us with blessings. This isn't just another feel-good theory; it's a call to arms to recognise pain and struggle as integral colours in life's vast tapestry, encouraging us to embrace 'cagey optimism' rather than surrender to despair. I share insights on how we can tune our perception to savour the alchemy of life's paradoxes, fostering a reality where challenges morph into opportunities for growth and connection.

Shift your perspective and shake up your emotional landscape — we're taking a look at 'pill' philosophies birthed from "The Matrix" that influence our worldviews. From the depths of the black pill to the promise of the white pill, our conversation explores how our chosen lens can dramatically alter our life's narrative. By understanding and acknowledging our own multiple aspects within a universe that's rooting for us, we unlock a path brimming with positivity.  Join us as we connect the dots between individual mindset shifts and a collective transformation, potentially steering us towards a future rich in fulfillment and unity.

Where to find Rob Breszny's book Pronoia:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Pronoia-Antidote-Paranoia-Revised-Expanded/dp/1556438184
https://www.amazon.com/Pronoia-Antidote-Paranoia-Revised-Expanded/dp/1556438184

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:02

Truth and Transcendence, brought to you by BeingSpace with Catherine Llewellyn. Truth and Transcendence, episode 137. And today I want to talk to you about another favourite book of mine. It's called Pro Neuer and it's by Rob Bresney. You may have come across Rob Bresney.

Speaker 1: 0:32

He has a rather unusual astrological offering on his website and in various columns in various publications. And this book of his, pro Neuer that's spelled P-R-O-N-O-I-A and it's, I would say it's a coffee table book. It's a massive book, it's heavy and it's pleasingly heavy, I would say. And he says that Pro Neuer is the antidote for paranoia. And on the front it says how the whole world is conspiring to shower you with blessings.

Speaker 1: 1:12

And when I first saw this actually a friend gave it to me when I first saw this I thought is this positive thinking? Is this somebody denying the shadow and the difficulties of life? And actually that's not the case. And in fact he talks an awful lot about pain and difficulties that we experience in our lives and how important those are, but that the way we come at it and the way we come at our assumptions about the world are really what makes the difference. So here on the back he says human beings are selfish, small-minded, violence-prone savages. Civilization is a blight on the earth. The rising tide of chaos that surrounds us on all sides ensures that everything's going to fall apart any day now. Right Wrong, in fact. Evil is boring, cynicism is stupid, despair is lazy. The truth is that the universe is inherently friendly. Life is a sublime game, created for our amusement and illumination, and it always gives us exactly what we need, exactly when we need it.

Speaker 1: 2:25

But his buoyant approach is not rooted in denial. On the contrary, he builds a case for a cagey optimism that does not require a repression of difficulty, but rather seeks a vigorous engagement with it. So this book, he says, is 888 tricks for becoming a wildly disciplined, fiercely tender, ironically sincere, scrupulously curious, aggressively sensitive, blasphemously reverent, lyrically logical, lustfully compassionate master of rowdy gliss. And I love that, because something I've noticed about the people who seem to be happiest and most fulfilled in life is that they are completely comfortable with paradox and apparent contradiction, as mentioned in those various things he says there. A lot of those sound absolutely contradictory and actually my feeling is that life is full of paradox and that that is a delightful aspect of it. So the question is, how do we open ourselves to that in such a way that we can receive it as a point of fascination rather than a point of confusion, concern, fear, despair, risk and a need for self-protection.

Speaker 1: 3:52

And I think that Bresna's concept of viewing life as if the universe is waiting and trying to share us with blessings actually helps us to unlock the aspect of us that can receive the miracle of life and that can receive the goodness that is coming towards us. And we talk about what is reality. Honestly, we probably don't know. We make certain assumptions in order to get through the day and okay, that's a car key, that's a car, right, that makes sense. We know what to do, but we don't know. We know that what we see with our eyes tells us and how we interpret it in our brain. That tells us what we think we're seeing, but we don't really know what's going on. We don't really know how much of reality we're capable of perceiving. I think it's fairly safe to assume that what we are perceiving is a very small fraction of what is, what is there and what is potentially available to be perceived. So the way our perception is directed is going to make a fundamental difference to the information that comes towards us and that we can receive and use.

