ArKana ArKadia

Truth or Despair

2012-01-26T06:19:00.000-08:00

Who despairs, sins? So that means not only do I have to deal with despair, I have to feel like a sinner too? That helps. Not. Right?

Hold on, reader. Before you continue, ask yourself if you need to hear any of this. Maybe you are one of the lucky ones, and you don’t need to know anything about despair because you have already left it behind you. In which case, read no more. On the other hand, if despair is something you struggle with on a daily basis, feel free to continue. Nothing you read here is likely to make it any worse.

Full disclosure: Since despair is the most consistent and persistent feature in my life, I am choosing to write about it – again, maybe for the last time but probably not. I want to get to the bottom of despair — but is there even a bottom? What if, the deeper I dig, the further away from the light I get? What if, on my mad, deluded quest to find the underworld of my psyche and there rout out despair, once and for all, I am only digging my own grave?

On especially bad days — like today — that’s how it feels. It feels like I am some sort of despair-generator, as if all the world’s despair spews forth from my own black heart, a self-pitying pit of pestilence. Never mind fear of fear, I live in despair of despair. It is a self-propelling circle of self-rejection. What is the point? But then, that’s the point of despair, isn’t it: pointlessness and the black, gnawing absence of hope. We live lives of quiet (or noisy, if you are like me) desperation.

I know that my despair must come from inside of me, because there’s nothing outside of me to explain it. There is nothing awful in the present (besides non-voluntary bachelorhood, I live an “enviable” life), and there’s nothing so terrible in my past (just one more traumatic childhood). As for the future, sure, death and old age looms, but that hardly makes me cursed. Am I really so alone or exceptional?? Maybe others just hide it better. But then, I hide it pretty well too. Most of the time when I interact with people, I smile and joke just like you do. So where does all this despair come from?

Nothing seems to work with despair. If I tell myself that it is all for some purpose—that I am “processing” ancestral patterns which my forebears and peers have avoided (by chasing wealth and status, going on religious crusades, and jacking off to internet porn)—then I give myself license to extend the misery indefinitely. If I tell myself it is only masochism and self-indulgence and that I could let go of it any time I wanted, the despair is magnified by a sense of my weakness and worthlessness.

God Help Me!!!

Is this what has made the world we are living in—a mad frenzy of delusional avoidance activity driven by a bottomless pit of generational despair? Why? What the hell is wrong with me, you, us?

There’s only one answer that covers all the bases: truth. Despair is the result of living out lives that are fundamentally untrue, inauthentic lives. So our despair is “punishment” for our inauthenticity, or at least, a natural consequence of it. Does it help to know that? Maybe not right away, but it does provide some sort of answer at least.

What matters isn’t the depth or persistence of our despair, but what we do about it. The only thing to do with despair is—nothing. In its purest sense, despair is the side effect of a cleansing process that occurs when we allow ourselves to see our inauthenticity. Despair becomes self-propelling and self-sustaining when we allow it to drive us into action or non-action that is colored or informed by despair (rather than by its opposite, yet close cousin, acceptance, and compassion). If I eat crappy food, seek out mindless distractions, avoid healthy activities and positive human interaction because of despair; or worse still, if I start to mistreat other people and take out my unhappiness on them; then despair has become an excuse for me to take refuge in inauthenticity, to retreat further and further into the nightmare of an illusory existence. The hole I'm digging goes sideways, and leads only into deeper and deeper darkness. There is no jewel-lit underworld at the end of my struggle, just a long dark tunnel, circling around and around the earth, endlessly. (Eventually the whole planet will cave in from our mole-like tunneling.)

But enough doom and gloom. This is supposed to be my way of saying goodbye to all of that.

Happiness isn’t found by pursuit. Meaning and purpose—where real joy comes from—aren’t things that we can create for ourselves. They won’t come from our parents, peers, or partners. They will only come from one place, because there is only one Source that is true, that can provide us with an authentic sense of being from which to live. There is only one truth. That simplifies things. Deep down, we know when we are living for—and as—that one true source of goodness and light, and we know when we aren’t. Despair is your friend because it lets you know that something isn’t right. We can let go right now: it really is as simple as saying it.

“I surrender.”

There are only two choices for any of us, at any time. Truth or despair.

I mean, really. How complicated is that?

The Energetic Facts of Life

2012-01-10T09:36:00.000-08:00

Art by Mitch Fraas

EVOL is the Answer

2012-01-09T12:07:00.000-08:00

Alejandro Jodorowsky: “I liked Lady Gaga’s meat dress. It was funny. But I did that first in my Panic performance. Maybe she has seen what I’ve done – I don’t know. I like to think her song Alejandro was written for me. Her music is interesting. It’s interesting because it’s very free. But it has no meaning because what she’s singing has no hope. It is without hope. It’s only about revolution, which isn’t enough. We need a re-evolution right now, not a revolution. We need something new. Lady Gaga has a lot of energy and that is fantastic, but she is using old Surrealist images. Surrealism was necessary – essential, even – in the 1920s to bridge the gap between rationalism and the subconscious. It started something important. But by the early 60s, it had become petit-bourgeois; it was too intellectual and romantic, and had ground to a halt. It had become respectable. They didn’t like science fiction or rock music or… let’s not make a list: the Surrealists didn’t like anything! I needed to go further than Surrealism, and that’s why I formed Panic. Surrealism – in particular with Salvador Dali – was all about ego. It was all about extreme individualism. And it’s the same with Lady Gaga. But today, individualism is over: to make a change and do something new – to truly wake up people’s minds – we have to do something collective, together as a social community. No more Dali, no more Magritte – no more working just for yourself. We have to work as one. We can do it. We can do it. I sound like Barack Obama now…”

(see here)

The collective ego knows all about revolution

The individual ego knows all about creative self-expression

Both are now obsolete, because the Powers That Be have fully incorporated them into the Program

What remains? To turn the Paradigm on its Head, like so:

1) Individual Revolution - the overturning of the False Self and the hacking into the AI-program, the Culture Parasite which imprisons consciousness (socio-religious conditioning, etc)

2) Collective Creative Expression, organized group spontaneity directed towards catalyzing and harnessing the energy of 1)

Out of which comes the Third Thing

This seems to have something to do with Reversing the Flow of (our culturized-Darwinified idea of) Evolution, also? Since the active element of EVOL-ution = LOVE.

This may also pertain to the notion of swarm intelligence. Hence Anonymous' Fascination for BEES.

"Arkana Arkadia: Catabolizing with Kephas!": Live Pod-Classes in 2012

2012-01-03T15:10:00.000-08:00

At a partial writing impasse at present, I am going back into spoken word, this time with a live (select) audience on the Net.The idea of live podcasts (or Pod-Classes) is both to allow for greater spontaneity and also for a collective space in which those attending will be tuning into the same frequency at exactly the same time. This creates a telepathic link-up - or meeting of minds - in which something more than verbal communication can take place. For this reason the pod-classes will not be open to just everyone, in the beginning at least, but only those of you I already have some kind of relationship with. The program I will be using allows for listeners to text me during the podcast with questions or comments, which I may or may not choose to address, depending on the flow of things.

The cost of attending an AACK! podcast will be $4.44, a token fee (partly) to ensure that those who join the group are sufficiently committed. However, as I already said, payment is not enough to guarantee acceptance - so if you are interested, please email me first, via my blogger profile.

The first in the series will be this Sunday, the 8th of January, at 10 am PST, 12 pm CT, 1 pm ET, and 6pm GMT.

The title of the first "AACK!" podcast:

"Is There Life Before Death?"

Subjects which I may be discussing include:

The two forms of ignorance: not knowing, and believing we know when we don't. The second kind is the one to watch for.

The two-pronged attack on delusion/the matrix program: saying no to the old, and yes to the new.

Finding one's true purpose as the means - as well as the end - to dropping the ego or false self.

The place of observation as the launch pad for action. Action and engagement as the means to access wisdom. Waiting and precipitating, the yin and yang flow of consciousness, akin to the in and out breath, and the beating of the heart.

The human "form" - how losing it must coincide with surrender to, and alignment with, a higher intelligence. How the social contract of being human is what keeps us sane and morally responsible: like a chrysalis for a pupa, it serves a necessary purpose. How recognizing the lie of the false identity can lead to pathology or suicidal despair without a corresponding awareness of something beyond ourselves running the show.

Failure and success: placing the bar at the appropriate level to you, in order to stay engaged in the battle of life and avoid both lethargy and ego inflation.

Living every day as the last - is it doable, if so, how?

Overcoming the futility of ego-driven, death-invalidating existence by finding and aligning with Cosmic Purpose (aka "the mission").

These and many more Arcana Arcadia in the mesmerizing tones of Mr. Kephas, all for the measly price of $4.44!

To suggest a topic for discussion on future podcasts, just comment at this post or email me.

Catabolically,

Kephas

***

Glossary of Terms:

ar·ca·num (är-knm)

n. pl. ar·ca·na (-n) or ar·ca·nums

1. A deep secret; a mystery.

2. often arcana Specialized knowledge or detail that is mysterious to the average person: "knows the arcana of police procedure and the intricacies of litigation" (George F. Will).

3. A secret essence or remedy; an elixir.

Ar·ca·di·a 2 also ar·ca·di·a (är-kd-)

A region offering rural simplicity and contentment.

Arcadia (Greek: Ἀρκαδία) refers to a vision of pastoralism and harmony with nature. Arcadia is associated with bountiful natural splendor, harmony, and is often inhabited by shepherds. The concept also figures in Renaissance mythology. Commonly thought of as being in line with Utopian ideals, Arcadia differs from that tradition in that it is more often specifically regarded as unattainable. Furthermore, it is seen as a lost, Edenic form of life, contrasting to the progressive nature of Utopian desires.

The inhabitants were often regarded as having continued to live after the manner of the Golden Age, without the pride and avarice that corrupted other regions.[1] It is also sometimes referred to in English poetry as Arcady. The inhabitants of this region bear an obvious connection to the figure of the Noble savage, both being regarded as living close to nature, uncorrupted by civilization, and virtuous.

According to Greek mythology, Arcadia of Peloponnesus was the domain of Pan, a virgin wilderness home to the god of the forest and his court of dryads, nymphs and other spirits of nature. It was one version of paradise, though only in the sense of being the abode of supernatural entities, not an afterlife for deceased mortals.

catabolism, katabolism [kəˈtæbəˌlɪzəm]

1. a metabolic process in which complex molecules are broken down into simple ones with the release of energy; destructive metabolism

2. the metabolic process in which energy is liberated for use in work.

"Real thinking is invariably destructive and pain-causing." Jed McKenna.

Spiritual Warfare, by Jed McKenna

2011-12-30T16:39:00.000-08:00

A few quotes from this mostly impressive book.

“I have an intended audience… it’s people who know they’re stuck and want to get unstuck, not people who don’t know they’re stuck and just want to pass the time and pass judgment. . . The former would receive criticism with gratitude, and the latter as a personal attack. Awakening is a process of breakthroughs, and breakthroughs don’t come from incense and candlelight and inner peace. You look at spiritual aspirants as those most likely to achieve awakening, but Maya has them so bamboozled that those who seem the most advanced are simply the ones who are burrowing downward the fastest.”

“How can it be that we’re essentially the same now as we were at the most distant reaches of recorded history? Why does our outer environment change while our inner landscape stays the same? Because that’s the first rule of this club:

Always Outward. Never Inward.

So it follows as a matter of certainty that anyone who espouses any teaching or doctrine or philosophy is necessarily a member of the club. Any spiritual teacher who allows students to ask questions and gives them answers is a member of the Outward Only club; an unwitting—and thereby all the more insidious—agent of ignorance. The world is full of respected and beloved spiritual and religious teachers. People ask them questions and they provide answers; question and answer, question and answer, on and on, talk and more talk, more like spiritual therapy than spiritual warfare, but all questions, no matter how sincere or heartfelt, are really the same question, Outward?, and all answers, no matter how profound or wise, are really the same answer, Yes. The subtext of every question is, Am I making progress by asking questions and trying to understand the answers? And the subtext of every answer is, Yes, you are going somewhere while sitting here talking or reading. This is progress. Be at peace. You are progressing and well-progressed. That’s the obvious lie we want to hear and those who tell it most convincingly are the most respected and sought after."

“Our eyes are wide open and we see reality with perfect clarity. This is so obvious that it’s beyond any possible doubt. It’s also untrue. Our vision is so obscured by the mental and emotional flotsam and jetsam of selfhood that what we call stark reality is really just a soft glow seen through tightly shut eyelids; just enough light getting through to illuminate the internal dreamscape. It is owing entirely to our belief that our eyes are open that the spiritual quest is doomed from the start, and that so many who think they’re well along or finished have never really begun. No matter how unwavering we are in our commitment or how steadfast in our determination, no matter how much knowledge we amass or wisdom we attain, no matter what hardships we endure or what sacrifices we make, no matter what scriptures we adhere to or what deities we appease, it’s all just a desperate ploy to keep ourselves from doing the one thing that could make any difference: taking personal responsibility, thinking for ourselves. At the point where we begin our search, we have already overshot the objective, and every step takes us further away.”

“Parents tell their children that there is no such thing as the boogeyman, but that’s because they themselves have never thrown off the covers and turned on the lights. There is such thing as the boogeyman. He is out to get you, and he will. The boogeyman is real. He is the most real thing in the dreamstate, and real Zen, if there is such a thing, is about turning toward him, not away.”

“There are two emotions that inform and animate the human animal: fear, and a gratitude-love-awe mix that might be best called agape. As fear goes out, agape comes in. More accurately, a pure white light of consciousness hits the prism of self and splits outward to become the universe as we experience it. If the prism of self is gray and murky with ignorance, choked with fear, contaminated with ego, then so becomes the universe that radiates out from it. It’s that simple. As the prism becomes free of such flaws, then the whole universe changes with it. It resolves into clarity, becomes brighter, more playful and magical. Because we are the lens through which it is projected, we are participants in its shape and motion; co-creators of our own universe.

That’s Human Adulthood. Spiritual Enlightenment is just the same, except you take the final step in purifying the prism of self: You remove it.”

Ramsey Dukes' Response to "Serious Play"

2011-12-15T23:45:00.000-08:00

I am coming to this thread very late, because of work pressure and other distractions. A lot of ground has been covered in the comments, more than I can respond to, so I'll mainly address the original posting even though it means risking repeating things that have already been said in the comments.

I will just add, in response to the comments about liver, there was an old joke: “is life worth living?". Answer: “it all depends upon the liver." I was also very interested in the discussion about Uranus, Pluto and Chiron, but had better stick to the main topic now.

Firstly, I'd like to correct any wrong impression about my views on magic and art. Kephas writes: “magic he said, is trying to bring about desired results or change, while art is simply creative release of energies, followed by getting to see how those energies bring about change, independent of our will." I have a problem with the word “simply", because I actually see art as something that goes beyond magic. The relationship between magic and art is reflected in the words “craft", a word often used for magic. Magic is indeed a craft, putting together a number of elements and skills in order to invoke a specific effect. So if you are designing a tarot card or magical image, it means deliberately placing appropriate symbols into the picture, or if you are writing a film script and deliberately inserting commercial elements such as car chases, gunfights, and love interest in order to make it a commercial success, then strictly speaking it is an act of magic or craftsmanship–you're making a talisman for commercial success. Art begins when the craftsman moves beyond such conscious deliberation and finds himself adding elements or shaping the whole according to a deeper impulse we might call "inspiration".

In that sense I totally agree with Kephas' summing up: "This is a key difference. It is the difference between letting a zeitgeist (spirit) move through one (without needing to understand it) and trying to move things oneself towards a desired end. For example, I might be writing this piece in order to persuade others of my point of view. On the other hand, I might simply be using words as a means to see what’s moving around inside, and coming through me, without any specific result in mind. In reality, it is a bit of both" Indeed there is usually plenty of overlap in practice.

The relevance of our conversation to the Anonymous movement is that, whereas most protesters are consciously doing things that they believe will work toward a specific effect, the actions of Anonymous seem less predictable, more open ended, more like casting a stone into the waters to create a splash, and therefore more akin to art than sheer craft.

I also agree with the warning that, by becoming an activist, one risks adding energy to the very thing you oppose; while at the same time the personal value of expressing oneself in protest cannot be denied.

On the other hand, I think the discussion focused too much on cause and effect, in the sense that the purpose of a protest action is to cause a specific change. I previously talked about magic being used to “invoke" a specific effect, rather than saying to “cause" it. Although we loosely talk about doing magic to make something happen, it's actually more about encouraging something to happen.

In the early 70s there was a call for ecologically aware people to separate out bottles and tins from their waste and bagged them separately so that they could be recycled. Critics of this pointed out that it was a waste of time, because most councils at that time had no separate recycling facility, so they simply chucked the whole lot into the same heap. But I argued that separating waste still had value as a magical ritual. Instead of feeling that nothing could be done, one was satisfying one's own need to pay tribute to the Earth by conscious attention. One was being mindful, and that in itself has value. One could also argue that, if enough people did this, it would eventually pressure the councils to offer a recycling service—but that is slipping back into a cause-and-effect argument.

So, in that sense, I do believe that taking part in a public protest does have significance as a shared ritual, a directed expression of one's feelings that does have intrinsic value. If the protesters could remember that as they take part, it might help them to avoid the sort of inflated expectations, and resulting sense of disappointment that K warns against. It also helps to get one out of it too simplistic cause-and-effect expectation. Invoking a group mind, Demon or whatever is a bit like voting for a politician: you make an informed choice of what you are invoking, but then to some extent surrender yourself to trusting it to do the right thing. Your protest is no more than a satisfying push in the right direction.

A Sorcerer's Corner: Carlos Castaneda's Doomed Romance with Knowledge

2011-11-30T07:33:00.001-08:00

Image by Lucinda Horan

Serious Play: The Occupy Movement and the Twin Horns of Oppression & Revolution

2011-11-22T08:10:00.000-08:00

For this post, collected together from recent comments I have made at Reality Sandwich, Facebook, and in dialogue with a protesting pal, I'd like to address what I see as the delusional aspect of the Occupy Movement, and how all social activism only strengthens the structures that are being challenged. This is not necessarily a bad thing, however, except insofar as people set about with specific purpose and results in mind, and so become frustrated and disillusioned. It's the delusional aspect which I perceive as the negative, and not the activism per se, which is as valid a way to pass the time as any other (for some people at least). There's a growing belief, however, that the “global revolution” is evidence of a collective shift in consciousness and—taking it to the next “logical” deduction—that it is actually the means to it. In my opinion nothing could be further from the truth, for reasons which I will outline as best as I can.

Anonymous is interesting to me in this regard, because Anonymous exists in a shadow realm between the paradigms, without obviously belonging to either of them. Actually, I would suggest that there are three paradigms relevant to this present discussion: 1) the ruling paradigm of money, power, etc. 2) the opposing paradigm of rebellion, resistance, community values and individual expression. 3) the paradigm which I will attempt to describe in this post, a paradigm which perceives the first two paradigms as merely mirror images of one another, and therefore as equally obsolete. In my estimation, Anonymous, which exists somewhere between the second and third paradigms, is not causing change, social or otherwise, but merely a surface manifestation of a change that is already happening. Like their inspirational character Guy Fawkes/V, Anonymous works with fireworks, creating a dazzling play of light and shadows that is of no actual consequence, finally. To my mind it is that very inconsequentiality that makes it all the more pure.

While speaking recently to Ramsey Dukes about the subject, Ramsey commented on the difference between art and magik: magik, he said, is trying to bring about desired results/change, while art is simply creative release of energies, followed by a getting to see how those energies bring about change, independent of our will. (In Ramsey’s fourfold model of Magik-Art-Religion-Science, magik evolves into art.) The Occupy Movement (at best magik) overlaps with Anonymous (at best art), because some protesters wear masks, and Anonymous encourages and even plans protests. And like Anonymous, the Occupy Movement is a manifestation of change, rather than a catalyst for it. The primary difference is that, unlike Anonymous, my impression is that many or most of the OM participants believe that they are bringing about change, or at least aspiring to do so.

This is a key difference. It is the difference between letting a zeitgeist (spirit) move through one (without needing to understand it) and trying to move things oneself towards a desired end. For example, I might be writing this piece in order to persuade others of my point of view. On the other hand, I might simply be using words as a means to see what’s moving around inside, and coming through me, without any specific result in mind. In reality, it is a bit of both—how effective this piece is will be the only real determinant of how much my ego is preventing real “play” (and hence communication) from occurring.

Another difference is that between recognizing tyranny, oppression, etc., for what they, without making a value judgment about them, and having a personal issue with them. Ditto writing this piece: if I recognize the delusional aspect of the Occupy Movement, can I do so without feeling superior to it or seeing it as a “problem” that needs to be fixed? For Anonymous and all those who wish to approach life (including tyranny and oppression) in a similar spirit of play, the global control system is not a problem to be fixed but a worthy opponent in a great game of cosmic ping pong. The difference between the two opponents is that one side knows it's all a game, while the other side views it with deadly seriousness. When activists take their “revolution” seriously, I would argue that they are unwittingly joining the side they are opposing, because they are sharing in the same “spirit” with it.

Revolution and tyranny are twin horns of the same demon, and the proof is that, just as physical law demands, resistance makes stronger. Based on the indications of “history” (i.e., prior experience), opposing power structures only reinforces and strengthens those same structures in the long run. As exhibit A for this argument, I present “9/11” and the resulting “war on terror,” the Patriot Act, and the myriad ways in which the US (and global) government used an act of resistance to consolidate its political power, and extend the apparatus of tyranny, the same tyranny which the attack on the twin towers was (allegedly) intended to undermine.

As I see it (and admittedly having no direct experience of the protests or encampments), the Occupy Movement has two purposes. Firstly it is an opportunity for people to get together and connect in a “fun” way that beats getting fucked up on drugs and alcohol. Secondly, it is serving to widen the gulf between the socio-political power structures (and the supposed “elite” behind them, the 1%) and “the people” (the 99%) who are both subject to those structures and, paradoxically, who support them by relying upon them. As evidenced by the recent police backlash, the Occupy Movement acts to further energize the old “us and them” polarity, in both the collective and individual psyche. This is all “positive” enough in terms of enacting the Christian psychodrama of Armageddon. But is that what's really desired here?

It seems to me that the Occupiers actually want to improve their lot, and the lot of the alleged “oppressed,” and here, perhaps, is the problem. I would argue that all of us are equally oppressed regardless of our social conditions, and that to try and improve those conditions by resisting governmental corruption is like rearranging the furniture in a house that is on fire. In which case, my guess is that the children of the revolution are going to be sorely disappointed when they see that the Occupation Movement— by energizing the “enemy”— leads to the exact opposite result to that expected, i.e., to the concretization of tyranny.

I would also guess that many of the more conscious participants—on both sides—know this, though I may be wrong about that, since nothing blinds people to the truth so much as ideals. It does strike me as interesting that, despite how well-versed in esoteric concepts many of the OM-ers are, they appear to be operating under a relatively naïve, or shallow, interpretation of social change, just as if it were ordinary political structures and corrupt human beings that were running the show, rather than millennia-long collective, ancestral patterns (a.k.a. “demons”) of denial. To resort to a whopping great cliché—no change can occur externally unless it come about as a ripple-down effect of an internal shift. Occupying cities is a great diversion from the oppression of our lives, but that perhaps makes it more likely to postpone such an internal psychic shift, or “revolution,” than to bring it about.

To be clear: I am not opposed to the Occupy Movement, or to defying the “system.” It is a collective ego trip, in my opinion, but that isn't meant as a value judgment, because a collective ego trip may be just what we need right now, as a species. The only thing I am opposed to is delusion, and since I have my hands full getting past my own delusions, the reader may well ask why I am wasting my time challenging other people’s delusions. I would have no good answer to that, except to say that I enjoy challenging other people’s delusions. My comments about the Occupy Movement and all the rest are no more meaningful or important than the movement itself. They are also, to a degree, exhortations of my ego, with something deeper and more real moving around underneath them. I will say this: those who believe the Occupy Movement is part of a collective shift do not need to defend it from my “heretical” ideas, because, if they are right, nothing I say will make any difference.

But from my point of view, the whole movement is about improving conditions for individuals (and groups of them), which implies that it’s sourced in separative, ego consciousness, and that those involved are trying to enact a shift externally. As a kind of cathartic theater, it might be (somewhat) effective, but that would depend on recognizing it as theater, geared not towards reforming outer structures but towards an internal change in the participants themselves. The Occupy Movement is all part of a larger process, for sure, but so is the tyranny, and so is everything else. I'm mostly concerned that a lot of people are going to have their hopes dashed (as previously with Obama) when they realize that the nature of tyranny is that it does not give into pressure . Or at least, it never has before.

At the same time, I think it points at a much larger delusion. The idea of “human rights” is assumed by the liberal mind-set to be a progressive one. It is a given. But the idea leads inevitably onto criminal rights, animal rights, insect rights, and so on. So where does the concept of rights end? Virus rights? Bacteria rights? Disease rights? Isn’t the idea of rights a human/ego-centric concept, one with social and political significance but no wider meaning, because no equivalent in the natural order of existence? Isn’t it just another imposition of the human ego on what already is? I would argue that none of us have rights because none of us need rights.

The idea of rights being ego-centric doesn't mean it can be dismissed, however, any more than a symptom of a disease should be dismissed. My point, if any, is that the idea of human rights is part of the problem and not the solution. It stems from a very deeply-embedded idea we have in the West, the idea of entitlement, the idea that we deserve better. The only way to argue that we deserve better, however, is to argue that God/the Universe has made a balls up of things because we aren’t getting what we want. Most of us feel that way (I know I do); but to turn it into a philosophy and a rationale for social activism is to take it from mere childish pouting into the realm of hubris. There's an argument for hubris, too, of course, so once again, no value judgment is implied.... But again, if people are protesting because they believe they deserve better, that's a sense of entitlement. According to what logic do we deserve better? The answer is, according to human (egocentric) logic, a logic based on the illusion of being separate from the system, both the little system of government, commerce, and social oppression, and the greater system of life as a whole. To oppose the little system is also to oppose the greater system, to defy the gods, as it were. If we were to free our minds first, mightn’t we find that the system of oppression we exist under is exactly the way it is supposed to be, along with everything else?