Speaker 1: 5:10

You may have had moments in your life where you've noticed that you are particularly receptive to noticing opportunities around you, or other times in life when you're particularly not perceptive to opportunities around you, where everything seems to be negative and unfair and unhelpful, and then other times where everything seems to be wonderful and contributive, and as if the universe cares about you. What's the difference? So fair enough sometimes. The difference is that there are some difficult things happening in your life and other times not so much, but more so than that. The way you're perceiving what's happening, I think, really makes even more of a difference.

Speaker 1: 5:53

You hear these extraordinary tales of people having very, very difficult lives and yet experiencing extraordinary spiritual integration and connectedness and fulfilment, and other people where all of the circumstances look fantastic and seem to be absolutely wonderful and perfect and who are just not happy. What's the difference? Well, the difference is in the way life is being perceived. And of course, you know, get the other way around people who are having a terrible time in difficult circumstances and people in wonderful circumstances having a wonderful time. So there's a full range of mixtures and possibilities, but the way that we approach our lives and the assumptions we make about our lives fundamentally govern our ability to receive the gifts that are offered to us and our ability to engage effectively with the difficulties the difficulties within and the difficulties without. So our energy and our summing up of how life is is far more powerful than we know. We think we've got some idea of understanding this because of things like the power of manifestation and positive thinking and all of these other things that we've heard about and some of us have practiced mindfulness, the law of attraction, all of these things. We think we've got to the bottom of it, but I really feel that collectively, we haven't got to the bottom of it yet, because how we'll know we've got to bottom of it collectively is there will be a fundamental and profound and permanent shift in mood and atmosphere all the way around the planet, and that's how I feel confident in saying we haven't yet fully got to the bottom of it. I think we're doing well in our progress in that direction, but there's more to go, and, of course, you could hear that, as me being doom and glue okay, we've not got there yet. We've got more work to do. Or you could hear that as, hey, there's even more available for us, which could be very, very exciting People talk these days about.

Speaker 1: 8:15

Are you red pill, blue pill, black pill, white pill, orange pill? You're probably familiar from the Matrix movie, where the Keanu Reeves character is offered a red pill or a blue pill, and I think the red pill is the one that you take if you want to really wake up to what's going on, and the blue pill is if you want to stay asleep. And of course, he takes the red pill and finds out that what's really going on is really very unpleasant and the illusion when you take the blue pill is much more pleasant. And in fact there is a character in the movie who then, having lived the reality for a while, goes actually I'd much rather be in the illusion, in the virtual world and takes the blue pill and goes back in. You know which I thought was quite bold of them to do that in the movie.

Speaker 1: 9:06

But since then people have now come up with black pill, you know, which is assuming that everything's doom and gloom, and white pill, which is saying well, actually we're pretty optimistic about where we're going and what we're doing. But the problem with the black pill one is when we, when we are assuming that the universe is out to get us or just uncaring, not wanting to, doesn't even notice us. We're that insignificant to it, that kind of thing when we have that point of view, if we're assuming that things are not going to go well for us and that the universe is not benevolent, one of the things about the way our mind works when we come up with a particular framework of thinking is we just can't help it. We automatically and naturally seek to strengthen that particular belief system, and one of the ways we do that is to look out for evidence that we're right. Now, in this case, there is limitless evidence available that there are bad things going on. So if we focus on those and strengthen that belief system, the doom and gloom belief system, what we then do?

Speaker 1: 10:25

We don't just make ourselves right in terms of belief, but we actually affect ourselves emotionally when we do that. There's probably some sort of chemical thing that happens in the body that I don't understand, but which I've certainly recognized and have experienced and witnessed in others, where an over emphasis on doom and gloom creates a physical imbalance in the body which leads to and contributes to emotional imbalance, tension, despair, anxiety, which is bad for the digestion, bad for the skin, bad for the body, which then contributes to the mindset that everything doom and gloom. So it's a very unpleasant downward spiral at that point and of course that leads to lowered spirits and the lowered capacity for noticing and grabbing opportunities. Plus, we then become very poor company, we start driving people away. But the white pill point of view is quite the reverse.