Unless our idea of God is the rather antiquated notion of an outside intelligence lording it over things, then the buck must always stop with divine—the greater intelligence of the whole system—and not at any point before that. To try and blame a system or group or individual for the way things are is tantamount to saying that they/it are separate from the divine, and so they can, and even must, be eliminated for the good of all! To fight for one’s personal sovereignty or impose one’s idea of what constitutes a good or proper life on to another person or group of people = egotism. To fight for other peoples’ right to personal sovereignty = egotism + arrogance. It is true that people seem to be suffering everywhere, and that it seems like an unnecessary result of a few psychopathic scumbags abusing their power. But a seeming isn’t necessarily a reality. If we see someone dying in a gutter, rather than rushing over to help them, isn’t it wisest to ask them first if they want to be helped? They might be doing a Diogenes and consider our “help” an intrusion.

The Occupy Movement is based on value judgments about what constitutes a good society, a positive direction for humans to move in, and at least partially on the assumption that “one utopia fits all.” At the same time, the idea of what we need seems to stem largely from a reaction-response to the way things are, i.e., from resistance to an existing way of life deemed to be “unjust” and undesirable. All these occupiers may get along fabulously as long as they have a common foe to oppose and can agree, more or less, on the way things ought to be. But what would happen if that enemy (those old outworn structures) were suddenly gone? If there is a shared need to identify and oppose “the other” (corporate oppression, government corruption, etc.) which is bringing these people together, then if victory did occur, wouldn’t they need to find someone or something else to oppose? And wouldn’t they be forced to find it within their own ranks?

Once again, I am open to the idea that getting involved in protests may have a liberating effect on the participants (or at least some of them), just as playing a good game of soccer or participating in a theatrical or musical performance can be liberating (and empowering).The obvious question then is, would that still be the case if the participants accepted that the Occupy Movement was futile, in terms of bringing about social change—or even that it was eventually going to have the opposite effect to the one desired? Would the participants still be willing to engage just for the hell of it—for “lulz”? It is that spirit of play—serious play—that is the spirit of real change.

As mentioned earlier, some people believe that the Occupy Movement and its other manifestations is an expression of a “collective shift” pertaining to the coming Age of Aquarius, the sign that rules the collective. However, the shadow of Aquarius is (its opposite sign) Leo, which signifies individual sovereignty and self-expression. This would support my description of the Occupy Movement as a collective ego trip, as an expression of Leo disguised as an Aquarian movement. The shadow (delusion) heralds the coming of an objective reality, however, so it is only right if things unfold in this way. What would be a mistake would be to take the shadow for the substance, the hope/illusion for reality.

My sense is strong that, if and when a collective shift comes, we won’t have anything to do with it, and most of us probably won’t even know what hits us. It might be suggested that the Occupy Movement is laying the foundation for the shift, but I would argue that there is no foundation either possible or needed for such a shift. What there is, perhaps, is a clearing the ground, a razing, not for some utopian edifice to be constructed but for an unknown new life to burst forth, over time, from that charred land.

In the meantime, a lot of people are getting their hopes up around the movement, just as they did recently with ObaMa (OM baa). I would wager it is many of the same people, too. It's well and good for people to get out and engage with each other, and again, it makes a nice change from watching TV or bowling. It’s also perhaps a natural expression of “the masses” to revolt, so by all means let them incur the wrath of the powers-that-be so that more people can see the iron fist in action and better understand the nature of the Beast. The trouble starts when people begin to take their activism too seriously and invest, both emotionally and psychologically, in some imagined, desired (and desirable) end result. Then they are setting themselves up, not only for disappointment, but for levels of bitterness and rage which they may not be able to deal with (or express constructively, much less creatively). Ironically it is probably such bitterness and (out)rage that got many people out there in the first place; but in the end, I predict it’s that same energy which will lead many people to unwittingly join the demon-forces which they are so passionately set against. They will then be swallowed up by the beast, even as it devours itself.

While Rome burns, people may as well fiddle. All change is good. But what is oppressing us, in my opinion, is not any external structures but rather our own self-importance, our sense of entitlement in the face of a shitty world and a bleak future. It is up to us, as individuals, to let go of that pride so as not to choke on it first. I am fairly sure that, if people managed to let go of their self-importance, they wouldn’t need to protest or to do anything else besides take care of themselves and those closest to them. And if everyone did that, there’d be no need for mass movements. We might then start to see that our conditions are only and exactly what we need, collectively, that the shift, if it is to come, will happen via such conditions and not despite them, and that all any of us needs to do to change our lives is simply to let go.

No matter what sort of conditions we are living under, that’s really all that any of us can do, in any case —let go and remember how to play.

“You say you want a revolution – you better free your mind instead!”

2011-11-09T09:34:00.000-08:00

Curious to note: oppressive regimes, etc, are the result of collective & individual blocked psychic energies, and therefore they are helpful to us as the means to identify an internal blockage/tyranny/oppression (mind over body, for example, or sensuality over spirituality). And so, when individuals band together to try and overcome external regimes of oppression, is that a way to symbolically enact a clearing of the channels within, or is it the means to avoid really looking at what’s going on inside and kid ourselves that we can fix ourselves by fixing our social circumstances?

Personally, I lean towards the latter POV, and YET… I am such a skeptic, or cynic, or as I like to think, a rigorous thinker, that I can’t help but wonder even if attempts to sort ourselves internally are missing the point too? The ego (constructed ID) is the only petty tyrant we need to “worry” about, and the ego runs the program of the self – so all our attempts to dethrone it are infiltrated from the start – like a King who creates his own rebellion in order to weed out the free-thinkers and destroy them.

Put more simply: if the root of our trouble, as individuals and as a society, is the illusion of being a separate entity apart from the greater intelligence system of the Universe, then the solution to that is to realize and accept that there is nothing that we can – or even need to -”do” about it, because we don’t exist as a separate volitional entity ANYWAY.

The Destiny Delusion

2011-10-27T15:05:00.000-07:00

From a post I made at RS, seems worth repeating here for those who aren't following the frantics over there.

... something I was talking about yesterday with a friend which I called The Destiny Delusion (future article?) - the way in which we, our constructed ID selves, manage to get hold of (what we assume to be) elements of truth, reality, and the divine, and shape them, according to the patterns of our lower/wounded natures, into a grand destiny-design that FEELS as real, more real even, than anything we have experienced. Entheogens, for me, were a major component in creating and expanding that Destiny Delusion, whereby I became convinced of certain things about myself and my role in the universe, personal and beyond. People we meet (especially ones we fall in love with, in my experience) hook into our delusional narratives (all of which, let's face it, are founded in and filtered through an erroneous belief that we are "discreet," separate entities) and so we get married, join groups, follow gurus, start movements, write books, sing songs, and all the rest, happily building (adding our energy and attention to) a "second matrix" kind of set-up (bardo realm for the living) that keeps us from realizing the truth about ourselves and reality, preciselybecause it appears to be "ultimate truth/reality." In simple (paranoid) jargon, it's the old shtick of demons disguised as angels, luring us into hellfire by playing on our vanity. Hence the inorganics that CC describes, hooking into our patterns, fears, hopes, desires, and telling us exactly what we want to hear.

I am 44 years old and I have to face up to the very real possibility (and I think it's more than just a possibility) that my whole adult life has been a kind of wrong turn. That said, recognizing the wrongness of it may just make it the right path after all, in a strange and mysterious way, though that remains to be seen. REALLY recognizing how wrong we are goes much deeper than an intellectual concession, all the way to the marrow of our bones. It is, I imagine, a psyche-splitting axe blow from which we never recover our former sense of selves.

Obviously the idea of demons (aka patterns) tricking us into a false sense of destiny is ‘paranoid’ in the extreme, and if it were true, recognizing the truth of it would make it very difficult NOT to become paranoid, even clinically speaking. But ironically, it’s only the constructed ID (which is responsible for co-creating this diabolic delusory realm) that insists on seeing things in such black and white terms at all. It insists on imagining angels and demons as also being discreet entities, like us, and so the danger is in reinforcing the second matrix program through fear and resistance to it (the flyers feed on fear of the flyers – so ignorance to them may be the best defense the average man has, puny as it is).

Angels and demons aren’t separate beings, however, but opposite poles of a single energy-consciousness system much like day and night; and human beings are capable somehow of containing the full spectrum of awareness that spans that polarity (hence the angel and devil on each shoulder cliché). The real danger is not in becoming prey to demons, but in mistaking cold for hot, day for night, demon for angel, and responding inappropriately (insanely) to the cues. There’s nothing “bad" per se about being taken over/eaten by inorganic beings. The badness/wrongness is in the error of thinking that something else is happening than what is in fact happening. That’s delusion, and the real trouble with delusion is that it’s self-sustaining and self-propagating: when we are deluded, our mistaken assumptions cause us to act in ways that lead us ever deeper into delusion.

The first, most difficult but also essential step, is recognizing our capacity for delusion as being very nearly total, and to do that without giving in to paranoia and despair. Not-knowing (knowing that we don't know WTF is going on) is the only real ground in which gnosis can grow in, and I presume it's for that reason that gnosis always happens of its own accord, never as the result of anything we do.

Real freedom begins with not needing to understand anything before we accept it, accepting things as they are, and letting understanding come post-acceptance.

Serpent's Promise: The Shocking Truth About Psychedelics

2011-10-22T20:06:00.000-07:00

Stirring up the natives over at Reality Sandwich with this piece; invite you all to join the fray, if you dare.

The Guatemaya Rabbit Hole

2011-10-19T09:12:00.000-07:00

Rainy season ends in Guatemaya this month, and Mitch Fraas and I are offering shaman tours of Guatemaya for cost-only (buy your ticket and pay for your expenses, and we'll put you up and show you the Mayan rabbit hole). Mitch is based in Santiago (where he will be building a house over the coming months), and I am based in Panajachel, where visitors will stay (see below)

The guest bungalow.

Mitch's working partner is the shamanic tour guide Dolores Ratzan, who was previously married to Martin Pretchell, the well-known author (his book Secrets of the Talking Jaguar is about his time as a shaman in Santiago Atitlan).

Dolores

Like Pretchell, Mitch belongs to the Copre Dia, the shaman brotherhood based in Santiago whose deity is Maximon.

For more information on what a shaman tour with Mitch and I entails, go to http://www.livingmaya.com/. Mitch and I can be heard in conversation here. If interested, contact me via my profile.

2011-10-18T19:54:00.000-07:00

The Culture of Blame & the Dark Side of Marriage

2011-10-02T16:10:00.000-07:00

Why do so many once-loving couples wind up hating the sight of each other? Why does sexual love turn into sexual hate? The reason is that when we fall in love we project all of our hopes and fantasies onto the other person, and that process has a dark side. Face it: there’s nothing more hateful than seeing all of our dreams fall apart.

What that means is that the more clearly we see the other person, the more those fantasy-projections fall apart, and the less we like it. So our experience is likely to be that, the more clearly we see the other person, the less we like them. It’s not because they are so unlikeable; it’s simply because they are their own person. They exist independently of our projections and fantasies of them. How dare they? I mean really—how dare they? So what we end up most hating about the beloved other is that they are independent and autonomous beings. That makes them a threat to us, the ultimate threat, in fact. And the more deeply we “love” them, the greater a threat they will become.

It’s all about having someone to blame. Everybody needs someone to blame. That’s the dark side of marriage. If we are unlucky enough to find someone who appears to be everything we want in life, then eventually they will become the perfect scapegoat for everything that goes wrong in our lives. They come to represent all the ways that we can’t get what we want. They become the denial of our wants.

It is a hideous conundrum, and it is one that can and does lead to murder. When it gets really bad, murder actually does seem, honestly and truly, to be the best answer. It becomes the most appropriate action for the personal self once we are faced with that hideous conundrum. If the personal self was all that there was to existence, in the end we may as well just kill the other, since all they are going to do is torment us with their autonomy and independence. Leaving doesn’t seem like a sufficiently final solution; if there is a true or “alchemical bond,” we are going to suffer even more that way. But if we kill them, destroy them completely, maybe we can be free!

Fortunately or unfortunately, there is more to us than the personal self, in fact the personal realm is really just the surface, and what torments us goes much deeper than we even know. So if that bond—and the torment it creates—continues on “the other side,” killing them would actually be the worst thing we could do. That’s the fearful symmetry of it, that what can end up seeming like the best and only solution is actually the most terrible trap we can fall into.

The other option is suicide. Ah yes: let’s send them a message they will never forget by destroying ourselves! Let’s punish the other and get free of them in one fell swoop. But this is the same non-solution solution. Picture this: Tormented by a love gone wrong, a person is trying to bring about resolution in their psyche and reach a state of peace. Who can blame them for that? The trouble is that nothing they do works. So then, if they persist in trying, in finding new things to do, things that might just work, in the end murder and suicide are, obviously, the last resorts. “I’ve tried everything, now let’s try that!” Some people, many people even, when finding themselves in that situation, might believe it’s a real solution. Not me. I know it’s not going to work, so I can’t kid myself. I can’t believe something I know the opposite of. I can believe what I don’t know, but I can’t believe the opposite of what I do know. Thankfully I am not that far gone. But it doesn’t have to be actual murder or suicide. In the less literal realms, one can murder and suicide in one's mind. In terms of sustaining the sort of energy and thoughts that fuel murder or suicide, I have been guilty.

So who’s goddamn fault is it? Is it my momma’s or dadda’s? Or is it their mommas’ and daddas’? Is it the whole human race’s responsibility? In the end, it’s everyone’s and no one’s -- except my own. I am the only one who can choose to act or not act on these feelings. Choosing not to blame is the fundamental step towards healing the wounds that are the real source of our torment. Taking responsibility means not blaming anyone, including oneself. Blame and responsibility don’t co-exist. It is irresponsible to blame people. Why? It has to do with the fact that everyone is already accountable for their actions. Because of that, the universe doesn’t need for us to bring others to account. That adds noise to the signal.

It is between oneself and what one’s knows the truth of. Facing the truth of one's self and one’s actions, that is the only account that we have to make, and it is to ourselves. We are the only ones who can see what we have done to ourselves.

Nobody does anything to anyone, really, because we are always doing it to ourselves. Whenever we hurt someone, they are just a surrogate for ourselves. So although we might be effective in making the other person feel our pain, we are still not actually doing anything to them, because we are isolate. If we were really connected, in a true sense, we wouldn’t be able to hurt each other. Living organisms can’t attack themselves; it takes a foreign element to enter in there and screw up the whole system.

So what is the foreign element? Blame. So where did it come from? It seems as though there is some element in our existence that isn’t meant to be there, that doesn’t belong, that is hostile towards our nature. It’s a paradox and a conundrum: if it was truly unlike us, how could it have access to us? How would it be able to infiltrate our system if we didn’t somehow resonate with it?

It’s nobody’s fault that blame entered the system. It just did. Forgive yourself for ever having blamed, and start all over again from there.

And now for a word from our sponsors...

2011-09-21T19:07:00.000-07:00

Skywriters in Hades: The Rest

2011-09-20T10:14:00.000-07:00

Cosmic Psyche

2011-09-16T17:53:00.000-07:00

Physics only interests me, like pretty much everything else, in the larger context of psychology. And if psychology is understood as the study of the soul, then its reach potentially encompasses all human experience, including determining what we mean by "soul" or psyche.

Psychology only interests me, like pretty much everything else, in the larger context of physics . And if physics is understood as the study of the body, then its reach potentially encompasses all human experience, including determining what we mean by "body" or physicality.

It’s only by going down into subatomic particles to see how they behave that physics has begun to get to the heart of the matter: as below is *not* as above, because our idea of the laws of physics/nature is out of accord with the reality.

In the application of (Jungian) psychology, it’s only by looking outside of us – not by looking inward – that we can begin to grasp the laws of the psyche, because - surprise, surprise - as without, so within.

Physical reality is not separate from the reality of the psyche, but it has been split off from it, the result being that we now perceive ourselves as living surrounded by dead matter, and as isolate within our own self-reflected, solipsistic, inner reality of “I.”

Yet the patterns of our thoughts and feelings that weave together into identity are physical phenomena, and the patterns of events, stars, planets, and subatomic particles moving outside of us are, in kind, psychological phenomena. They are the movement of a cosmic psyche, of which we are currently but dream-fragments, thought-forms – yet nonetheless made of the same substance as the totality, hence one with it.

The Rules of the Game: Fate & Free Will in the Matrix

2011-09-14T18:55:00.000-07:00

(from Matrix Warrior, 2003)

The sorcerer's set-up

“To deny our impulses is to deny the very thing that makes us human.”

—Mouse, The Matrix

The question of fate and free will is as old as philosophical thought itself. Perhaps the matrix gave us this problem to begin with so we’d spend our entire history trying to figure out what was always a foregone conclusion. Whatever we decide to believe, it is already programmed into us. As every Gatekeeper knows, the belief in free will only makes humatons that much easier to control.

To the matrix warrior, the paradox of fate and free will is as follows: as long as one believes one has the freedom to choose one’s actions, one will always be a slave to them. Humatons are confined to the matrix, a program that tells them they are free individuals precisely in order to manipulate them more easily. The moment humatons accept their fate, however, and the unpalatable truth that their acts and thoughts are determined by some outside force vaster than they can imagine, they have taken the first step towards freedom.

The reason for this is that within the matrix there are a set number of preprogrammed responses to any given situation (a situation created by the matrix itself). Whichever one of these a humaton chooses (under the programmed illusion of having a choice), he or she is always only acquiescing to the program. The matrix is like a chess player that has already anticipated every last one of its opponent’s moves—except one. The only way to escape the program is by acting entirely outside the rules of the program. The rules of the program are the rules of reason, of the rational mind. Thus the matrix warrior knows that the only freedom within the program is to act irrationally. This is not to say insanely or foolishly, but rather spontaneously, unpredictably, and above all without personal motive. Here is where the imagination and will come into play. Since the matrix can only imitate and anticipate the processes of reason, any act of the creative imagination is outside the parameters of its comprehension, and will always come unexpected. And since will is precisely what humatons do not have (having been drained of it by AI), the one response that they are almost guaranteed not to give is that of will, the imaginative response. It is this response which is the warrior’s one true option within the matrix. By choosing to have a choice (i.e., to override the program), matrix warriors effectively have no choice, save to act spontaneously and do the one thing that is unexpected of them. To be impeccable, warriors must always follow this inner imperative, that of freedom.

The inner voice of the matrix warrior is a simple but extremely tricky affair. Since warriors know that every last one of their thoughts originates in the matrix program itself, they must learn to ignore their thoughts, to tune them out until they become a sort of background hum, an irrelevant but relentless nag. Long before they attain a lucid state of internal silence, matrix warriors must practise diligently, every moment of their lives, discriminating between their thought-responses so as to isolate this inner voice. Once they have rejected every last one of the false thoughts of the matrix mind, whatever impulse or intuition is left is the one they can trust in. Accordingly, it is the one they act upon. In other words, the only appropriate action in any given moment for the matrix warrior is the unthinkable action, the one that arises from the silent emptiness, behind and beyond all the senseless chatter of the matrix data-feed. Thus, it is a truism to say that matrix warriors are impeccable because they are irrational, and because they dare to do the unthinkable: to act without prior thought or motive.

By continuing to act in this non-rational, spontaneous manner, the matrix warrior constantly confounds the program. The matrix is unable to assimilate the warrior’s choices or to respond adequately to them, just as a sane person cannot hold a conversation with a madman without losing the thread. And so, little by little, the matrix begins to lose sight of the warriors, to loosen its hold on them, and warriors in turn become progressively freer to heed their inner voices and to act spontaneously. Yet, so long as they remain within the matrix, warriors remain caught up by their fate. They cannot change the components of their lives, nor in any radical fashion the events and circumstances that shape them. What they can do is to refine their responses to the events and so alter the manner in which they occur. In this way, by accepting their fate, matrix warriors are able to accelerate the program, as it were, and move through the programmed events in a faster, more economical and empowering manner. After a time (most especially once they connect to the 2nd attention sorcerers in the real world), they are able to see their fate, laid out before them like a map or a blueprint. They can then work within it, without ever being restricted by it.

With great power comes great responsibility. Responsibility is the ability to respond, and this is the only freedom warrior/sorcerers can ever have within the matrix: the power to respond freely to whatever comes their way. Through such a power, warrior-sorcerers begins to transform their world and the matrix turns gradually from torture chamber to playground. Seeing as the matrix program is hardwired to warriors’ own unconscious will, the fate which AI has assembled for them consists of elements drawn from their sleeping minds, elements that must accordingly fit their particular needs as individuals. Even though the matrix has shaped their personalities from birth, it stands to reason that, since AI cannot actually create anything (lacking the imagination to do so), it can only shape and mould what already exists. So each individual’s life-plan, their fate, is actually assembled only partiallyin advance, but mostly through the process of being ‘lived’ (i.e., dreamed). The matrix provides a nearly infinite series of choices, and individuals, from birth onward, select which ones best meet their needs; these ‘choices’ in turn give rise to the events and circumstances of their lives. So although AI may be able to foresee every last one of the countless possible ‘fates’ for any given individual, it cannot know which precise fate will be realized. Logically, the longer humatons remain within the matrix (the longer they are plugged in), and the more rigidly they keep to its dictates, the easier it becomes to predict their fate, to the point that most humatons, by the time they reach adulthood, have their lives entirely mapped out, preordained. The only possibility of breaking out the pattern, then, is via intervention from matrix sorcerers coming from left of field, from outside the matrix program. In just such a way, Morpheus intervenes in the life of Thomas: to make him an offer he can’t refuse.

Le Regle du Jeu

To return to the original question, matrix warriors know that, although their various fates are all preprogrammed, there is a nearly infinite variety of them, and that they are all contingent upon, drawn out of, their own unconscious mind. They are dreaming their lives, and their primary advantage over other humatons is that humatons never realizes they are dreaming, while warriors become aware of this by steady degrees. Humatons never recognize the option of becoming lucid, and so they allow the matrix to make all their choices for them (they are not the dreamers but merely figments of the dream). Matrix warriors strive to become conscious of their unconscious processes and tap their creative imagination, their will—in order to have an active say in their fates. By becoming aware of the actors at play, it becomes possible for them to meet and respond to the events in their lives in a more lucid, controlled, spontaneous, and imaginative fashion, thereby using events constructively, towards their own freedom. By accepting their fate, warriors turn the matrix’s own devises against it, and begin to discover their destiny. Warriors, rather than trying to change their fate, seek to accelerate it. If they can bring about all the events that their unconscious mind has provided for AI to work with—and above all if they can turn these events from distractions and inhibitions to actual instructions—they are able to exhaust the program’s possibilities (to complete its purpose); at this point they may begin to introduce, through conscious will, new possibilities all their own. It is now that the 2nd attention begins to seep through into the warrior’s life, fate segues into destiny, and the imagination takes over from the intellect. Will (imagination) overthrows reason. And it is at this point that the rules begin to change. The matrix sorcerer has freed his mind.

The question remains: how much can matrix sorcerers actually alter their lives from outside the matrix, in the 2nd attention? It seems unlikely that they have the power to reprogram the matrix or to shape events within it, since only ‘the One’ can do this. If matrix sorcerers did have such a power, they would have nothing to fear and could end the whole game simply by programming everyone to wake up. It also seems logical that, the more hacking they do, the more they are likely to draw the attention of the Sentinels (the search and destroy machines) in the 2nd attention, as well as the Gatekeepers in the matrix. Hence, discretion is the better part of valour in the war against the matrix, for the sorcerer as much as for the warrior.

Interestingly enough, this restriction also applies, and maybe even more so, to the Gatekeepers. The Gatekeepers are obliged to act within the rules of the program, because a computer program needs to be consistent in order not to fall apart. It may be that the Gatekeepers cannot afford to break too many rules too often, because then the rules would cease to hold up. Since the matrix is based upon a rational and strictly limited (and limiting) interpretation of reality, any acts or events that are too far outside such an interpretation would threaten to destroy it entirely, or at best cause it to mutate. Humatons would start to stir in their slumber if they were witness to too many marvels. So matrix sorcerers and Gatekeepers alike must walk a razor’s edge in which their magical acts and impossible leaps are as likely to work against them as they are to further their cause.

By performing impossible feats inside the matrix, Neo and the others can let humatons see ‘what you [AI] don’t want them to see: a world without rules’. This way, matrix sorcerers can awaken humatons to their own possibilities. Even more dramatically, by introducing new responses, new options, into the program, they are causing it to mutate, creating new rules and possibilities and so reshaping ‘reality’, redesigning the program, towards the eventual end of cancelling it entirely. On the other hand, if they draw too much attention to themselves, they will be open to reprisals from AI. Since the Gatekeepers can manifest through any plugged in human whatsoever, and since they can monitor all events within the matrix through the humatons, any outré phenomenon the sorcerous crew perform will quickly bring the Gatekeepers to them. The matrix program will rise up against them, including, let's not forget, those ‘hopelessly dependent’ humatons who will fight to protect their sense of reality. Matrix sorcerers are restricted not by any inherent limitation of their powers, but rather by the limitations of the 1st attention itself. If they stir things up too much, mutating their fates and accelerating the program, they will find themselves faced with more than they bargained for. To this end, they are careful to transform their lives within the matrix a little bit at a time, gently, frugally, with patience and cunning, and above all with a carefully drawn strategy. After all, they have nothing to gain by rushing, and everything to lose by overreaching themselves.

Since the active element in the lives of matrix sorcerers is no longer their reason but their will, and since will manifests spontaneously and non-rationally, there is no longer any way for them to predict their own actions, much less the outcome of them. A matrix sorcerer can have no goal, as such, save the goal of total freedom and complete transformation, a goal as mysterious as it is apocalyptic. Matrix sorcerers are concerned only with the moment, not with yesterday or tomorrow. Time is an illusion, like everything else only more so. Matrix sorcerers are like card sharps who win every time without ever having to cheat. They don’t need to cheat, because like idiot savants they can memorize the movement of every single card, and know exactly which one will come up next. They know not only what their next hand will be, but what everyone else’s will be too! The only thing they can’t control is where the cards will fall; but seeing as the bluff is as much a part of the game as anything (to the card sharp, there’s no such thing as luck), this is of little consequence to the matrix sorcerer. Whatever cards they are dealt, they know how to play them. That’s fate and free will in a nutshell: no one chooses what hand he is dealt; only the matrix sorcerer is free to decide how to play it.

Matrix sorcerers manifest their destiny out of the raw material of their fates. They know exactly what they want and how to get it, because they know that the only way to get what they want is not to want it. And since they don't give a fig either way, they can always bluff their way through, no matter how lousy the hand they are holding may be. Not caring if they win or lose gives sorcerers the calm and the confidence of winners, and so they win every time. In just such a manner, matrix sorcerers handle the elements of their fate and shape them into an enviable destiny. It’s all the same to them if there’s air or not: they don’t need lungs anyway.