Speaker 1: 11:26

If we take that point of view that the universe is sharing us with blessings, and if, whilst doing that which Bresne really goes into in depth in the book Pranoya, if we also really examine our own shadow, in other words the things in ourselves that we don't like, but from within a context of a benevolent universe, then what we do is we are reversing that particular pattern. We're then looking at evidence that we're right, that the universe is sharing us with blessings, and guess what? We notice more opportunity and blessings coming towards us and we then grab those and then our life gets better and then we have higher spirits and our capacity for noticing and grabbing opportunities grows. And of course we are then attracting people. We are more magnetic to people when we're in that mind set. But again to emphasise, this only works when we are exploring our own shadow as part of being open to truth. So, in other words, we're taking this assumption of the benevolent universe as a piece of containment and support and feeling held and encouraged, such that we can explore our own issues and difficulties from a positive, self accepting point of view, so that we can then grow.

Speaker 1: 12:52

It's not so that we stagnate, it's not so that we go right, I'm wearing blinkers, I'm wearing rose coloured spectacles, everything's fine. I don't need to think or examine or explore. No, that's not what it's about. So what we do know is that how we live our lives is affected by how we view how life works, and how we live our lives affects us as individuals and also everyone we encounter and those that they encounter as well, and so on. So one could say that a book like this if everybody read it, that could actually contribute to the sort of shift we might want to see in the world.

Speaker 1: 13:36

And if that sounds a bit mad, you could say that about all sorts of different books or experiences or seminars or mentoring practitioners or healing practices or anything special water that's been specially processed. I had someone on my podcast a while back and she was selling this special water that was been processed in a special way, apparently had healing properties, and that's what she's into and she thinks if everyone took some of that, the world would change. She's probably right. So there are multiple, multiple things in the world which, if everybody did them, the world would change, which I think, if anything, reinforces what I'm suggesting in this particular episode, which is let's experiment with the notion of assuming that the universe is sharing us with blessings, conspiring to share us with blessings, and that we could become, as he says, wildly disciplined, fiercely tender, ironically sincere, scrupulously curious, aggressively sensitive, blasphemously reverent, lyrically logical, lustfully compassionate and a master of rowdy bliss. So I'd be very interested to know, if any of you have sessions coming up with your coach or your therapist or practitioner or whatever If you were to take some of those words into your session and say I'd like to have a bit more of this, I'd like to have a bit more scrupulously curious.

Speaker 1: 15:24

Let's examine what that actually means. Any of these could be taken as a fantastic piece of inquiry into actually opening up to different aspects of ourselves that can just live in harmony, in a dynamic harmony, an exciting, dynamic harmony. And of course, part of what I'm suggesting is that we can only really allow that to happen fully when we start from a place of assuming benevolence in the universe, which some people might call an abundant mindset. So, starting from that and just remembering that we don't know what is actually the truth and what is really reality, we just don't know. We only know what's our own truth in any given moment. And we also know that sometimes somebody communicates their truth to us and we find it resonates for us and we choose to believe it or to accept it or to hold it as a hypothesis. But still that's our own choice, which comes from our own relationship with our own truth. So why not? Why not take the white pill perspective? Why not make the assumption of the benevolent universe? So, pro Neuer by Rob Bresney I'm going to put a link in these show notes Love this book.

Speaker 1: 16:47

You can dip into it, you can read it all the way through and there are bits in it where you encourage to write in it and scribble in it and draw things and wonderful thing. And, if you like it, it's a fantastic gift. When you've got people who really don't need more stuff, which is true for most of us, this is a great book to give. So thank you for listening, have a fantastic week and I look forward to seeing you next time. Thank you for listening to Truth and Transcendence and thank you for supporting the show by rating, reviewing, subscribing, buying me a coffee and telling a friend. If you'd like to know more about my work, you can find out about mentoring, workshops and energy treatments on beingspaceworld. Have a wonderful week and I'll see you next time.