This in-the-momentness spontaneity of sorcerers is the key to their power and freedom both. The matrix program is upheld by the code of reason, of language-based, rational thought. This is what gives sequence to the events and beings that appear to exist within it. Sorcerers have unplugged from the matrix through disconnecting from their own rational thought processes, by shutting off their internal dialogue, their false ‘minds’, and attaining a state of inner silence. It is from this state of silence that the will, the imaginative-creative faculty, emerges. This is a most salient point. It is inner silence that makes matrix sorcerers different from their fellow humatons. Even matrix warriors who have yet to unplug are still trapped by the dictates of their fate, of the ‘program’. The matrix sorcerer is outside looking in. The sorcerer’s art is in his or her power to imagine, the capacity for creative thought. Sorcerers ‘think’ in images rather than words. Above all, they act without thinking. By forbearing from rational thought immediately before acting, their acts break the rules of the matrix and upturn the program. The matrix is designed to monitor, direct, and control human thought and so to anticipate every action. From the most trivial to the most revolutionary, all are part of AI’s spectrum and within its power to influence. When matrix sorcerers act, however, they acts impulsively, spontaneously, and without accompanying thought. This makes their acts appear irrational, and come wholly unexpected. It is precisely this that makes them truly creative, and therefore beyond the matrix’s power to counteract.

This is what Morpheus means when he tells Neo to free his mind: to let go of the desire to analyse, interpret, judge, and control what is happening, and simply allow his will to unfold, magically, without interference from reason. Once he is able to do this, Neo’s actions become sorcery. By silencing his thoughts and so becoming disengaged from the matrix, he has tapped his will. The only freedom for matrix sorcerers is to act without knowing what they are doing, to become a witness to their own acts, a midwife to miracles, a true creative force of nature, outside time and space, and beyond the reach of the Gatekeepers.

Being the One, full video

2011-09-11T21:16:00.000-07:00

At the FB page there's the full methology behind how the film was made.

The End of the World: When, What, and for the Love of God, Why?!!

2011-09-08T16:45:00.000-07:00

Perhaps the “end of the world” is no more nor less than a species coming of age, a shamanic rite of passage which only individuated psyches will be prepared for? That is, those individuals who have owned their personal shadow and established an INNER sense of the real, outside of external/collective definitions and values (the group mind). Since it would be the end of the unwritten “consensus” which agrees that reality is outside of us, for those whose only reality is outer and not inner-generated, it will be very much the end of the world.

This may be an evolutionary process – consensus reality/the group mind being the matrix-chrysalis-womb that allows the fetal consciousness of humanity to come to term. Leaving that matrix-womb would be every bit as terrifying and unfamiliar as leaving the first womb was to us, and every bit as wrenching. The group mind, like the mother’s body, provides us with a sense of comfort, familiarity, safety, and identity; as such, we depend on it just as much as an unborn fetus depends on *its* environment.

Leaving the group mind would be akin to death as well as birth: cast into an unknown realm in which we have no choice but to generate reality from what we have within us. Human consciousness would then change its spin – perhaps overnight?! – from passive reception to creative transmission. Surviving that apocalyptic transition will depend entirely on the degree to which we have integrated and “owned” our individual inner (shadow) content, because otherwise we must face it outside of us. . .

This is such a complex question, and of course it's what everyone wants to know. But there may be an even more complex question, relating to how much our focus on external "events" and our adherence to a linear timeline might be keeping us in the fetal-consciousness of consensus reality, and thereby preventing the "event" from happening?

Suppose it has already happened, and we are simply reliving all the events leading up to it, in that final, definitive moment of species death/birth? For me, the question is always personal/individual - where am I situated in myself/my own evolution? And when, if ever, will I break through into a fully REAL-ized, individuated/liberated state of being? When, Oh Lord, when?

I think that's all we need to concern ourselves with (if that!), and yet, paradoxically, since our outer environment, local and non-local, mirrors our inner state, it pays to keep a close watch on our world also, as a way to gauge where we're at.

The idea of "the end of the world" strengthens the idea of the world; the idea of the dissolution of the ego, strengthens the idea of an ego. Yet neither the world nor the ego exist, really, as a fixed or final reality, outside of our agreement to perceive them as real.

So then the idea of a collective species awakening, etc, strengthens the idea that we are part of a collective. This is both good and bad, probably, because it is both true and not true - it's an idea that is becoming true on the one hand, and which is truer than we dare face up to, on the other. I think we are currently caught in the shadow of the idea of being a collective. The group mind (Piscean age, womb, matrix) is giving over to the Aquarian (Promethean) awakening to the reality of our utter aloneness and isolation, a necessary crossing of the Abyss that will give rise to individuated solar beings which can then, but only then, come together and form a tribe - a collective being which is perhaps infinitely more heart, and body, than "mind"?

Getting to the nuts and bolts of this question, I have long "intuited" (never sure where it comes from, maybe wishful thinking) that 2012 would be "the beginning of the end." For the Maya it is when the old systems begin to collapse and give over to a new way of being/perceiving. To my mind that entails a full recognition of the nature of our predicament, and hence is when the machinery of the shadow begins to emerge into concrete expression. A truly terrifying time is ahead of us, I believe. That shadow machinery would then be fully manifest by 2017, at which point some sort of external intervention would occur. (What's that Joe Campbell said, about only finding the light in the deepest shadow?) However, this is probably an optimistic scenario, as it looks to me like it's going to take more than five years for a whole species to be fully confronted with its shadow. But I optimistically predict it for myself, at least! : /

It's like an end game theater of higher and lower self (and yet the lower self is the deeper self, is the higher self!): we first have to see what we have turned ourselves into, as a species, and experience the full, horrendous truth of our complete enslavement to our lower natures. Whether this enactment entails environmental chaos or tyrannical government oppression, or both, or some unimagined factor, remains to be seen. But only then - in the deepest part of our own shadow - will we see what we really ARE. Enter the Other, divine or extraterrestrial emergence, which comes from within, and yet, mysteriously and magikally, intervenes from without.

The God Game

2011-09-03T20:36:00.000-07:00

Hang Dog with a Hard On

2011-08-12T13:35:00.000-07:00

A musical interlude

Telepathy, Trance, Dreams, Trauma

2011-08-10T18:08:00.000-07:00

Images by Lucinda Horan

PART THREE

“Authors, the scene ends

with a rule of theater:

In the beginning was the mask.”

—Antonio Machado

The Magikal Mirror

“Writing, I think, is not apart from living. Writing is a kind of double living. The writer experiences everything twice. Once in reality and once in that mirror which waits always before or behind.”

—Catherine Drinker Bowen

Keeping a journal and performing a magical ritual might seem worlds apart, but there may be a common intent to both these activities. In the same way as we can bring aspects of our psyche to consciousness through writing, a ritual magician assumes certain roles with a desired outcome, embodying the god Mars in preparation for conflict or the goddess Venus in anticipation of love. By such archaic practices, the ceremonial magician is awakening parts of his (or her) psyche which he wishes to embody and integrate into his persona. In a similar way, a shaman dons animal skins as a means to summon “spirits” which “dwell” in his psyche and in that of his audience (or client): he or she is invoking (and evoking) the primordial forces by acting out a specific part of the group psyche, as a means to integrate it. This is analogous to group therapy also, when a ritual space is created within which normal social rules are suspended. This ritual space—be it the journal, the therapy room, the shaman’s hut or the magician’s circle—allows “the inexpressible to be expressed.” As already described, communicating with ourselves in this way develops our ability to communicate with the world. Then, as we begin to bring this new awareness and maturity into our interactions with others, so communicating with the world deepens our relationship to ourselves.

There is a well-known magical oath: “I pledge to treat every phenomenon as a particular dealing of God with my Soul.” While based on the metaphysical belief that the Universe is a “magical mirror” which constantly reflects back at us the internal conditions of our souls, this oath also sums up the tenets of existential psychology, as encapsulated by Carl Jung’s statement: “When an inner process cannot be integrated it is often projected outward.” On the individuation journey to self-knowledge, there are inevitably aspects of our consciousness which we are either unable to see or unwilling to look at in isolation. Just as there are gods which the magician is careful not to invoke until ready, there are subjects which we choose not to write about in our journal, often because we aren’t ready to even think about them. Once we enter into interaction with other people, however, these are the very aspects that get stirred up. They are the rough (and blind) spots which sooner or later are going to trip us as we begin to engage with our environment in new ways. It is this pressure of interacting with other people that brings home the discord in our psyches and allows us to work it out. This tension provided by “the other” is essential to individuation, and it is why, “beyond a certain point, the whole universe becomes a continuous process of initiation.”[i]

Between the Lines: Induced Trance States Via Reading & Writing

“Telepathy, of course. It’s amusing when you stop to think about it—for years people have argued about whether or not such a thing exists, folks like J. B. Rhine have busted their brains trying to create a valid testing process to isolate it, and all the time it’s been right there, lying out in the open like Mr. Poe’s Purloined Letter. All the arts depend upon telepathy to some degree, but I believe that writing offers the purest distillation.”

—Stephen King, “What Writing Is.”

Increased self-awareness equals maturity, making individuation an exponential growth curve. Maturity and self-awareness increases our capacity to observe ourselves, not only in others but in isolation, and this capacity for self-observation further increases self-awareness. The tension created within us by the presence of the other then allows for a new seeing within ourselves, because the other is always reflecting something we can’t or won’t see about ourselves. That newly gained insight is what we bring to our next relationship, and so on. The paradox of individuation is that, as we deepen self-awareness, it is as if we are cleaning the universal mirror within which we are gazing, so life reflects back at us ever more sharply our internal condition. The result is seemingly counter-intuitive: we become not less but more (and more) sensitive and vulnerable to both internal and external triggers the more we mature, because as we continue to integrate the contents of our unconscious, it begins to seem as though the whole world is happening inside of us. It also becomes harder and harder to distance ourselves from others, because we are taking responsibility not only for our own thoughts, feelings and actions, but for everyone else’s too—though only in relation to ourselves—and so everything that happens lands at our doorstep. The closest parallel to this ongoing initiation would be that of a lucid dream state, because in dream states isolation and interrelationship co-exist: we are both alone in our “head-space” and interacting (telepathically, astrally, or by means not yet understood) with the world outside us. This is why it is possible to unravel psychic knots while dreaming, which provides a direct parallel once again with both reading and writing, since both activities (when immersive) recreate a waking dream state.

The following is from Stephen King’s On Writing:

“My name is Stephen King. I’m writing the first draft of this part at my desk (the one under the eave) on a snowy morning in December of 1997. There are things on my mind. Some are worries (bad eyes, Christmas shopping not even started, wife under the weather with a virus), some are good things (our younger son made a surprise visit home from college, I got to play Vince Taylor’s ‘Brand New Cadillac’ with The Wallflowers at a concert), but right now all that stuff is up top. I’m in another place, a basement place where there are lots of bright lights and clear images. This is a place I’ve built for myself over the years. It’s a far-seeing place. . . . you are somewhere downstream on the timeline from me . . . but you’re likely in your own far-seeing place, the one where you go to receive telepathic messages. . . . And here we go—actual telepathy in action. You’ll notice I have nothing up my sleeves and that my lips never move. Neither, most likely, do yours. Look—here’s a table covered with a red cloth. On it is a cage the size of a small fish aquarium. In the cage is a white rabbit with a pink nose and pink-rimmed eyes. In its front paws is a carrot-stub upon which it is contentedly munching. On its back, clearly marked in blue ink, is the numeral 8. Do we see the same thing? We’d have to get together and compare notes to make absolutely sure, but I think we do.

“This is what we’re looking at, and we all see it. I didn’t tell you. You didn’t ask me. I never opened my mouth and you never opened yours. We’re not even in the same year together, let alone the same room... except we are together. We’re close. We’re having a meeting of the minds.”

Stephen King makes no mention of mirror neurons or brain states; back in 1997 no one was talking about such things. Yet he is essentially describing the same phenomenon: transference of thought via writing. It’s interesting that King takes the time to describe his brain state (his mood), even though it has no apparent bearing on the scene which he goes on to transmit (the rabbit in the cage), telepathically, in order to literally illustrate his point. The reason it’s interesting is that the science of mirror neurons argues that it is just such “between the lines” information that is transmitted via language—the writer’s mood and current circumstances—even when they are in no way inferred by the written or spoken material itself.

What King is describing here is more than simply a shared visualization, because the act of visualizing—being obviously linked to dreaming—is one that entails at least a minor trance state. We all know what it is like to get sucked into a good book. We get lost in the writer’s (and/or the characters’) thoughts and feelings, immersed in another world being created by a combination of words on the page and our own ability to weave a surrogate dream reality inside our skulls (or bodies, if you want to be holistic about it). One thing is certain: when we are carried away by a good book, fiction or non-fiction, we are only secondarily aware of reading words on a page; our primary awareness goes where the words themselves take us. And where they take us, as King points out, is not only into our own minds, but into the mind of the author. It is a matching of brains states, a shared trance. And (though this is trickier to prove) I’d wager that the closer the author was to deep dreaming when she or he wrote the book, the closer we can approach to such a state ourselves while reading it. This is what distinguishes great writing from not-so-great: the degree of immersion it induces in us is determined, at least in part, by the degree of immersion which the writer attained while writing it. This is what communicates—“between the lines.”

Reading James Joyce is a very different experience to reading Elmore Leonard, and Jean Baudrillard requires an alternate sort of attention to Stephen King. Some prose is harder to get “our heads around,” and while this may have to do with obvious factors such as dense vocabulary or labyrinthine phrases, it may also be dependent on how foreign or alien the brain state of the author is compared to our own. People who work hard to match Joyce’s brain state “get” what he is doing and consider him a genius. For the rest of us, he is incomprehensible and overrated. (Ditto Baudrillard.) The same is true of our dreams: the ones that more closely match our waking brain state are easier to remember, understand, and describe. Others are so “out there” that just thinking about them causes us a mild form of distress due to cognitive dissonance. (The Surrealists were all about creating cognitive dissonance, and their aim was to try and match dream states through their use of word and image.)

If you read the following sentence, allowing that forensic science has a relative ownership of the sort of cheese waffles which your mother baked, for the sake of literary analysis you will take the next number 5 bus and wind up looking for missing punctuation marks. On the other hand if I say simply that this sort of playful writing has a pleasingly disorientating effect on the mind, you will be then relieved to be back on safe ground, and that matching the author’s brain state does not entail coming too seriously unhinged from your own familiar worldview. Coherence is something we let go of only with a struggle. The point is, while you are reading this, you are going along with my own thoughts and as long as these seem to follow a linear sort of sequence common to waking logic, and to stick to ideas reasonably familiar to you, you can keep up and won’t have too hard a time of it. The moment I bring in salivating leprous homunculi and suggest that your mother’s panties are the secret to your wasted sex life, you will either laugh, become incensed, or try and figure out where exactly you lost the thread of my argument.

See what I mean?

PART FOUR

Lucid Dreaming & Original Trauma

“Learning to think without resorting to images is indispensable to alphabet literacy. ‘Make no images’ is a ban on right-brain pattern recognition. All who obey it will unconsciously begin to turn their backs on the art and imagery of the Great Mother and, re-orientated a full 180 degrees, will instead seek protection and instruction from the written words of an All-Powerful Father.”

—Leonard Schlain, The Alphabet Versus the Goddess

Matching the author’s brain state is something that happens automatically with “easy” prose, but which we become increasingly aware of having to do when the prose is more innovative and challenging, or conversely, sloppier and less cunningly structured. Yet the awareness of the reader is finally the determining factor in how efficient the conveyance of information is. If a tree falls and no one hears it, there’s no sound, and a book that is never read does not exist as a form of literature, only an object on a shelf. Telepathy has not occurred: minds have not met. Compare this to our dream lives. How much of the material of our dreams ever makes it to our conscious minds? Yet it is there: book after book, story after story, just waiting to be tapped into and enjoyed.

In the common view, dreams are a way for our brains to “work off” excess stress or work out unresolved issues. In the jargon of our day, the dream state is a place where the unconscious “uploads” data—in symbolic language—about the condition of the “network,” our total psyches. This can be transpersonal as well as personal because the unconscious is collective as well as individual. While sleeping, we are in a relatively egoless state, and because of this, information that would otherwise be threatening to, and hence repressed by, our waking consciousness can be addressed and integrated. When I say “relatively egoless,” I mean that our everyday concerns no longer hold sway over our choices. Barring specific anxiety dreams, we aren’t worried about the rent or what the neighbor thinks of us, but tend to get caught up in symbolic enactments that make little or no sense in the context of our waking lives.

If we think of ego in its pure sense, however—that of an individual perspective with its own focus and drive—it could be argued that, potentially at least, we are more in our ego while dreaming, because when we sleep our ego and id (conscious and unconscious minds) are functioning much more as a unit. This becomes particular apparent in lucid dreaming, and once again the parallel with writing is clear: lucid dreaming is a way of taking control of the components of our unconscious and writing the dream. Like a scenarist, a novelist, or a scriptwriter, our intent is to arrange specific elements of our unconscious in a conscious or semi-conscious fashion, in order to discover how best they fit together and create a meaningful narrative. This is the similarity; the difference, of course, is in the medium employed. When we sit at a desk and write, we are using words to describe internal states and are willingly entering into mild trance in order to best midwife that psychic material into the new form, that of literature. When we dream, on the other hand, something else happens, and words are only incidental to that mysterious process.

When we write we are creating an external vehicle for ourselves as consciousness: a book, a poem, a short story, an essay. This is called self-expression, and it’s a process which most writers would say they have control over, if not total control then near enough. (Writers often say that when it’s working, the story or piece takes over; but never, I assume, to the point they would forget to eat and starve to death.) When we dream, such control is drastically reduced, to the point that most of the time we forget that we are dreaming. The world we create becomes all-embracing. When we dream, we are “projecting” consciousness outside of the “self” and creating an image, then stepping into the image and interacting with it. Anyone who has ever fallen asleep and entered into dreaming consciously (the hypnopompic state) will have observed that critical moment when ordinary thoughts begin transform into and appear before us as images. This is the act of creation stripped down to its essence, and the essence of the creative act is that (unlike writing) we have only a rudimentary kind of control over it. Falling asleep in this way can be extremely jarring (the trick is not waking ourselves up by reacting to the images we see); it is like tapping into a well of psychic energy that for the rest of our lives is turned off and unavailable to us. Writers—and all artists—attempt to tap into this wellspring consciously, while awake, and to direct it into a finished work which they can present to the world as “the product of their imagination.” Yet it may be that the product itself is almost incidental to the real mystery, that of the creative process itself. How does it happen and why does it take the form it does? What are these seemingly bipolar kinds of consciousness called waking and dreaming, and why is it so difficult (and so fascinating) a task to create—or locate—a working bridge between the two?

It’s been said that the original sin was projection[ii]: a split in consciousness between inner and outer by which we were cut off from the divine, expelled from Paradise. On the other hand, with no projection of consciousness outward, would there be anything for consciousness to interact with? Perhaps it wasn’t a sin until we mistook the projection for ourselves and got lost in the dream? Perhaps all of these practices—magic ritual, shamanic trance, lucid dreaming, meditation, psychotropic plant use, and writing—are ways to re-enact the original manifestation of consciousness into (and as) matter? Maybe they are tricks to remember how we tricked ourselves, as consciousness, into getting lost in a language-based reality construct? In which case, are they also ways to reverse “the Fall” by reenacting the primal trauma—what Philip K. Dick described as “a primordial split in the godhead”—and heal the rift between waking and dreams?

[i] Robert Anton Wilson, after Aleister Crowley.

[ii] Lyn Birkbeck to author.

The Listener

2011-08-08T11:31:00.000-07:00

Image by Lucinda Horan

PART TWO

The Listener: Developing a Dialogue with Self

“In Genesis, Yahweh’s first instruction to Adam is not something practical such as how to make a fire or fashion a weapon. He teaches the first man to name all of His creatures. By this act, Yahweh emphasizes that naming is the most potent power He will confer on mortals. Through naming, Adam gains ‘dominion over all the earth.’ Naming confers meaning and order. To name is to know. To know is to control.”

—Leonard Schlain, The Alphabet Vs. the Goddess

It is logical to presume that, before words were ever written down, they began as sounds. While we can only presume this about the species, we can observe it first hand when it comes to individuals. When a baby learns to speak it doesn’t build a vocabulary word by word (a process which begins later), it starts by making unintelligible sounds in imitation of what it hears. Gradually, these sounds begin to resemble recognizable language and verbal communication begins. Soon after this, the child learns to read and write and language becomes fixed, not only as sound but as image. It becomes script, code. Writing then introduces a new possibility, that of words separate from direct communication, and the corresponding possibility of communication occurring, not only across space, but across time. As Leonard Schlain writes in The Alphabet Versus the Goddess, “The written word is essentially immortal. To a hyper-conscious primate who had become aware that death was inevitable, the discovery of a method to project one’s self beyond a single life span seemed nothing less than miraculous.”

There is another possibility which Schlain does not discuss, another purpose for writing which has nothing to do with immortality or even communication in the ordinary sense. That is the possibility of writing without any intention of ever sharing it with another human being—such as for example when writing a journal. Thousand, perhaps millions, of people do this every day (admittedly less so now that blogs and Facebook have opened up the possibility of communicating with strangers), and the assumed wisdom is that keeping a journal is a therapeutic process. If this is really the case, how does it work? The obvious answer is that writing a journal is a way to communicate with oneself.

“To start a dialogue,

first ask:

then… listen.”

—Antonio Machado

Short of talking to oneself (which creates a very different effect), self-communication is only possible via writing. Writing down an account of one’s activities or thoughts creates a distance between oneself and the raw material of one’s existence, and potentially between one’s everyday “motor” self and one’s consciousness. As in good therapy, one is talking to an impartial, disinterested, but wholly attentive other, the difference being that, in this case, the “Listener” is oneself. This Listener is something we can all develop within ourselves, without which no real communication is possible. Before we can begin to listen to others, we have to learn to listen to ourselves. Only then can we find our true voice, because real speech can only come about as a response to listening, whether internally or externally.[1]

We are all familiar with the phrase “to get something off your chest,” the idea being that, by talking about something that is causing us stress or discomfort, we can let it go, or at least see it in a less stressful light. The reason this works is that, by talking about something with a second party, we can see it from a different perspective, from the outside rather than the inside, and reduce its power to affect us. This can work when we have a sympathetic ear to vent our frustration to, but it tends to work better when we have a neutral ear, such as in therapy. Therapy allows us to re-experience our problem from the perspective of an impartial but curious observer who is devoid of any strong emotional reaction. This presence is the Listener, being at once both interested and disinterested, sympathetic but impartial, uninvolved. When we communicate with ourselves in this way, via writing, creative expression, deep thought or meditation, we bring forth The Listener—the part of us that is equivalent to a sympathetic but disinterested friend or a therapist—and can then reconceive the problem from a new perspective. The benefits of this are two-fold: not only do we experience our problem in a less stressful light, we also gain access to a part of ourselves that is able to rise above any problem because it is entirely uninvolved, while at the same time, privy to inside information about us. The Listener is our own inner therapist.

Whether by sharing with a neutral party or writing it down, what is occurring through the act of communicating is that we get to see what’s inside us in a way that feels safe to “take on board.” In terms of the issue being reconceived, if we are angry, we may describe our anger and the reasons for it, thereby seeing the shape of it and coming to “grips” with it. We can then own the anger in such a way that confronting the original cause of our anger becomes much easier and more straightforward. Instead of acting in anger, we “take” our anger to the person or situation and express it in a more balanced, less emotive fashion. Writing a journal, like talking to a therapist, is a way of testing the contents of our minds, both conscious and unconscious (writing will bring unconscious matter to the surface just as much as therapy), making sure that we have got to grips with it before letting others see it. It is a psychological rehearsal space in which we can see exactly what we are capable of and what we’re not—“where we’re at”—before going on stage and performing in front of a live audience.

This sort of dialoguing with the self can have an accumulative effect: it creates a recursive feedback loop in which, the more we reveal the contents of our minds to ourselves and integrate them, the more we accept ourselves as we are, the more we can open up to others, and so on. Alchemically speaking, we are drawing the lead into the laboratory of our minds and transmuting it, via awareness, over a long painful process, into gold. By establishing a different way of relating to ourselves through on-going dialogue, we are establishing a kind of private social identity which, little by little, we can take with us into the world. By strengthening our individual sense of truth, meaning, and value, we are slowly “finding our feet” in reality.

[1] If we are too busy criticizing ourselves we won’t really hear what we are trying to communicate. In the same way, when we pretend to listen to others, we are actually too busy figuring out what we want to say next, and simply waiting for our chance to do so. This is not dialogue.

SKYWRITERS IN HADES

2011-08-04T19:20:00.000-07:00

Image by Lucinda Horan

Mirror Neurons, Individuation Spellcraft, and the Art of Shamanic Writing

(with thanks to Mrs. Kephas: the perfect listener)

PART ONE

“Don’t scorn the word:

Poets, the world is noisy

and silent, only God speaks.”

—Antonio Machado

Pornography and Shamanic Healing

“Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia.”

—E.L. Doctorow

In 1992, Giacomo Rizzolatti and a team of neuroscientists accidentally discovered mirror neurons while experimenting on monkeys. The monkeys had their brains wired up in order to observe how motor neurons related to hand movements, and when a monkey picked up a peanut, the neuron fired. But to the team’s surprise, the same motor neuron also fired when the monkey was watching a lab assistant pick up the peanut. Apparently, to the monkey’s brain, seeing someone grabbing a peanut was a similar experience to grabbing the peanut itself. Action and perception were “tightly linked.” The neuroscientist Vilayanur S. Ramachandran believes that the discovery of mirror neurons for neuroscience is equivalent to the discovery of DNA for biology, and that the “fifth revolution” is the neuroscience revolution (following Copernican, Darwinian, Freudian, and Crick and Watson’s discovery of DNA).

Before we look more closely at what mirror neurons are, I’d like to begin by citing an interesting demonstration of how they function, using for an example a subject we are all acquainted with—pornography. The following is from “Porn and Mirror Neurons,” by Jonah Lehrer.

“But how does porn work? Why do humans (especially men) get so excited by seeing someone else have sex? At first glance, the answer seems obvious: watching porn triggers an idea (we start thinking about sex), which then triggers a change in our behavior (we become sexually aroused). This is how most of us think about thinking: sensations cause thoughts which cause physical responses. Porn is a quintessential example of how such a thought process might work.

“But this straightforward answer is probably wrong. Porn does not cause us to think about sex. Rather, porn causes to think we are having sex. From the perspective of the brain, the act of arousal is not preceded by a separate idea, which we absorb via the television or computer screen. The act itself is the idea. In other words, porn works by convincing us that we are not watching porn. We think we are inside the screen, doing the deed.”

Now let’s reframe this argument and apply it instead to a shamanic healing ritual.

How does shamanic ritual work? Why do humans get healed by seeing someone else perform a ritual? At first glance, the answer seems obvious: watching a ritual triggers an idea (we start thinking about healing), which then triggers a change (we are healed). This is how most of us think about thinking: sensations cause thoughts which cause physical responses. Shamanic ritual is a quintessential example of how such a thought process might work.

But this straightforward answer is probably wrong. Shamanic ritual does not cause us to think about being healed. Rather, shamanic ritual causes us to think we are doing the healing. From the perspective of the brain, the act of healing is not preceded by a separate idea, which we absorb via watching the shaman. The act itself is the healing. In other words, shamanic ritual works by convincing us that we are not watching a shamanic ritual. We think we are the shaman, doing the ritual.

This interpretative model can be applied to absolutely anything within the parameters of human experience; but what we are interested in applying it to here is writing, most specifically journal writing, which involves the observation of behavioral patterns. What are the ways in which writing can be used to hold a mirror to our psyches and develop empathy for ourselves, as well as for others? How is isolating ourselves from the input of others a means for self-examination and a way to become more integrated into the community? What is a group mind, how is it formed, what makes its hold upon us so complete, and how does writing help to break that hold? What is individuation, how does it pertain to finding our own unique “voice,” as writer-programmers of our reality—and what does all this have to do with porno and shamanism?!

Stay tuned, all will be revealed.

Reality as a Language-Based Construct

“The linking and relinking of objects by the Brain is actually a language, but not a language like ours (since it is addressing itself and not someone or something outside itself). We should be able to hear this information, or rather narrative, as a neutral voice inside us. But something has gone wrong. All creation is a language and nothing but a language, which for some inexplicable reason we can’t read outside and can’t hear inside. So I say, we have become idiots. Something has happened to our intelligence. My reasoning is this: arrangement of parts of the Brain is language. We are parts of the Brain; therefore we are language. Why, then, do we not know this? We do not even know what we are, let alone what the outer reality is of which we are parts. The origin of the word “idiot” is the word “private.” Each of us has become private, and no longer shares the common thought of the Brain, except at a subliminal level. Thus our real life and purpose are conducted below our threshold of consciousness.”

—Philip Dick, Valis

As many of us have long known (or are beginning to suspect), writing is a lot more than just marks on a page or pixels on a computer screen. Computer programming and html code are helping us to conceptualize reality as a language-based construct, and however foreign, even revolutionary, this idea is, it is not without its precedents. In fact, biology’s discovery of DNA and genetic code has already established this idea for several decades, but because DNA is something few of us have direct knowledge of, it remains a largely abstract hypothesis. With computer programming, however, the idea that a series of letters could give rise to material reality—image—is something that we get to experience for ourselves every time we boot up our PC. We all know that code creates images, and images reflect (and can pass for) reality.

Once upon a time this idea—and most of all the possibility of applying it—was restricted to the few. Once upon a time only initiates were privy to the occult knowledge required to activate “junk DNA,” raise the “Kundalini,” and recalibrate consciousness from human to divine frequencies. In Gnostic tradition, this self-activation process was symbolically described as moving up the chain of planetary “Archons,” using certain key words of power to get past each Archon or gatekeeper, until individual freedom was attained. These days, kids who don’t know an archon from their elbow are playing video games which require certain clues and passwords to get past a series of obstacles, or “gatekeepers,” in order to make it to “the next level.” Without digressing any further into the sacred science of occultism, you might say there’s been a progression from the magical tradition of spellcraft once reserved to the priestly caste, to government-sponsored biologists and neuroscientists tinkering with DNA and monkey brains, until today, when the oldest and most arcane art and science is being taught to pre-schoolers, and anyone with the time and patience to master computer-programming can summon occult forces and shape reality—via the power of words.

All of these various disciplines and media have one thing in common: language. Language is a series of symbols which only become meaningful once their meaning is agreed upon and they can be used to communicate. DNA, html code, god-names and video games are all metaphors, because in a reality that’s interpreted (and therefore shaped) via language, everything is metaphor. So what are they all metaphors for? In simplest terms, they are metaphors for the human psyche, and the process being described is that of individuation, or, to use another metaphor, the alchemical transmutation of consciousness. This is the “real life and purpose” which (writer) Philip K. Dick intuited as being “conducted below our threshold of consciousness.” It is happening right here, right now, beneath the surface and between the lines of our everyday narratives.

Part Two

The Ultimate Vice

2011-07-08T15:18:00.000-07:00

(Going through the various "books" I never published; found this from Matrix Sorcerer, circa 2003:)

Reality is a “vice.” We, humanity, are held fast in the grip of this vice. Because we feel the external pressure, growing worse with every passing year, we assume that there is some force or power outside of ourselves that is trapping us. Hence, we have invented the concept of the Devil to account for the vice that enslaves and imprisons us. But, by doing so, we have only become more trapped within it.

Once we acknowledge that the “vice” is God, and that God is us, we can begin to loosen its hold (fixation of assemblage point), and be free of “reality.”

The Devil is a lawmaker; hence he has to believe in himself and only himself. Hence, he must reject God. His power, then, is in his blindness.

Those who exist least, believe most firmly in their existence. This belief is the only thing that establishes them.

A God is a self-aware individual who has realized his non-existence and embraced it to the fullness.

Devil is finite, then; God is infinite. For only the finite can “exist” in isolation. The infinite, by definition, is One with All, and therefore, None at all.

The Imaginal is All For You

2011-06-17T19:30:00.000-07:00

Here's a mini essay I just posted at RI.

Strieber (like Castaneda) had some profound personal encounters with Imaginal forces. When I read his books (and Castaneda's), the accounts resonated, profoundly, with my own, forgotten or fragmented experiences with the Imaginal. In a word, I recognized "truth" in them (I use "'s because I'm at RI, normally I wouldn't bother).

I am and always have been a very credulous and impressionable person, and as is my wont, I took both these authors' accounts literally, at face value - as they themselves seemed to - even knowing (at least later on) that Imaginal experiences aren’t "literal" so much as metaphorical (but then, so is ordinary reality once we scratch the surface, right?). Point is, Whitley's and Carlos' experiences were filtered through their individual psyches and written out in linear (literal) language, so those are the versions of Imaginal reality which we got “fed.” And then, insofar as we are left-brained and literal-minded creatures, we can only take them at face value, or reject them in the same way. (For the left-brain something is either true or false, it cannot be both/and. First mistake.)

The point is that these writers share their truth, not the Truth, but as readers, if we identify with and relate to the stories (while taking them at face value), we are going to try and make it our truth – more or less in the same way that people who follow gurus try to twist themselves into the right shape to match their guru's truth. If we do this, then sooner or later we are going to get disillusioned – as soon, in fact, as we realize that the other guy’s truth, however good it might have seemed, it’s not gonna be our truth. Why? Because it’s not our experience of the Imaginal, divine, or whatever. Sooner or later, something in there is going to “not fit,” because the only reality that fits us is, you got it, our own. So that’s the test and the opportunity of every “guru” - and every literary genius or rock n’ roll idol or whoever we look up to & whose ideas or work we follow, whose path we wind up trying to walk down or whose “being” we want to emulate. It never works.

The test and the opportunity is to save the baby and toss out the bath water. If we wind up rejecting everything about the person, IMO, we’ve missed the opportunity and flunked the test – maybe (I don’t want to impose my version of reality on anyone, but for me that’d be true, though God knows it’s tempting). True skepticism is learning to discern truth from delusion, starting with our heroes or teachers, and ending up with our own. The “believer” swallows the story (aliens, sorcerers, democracy, whatever) whole, gets drunk on it, becomes sick, and then the “skeptic” comes to the rescue and tries to vomit everything back up and swears never to touch the stuff again (but usually he finds another vice). This isn’t skepticism so much as cynicism, overcompensation for feeling like a sucker. It denies whatever is in us (or in Strieber, or whoever) that responded to truth, and focuses only on the part that managed to turn a little bit of truth into a great big delusion. It’s not lies that fool us, IMO, it’s truth taken too literally, or too quickly to heart. It’s truth which we invest in and build a whole edifice of delusion out of.

Imagination – that’s the key, but not in the way most people think of it, as a polar opposite to reality, so much as what underlies all of our experience. Keats compared the imagination to “Adam’s dream: he awoke and found it truth.” Blake believed the imagination was “not a State: it is the Human existence itself.” These guys weren’t slouches. They were as rigorous as they were intuitive. Personally, I’m willing to take their word on that.

Like Castaneda, Strieber got abducted by his own unconscious, whether it was aliens or elementals, angels or demons or govt mind control operatives. Whatever the agents that “came for him,” that’s not a desirable state of affairs. What’s desirable is for us to venture willingly and open-eyed into our unconscious, exactly like the Poets did.

I admit (I already did) that I’m a credulous person. (That's why I'm an odd fit with RI.) There’s no way to be open-minded without being credulous (or if there is, I haven’t found it). I am susceptible to the spells cast by other people’s convictions - and/or delusions - ask my wife if you don’t believe me (rhetorical suggestion). But the alternative to being credulous isn’t being cynical (which is what most skeptics are, IMO), because that just amounts to being closed-minded. The solution is to learn discernment about what we let all the way in and take to heart, what we take as our own truth, as opposed to what we let flow through us and out again, checking it thoroughly on the way. To quote Keats again: “The only means of strengthening one's intellect is to make up one's mind about nothing, to let the mind be a thoroughfare for all thoughts.” That means to believe without believing, to disbelieve without dismissing, to make up one’s mind about nothing. In the words of Whitley, it means we get to “Learn to live at a high level of uncertainty.” (Bleh)

Who the hell wants to do that? In this world, certainty is power. We’re taught and bred to make up our minds about everything, and dismiss anything we can’t make our minds up about. The trouble is we are also told, subtly, which conclusions to reach (drink Coca Cola), so then, when we make up our minds, we’re really giving them over to someone (or something) else’s influence.

For me that’s the proof that Strieber’s doing something that’s worth paying attention to: he raises a lot more questions than he provides answers.

That, and I have a big soft spot for the guy.

Here We Go Again?

2011-06-16T17:43:00.000-07:00

Why Do We Want Enlightenment?

2011-06-06T16:51:00.000-07:00

Living for others is true living. If we want to be enlightened, there's two main reasons: one is to be invulnerable and beyond pain and the reach of others; the other is to be able to fully connect to others and be of real service to them.

Which kind do you think most spiritual teachers attained?

I had a thought today, the sprout of a theory perhaps: that if a spiritual teacher (mentioning no names) used enlightenment as a means to create distance and avoid pain, that would prevent him from enlightening anyone else - self-quarantine - because it's a spurious (self-serving) enlightenment and so it wouldn't be allowed to "catch". At the same time, people would get hooked on proximity, because it's what everybody wants from enlightenment: aloofness and invulnerability.

I wondered then if most of us are prevented from attaining enlightenment for this reason: because we want it for the wrong reasons, to become invulnerable? Perhaps certain individuals slipped through the net, and in the case of JDR, it happened to him at the age when we most desperately want to be invulnerable (adolescence). Yet according to Joseph Chilton Pearce, this is also the time when it is naturally supposed to happen, and maybe the reason it doesn't is because we have been traumatized and already started building our personal defense system; so, again, we can't be trusted with enlightenment.

What if enlightenment is a start point and not an end point? A cracking of the chrysalis of the constructed identity and false self that allows us to begin to move and flower with the flow of life instead of cut off from it? If so, then enlightenment is the most ordinary thing, and it is the rest of us that are the freaks. But somehow the ratio got reversed.

Watch the Skies

2011-06-01T12:32:00.000-07:00

It's coming from down below...

Pyjama Surfing

2011-05-06T11:07:00.000-07:00

I'm writing a regular (monthly) column for the Spanish-language site, Pijama Surf - the first piece is on "Why We still Need Gurus."

The original English version of this piece is linked at the bottom of the article.

May Day's Marital Advice for the Shipwrecked

2011-05-01T15:00:00.000-07:00

your partner is your mirror

getting away from the mirror for a time can be healing - and necessary - for both when the pressure and pain of the cooker gets too great.

but thinking that it will be ANY DIFFERENT with a new mirror is a mistake

marriage is when you commit to not changing the mirror, no matter how awful what you see there

when i found out, really found out, that i wasn't going to get what I, my little wounded lower self - wanted, i was ready to bail

but where was i gonna go?

after all the illusions die, that's when relationship really begins

when the ship of alchemical marriage is sinking it's because there was an agreement to go all the way into the depths together

my marital advice is: burn all lifeboats, and prepare to sink

Well, What DO You Know?!

2011-04-11T12:02:00.000-07:00

How many times do we mistake a powerful combination of thoughts, passionate feelings, intuition, and so forth, for a knowing? In my (extensive!) experience, today’s “knowing” is tomorrow’s delusion.

To stand on my own two feet means to follow my own truth, not someone else’s. Doubt has led me to that knowing, and if I had rejected it as a hindrance and banished it as a lie, I would still be trapped in the illusion that truth can be found, or recognized, anywhere outside of my own heart.

So doubt has set me free.

Meeting John de Ruiter has been a wonderfully transformative experience, but one that was only complete when I was ready to turn away from him. This has been my coming of age. For many people in his Oasis community, turning away from John is regarded as the equivalent of turning away from truth. For me, it has been the very opposite experience.

What I got from John that I think was of unquestionable value was a letting go of the need to do anything, to prove or accomplish anything; the acceptance that nothing needs to be done, ever. From that place of knowing that nothing needs to be done, it becomes possible to determine what needs to be done. Without John, I might never have emptied my cup as quickly as I did. My mistake was trying to use him to fill it up again. The filling has to come from within.

But it seems as though John has encouraged people to “fill themselves up” with him. He is living truth, after all. . .

Most people around John can be defined as believers or non-believers, those who are “in,” and those who aren’t. The assumption of those who are “in,” the believers, seems to be that anyone who was in and is now out, has turned away from truth and is mistaken or deluded. I know that I dismissed all arguments against John simply by saying, “I KNOW he’s for real so that’s the end of it; all your doubts are based on NOT-knowing he’s for real and if you knew him like I did, you wouldn’t doubt him.” That was my line of reasoning, and amazingly, I never really questioned how subjective and totalitarian it was. I am embarrassed by it now.

It’s true I don’t know who or what John is at this point. What I do know is that, back when I thought I knew, I was wrong. I only believed, and I believed because I wanted to believe. Maybe I even needed to believe.

If we let ourselves be conned on a street corner by a grifter, it’s true that we have only ourselves to blame. But going to the cops and giving a description of the thief might be part of how we take responsibility for our own stupidity. That’s not just because we are pissed off and want to blame someone. Isn’t the con artist accountable too? Mightn’t we want to protect his future marks, in the spirit of community?

Good marketing always makes it look like there are “no strings attached.” De Ruiter may say that we should only trust what we know, but he also implies that he knows best, and has even stated it outright in various ways. Many people in his group perceive John as “the way, the truth, the light.” Direct knowledge is a term John uses, but as with many or most of his terms, it has never been defined or fully described. Many in his group believe they have experienced direct knowledge of truth, specifically concerning de Ruiter, and therefore have graduated from belief to knowing. I believed that too, so I know that no one can tell anyone that it isn’t so.

But not only can we not believe what we hear, we can’t believe what we see, think, or feel either. We can only believe what we know. De Ruiter has posited a “knowing” that is sourced in neither thinking nor feeling nor intuition nor bodily sensation, and in the process he has presented himself as the master of that knowing. People around him (including myself) have experiences that are so profound that they seem to go beyond thoughts and feelings (even though that’s still how we experience them), and so we assume this MUST be “a knowing.” But I have noticed how people (including myself) need to defend their “knowings,” which suggests they are not so much knowings as heartfelt convictions—which is something quite different.

Convictions make convicts. Besides basic facts (like the fact we are going to die some day), I no longer believe we can know anything except how we feel.

The amount of concealment I have encountered around John’s private activities, and around Oasis in general, is disturbing. There is no possible way for me to reconcile a message of truth and honesty with all of the concealment and dissembling I have encountered. A proponent of truth must be an open book. The book of John de Ruiter is not only closed, it is sealed tight with cobbler’s glue and buried somewhere deep in the forest. Then I am told there is nothing to know about a Master because “there is nothing there.”

It’s the oldest trick in the book!

Having spent the last four months researching John’s past and speaking to as many people as I could, there is no longer any room for doubt— in my heart or mind—that he is concealing aspects of his behavior, and that his teachings are not what they appear to be. The element of deception I have come across time and again is absolutely irrefutable: it is a fact. I have remained as open as possible to the idea that such deception might be somehow sanctioned by Higher Truth, but the more I tried to keep that possibility in play, the more acutely aware I became of having to practice doublethink, foregoing all logic or common sense, and abandoning what I knew to be true—just to try and make sense of what I was discovering.

My “judgment” of John based on this wasn’t that he was a bad guy. It was that he was just a guy. But when I took into account the fact that he has persuaded however many people that he IS more than just a guy, that he is in fact “the living truth,” unfortunately that opened a whole new can of worms whereby I had to consider that he is not “just a guy,” but a very deceptive (or deceived) guy. This, in my opinion, is why so few in the group are willing to question John’s behavior, or his obvious concealment and dissembling around it, AT ALL: because it is a ball of twine that, once you pick at the first thread, will come totally unraveled, forever.

No one can ever be right about another person when it comes to casting judgment on them. That’s why facts are so important, not to judge but to discern. If people wish to see de Ruiter as “living truth,” that’s fine; but if they are refusing to look at certain facts in order to maintain their belief, that’s not so fine. That’s crazy-making. Based on the evidence, de Ruiter is not what he and Oasis’ PR claims him to be, and a lot of work seems to be going into maintaining that illusion. It doesn’t mean people aren’t receiving positive experiences around him—I know I did. The question is, at what price?

John has also talked about (it’s even a long quote at his website) how it is possible for a person to use an awakening in order to become invulnerable and then get “trapped” in an “enlightened ego” identity. This would be very hard for anyone who hadn’t experienced something similar to recognize, and the person in question, by definition, would not be aware of it either. (The trap is in the very certainty of having attained “mastery,” to be fully conscious and free from self-interest, “mastered by Truth”). The danger of a “blind spot” is the fact that we are not aware it is there, and often can’t even entertain the idea it might be, because then we would have to stop everything.

“The deep” is unmapped terrain. Staying in what you know is easier said than done. How hard is it to have a complete knowing about oneself, much less somebody else? Faith, belief, trust, loyalty, commitment, devotion, emulation, worship, love, submission—none of these are the same as knowing. But together they can make a highly convincing alternative to it.

A common experience of people around John is of receiving a blissful dose of energy that is “like a drug.” This was my experience also. However, a bit like drugs, I also noticed on occasion a sort of deflation after the meetings. Did John’s “truth” give me temporary refuge from the pattern-prison of my own wounds? I felt acutely when we left Bristol (in 2010, after my first seminar) that John’s energy was like a “nest” around us, soothing and protective, like a cocoon. I think maybe John offers a kind of psychic pain relief, balm for any psychological wounds which a person is not ready or able to go into. I also realize how “okayness” can be used as the supreme tool of avoidance.

Nests are necessary for a chick to grow in; but until the chick leaves the nest, it will never learn to fly. For me, de Ruiter was like a powerful hallucinogen: useful to see that such states exist within myself, but not to be relied on to “get there” once I’ve found that out. Otherwise, it becomes more about the drug than the experience.

Not that it’s been easy to get clean. I’m still in the process of it. Coming clean here, with my old audience, is maybe the last phase of that process. I am admitting that I was wrong, powerfully deceived and deeply deluded, about John de Ruiter, and probably about everything else too.

If anyone still wants to listen to me after that, God help you!

Defying Dad At Last

2011-04-07T13:21:00.000-07:00

Better late than never, fellas! (and ladies)

Graphic art by Soundless Dawn. Thanks Steve!

Toe in the Implicate Order

2011-04-02T17:36:00.000-07:00

Urmmm...

Is anyone still here?

Galactic Raffle Over

2010-11-14T15:31:00.001-08:00

No more submissions, thanks, winner/s has/have been selected and has been/will be notified (soon?).

thanks to everyone who submitted and also to those who did not.

Who Knows?

2010-11-11T13:29:00.000-08:00

I won't be taking down all the sites as promised, at least not today.

Simple explanation: it is no more up to me whether I quit than it is to continue. Erasing the sites and announcing my disappearance is just the flip side of the same coin to that of my compulsive creativity. Extremes of behavior sustain one another. Also self-erasure can be slightly pathological (Carlos was obsessed with it).

For now, I will just say that I may never post or podcast again. But then again, I may. It's not up to me, so I am content just to say, who knows?

If not, then consider these various sites exquisite corpses.

In passing, I found an interesting definition yesterday in Doug Coupland's dictionary of the near future:

DESELFING Willingly diluting one’s sense of self and ego by plastering the Internet with as much information as possible. (See also Omniscience Fatigue; Undeselfing)

Consider me de-selfed.

Adieu or au revoir to all my faithful readers.

Ooops

2010-11-03T11:39:00.000-07:00

self-sabotage at it's finest: the email address given below is incorrect; it should read aeolus_kephas at yahoo.com

That would explain why no one emailed AK - you think?! But not why no one asked about it in the comments section.

Too bad: I was beginning to think the message to retire was UNequivocal.

Email AK with subject line "WTF?" if you still want to qualify for free consult.

Galactic Raffle

2010-10-28T17:16:00.000-07:00

If you are interested in a free consultation with Aeolus Kephas concerning your place and purpose within the galactic unfolding, send an email to aeoluskephas at yahoo.com, with the subject line "Who am I?"

In a couple of weeks, Aeolus will select an email at random. The winner will receive a free consultation with AK, on the subject matter of their choice.

Accelerated Evolution and the Other Self

2010-10-25T14:15:00.000-07:00

Excerpts from the recent John De Ruiter seminar, juxtaposed with teachings of don Juan from Castaneda's The Eagle's Gift.

JDR said:

And there’s more to you than what you have believed. You have Direct Knowledge of more-of-you that has no relationship to your self yet. It has no purpose in your life yet. For you to believe as-awareness that Direct Knowledge, within, is for you within-your-self to be absorbed into that Direct Knowledge - turning you-as-awareness from the perspective of what your self is, into something completely different - and completely foreign to your self - foreign to what your self is at present, and yet beautifully you.

Carlos wrote:

Our total being consists of two perceivable segments. The first is the familiar physical body, which all of us can perceive; the second is the luminous body, which is a cocoon that only seers can perceive, a cocoon that gives us the appearance of giant luminous eggs.

One of the most important goals of sorcery is to reach the luminous cocoon; a goal which is fulfilled through the sophisticated use of dreaming and through a rigorous, systematic exertion called not-doing.

JDR said:

You within-all-of-your-self . . . summoning all awareness into one point - accomplishing the Being of Real Knowledge in your self - remaining one-pointed, accomplishing entrance into Direct Knowledge that isn’t in your self. Direct Knowledge in all of that-within that precedes the level of what your self is.

Carlos wrote:

The act of remembering the other self is thoroughly incomprehensible. In actuality it is the act of remembering oneself, which does not stop at recollecting the interaction warriors perform in their left side awareness, but goes on to recollect every memory that the luminous body has stored from the moment of birth.

This act of remembering, although it seems to be only associated with warriors, is something that is within the realm of every human being; every one of us can go directly to the memories of our luminosity with unfathomable results.

JDR said:

Believing that entering that is you within-all-of-your-self . . . being completely absorbed into the more-of-you-within. The form of your self has no relevance in that. Its relevance is made real in the all-of-you entering the level of our self, making it all different. The all-of-you accomplishes the all-of-your-self.

In that, there is no room for a little self. The little self becomes completely absorbed into the all of a greater self. A self capable of the all of your reality: Reality-of all-of-you. A form of self, reflecting that . . . making a self.

The making of a self that matches the all-of-you.

Carlos wrote:

Losing the human form is the only means of breaking that shell, the only means of liberating that haunting luminous core. To break the shell means remembering the other self, and arriving at the totality of oneself.

Losing the human form brings the freedom to remember your self. Losing the human form is like a spiral. It gives you the freedom to remember and this in turn makes you even freer.

JDR said:

You won’t be your self any more. You’ll be real pure You . . . that has a self and that will now, - completely change. The unpleasantness of that change, as profound as it is, is to Pure-You, un-daunting. Knowing moves only by Knowing; - the being-ness of that reflecting that. Every structure in your self, by you, will bend to that. Response to Direct Knowledge will have a face in your self.

Carlos wrote:

Warriors have no life of their own. From the moment they understand the nature of awareness, they cease to be persons and the human condition is no longer part of their view.

JDR said:

[With] knowledge that is greater than what your self is, … the presence of your self fades - and what comes into the fore is presence of THIS - presence of connection with more-of-you. A connection-within to the core, that doesn’t yet really relate to your self - making its fading … right for you.

With that fading . . . comes something of a seeing - from other dimensions within. Dimensions that your self and your life are not in sync with; they’re not the same-as.

Carlos wrote:

In those states of heightened awareness you've had an incomparable richness of personal interaction, a richness that your body has understood as a sensation of speeding. The richness of your perception on the left side has been, however, a post-facto realization. Your interaction appeared to be rich in the light of your capacity to remember it. You became cognizant then that in those states of heightened awareness you had perceived everything in one clump, one bulky mass of inextricable detail. You've called this ability to perceive everything at once-intensity. For years you have found it impossible to examine the separate constituent parts of those chunks of experience; you have been unable to synthesize those parts into a sequence that would make sense to the intellect. Since you were incapable of those syntheses, you could not remember. Your incapacity to remember was in reality an incapacity to put the memory of your perception on a linear basis. You could not lay your experiences flat, so to speak, and arrange them in a sequential order. The experiences were available to you, but at the same time they were impossible to retrieve, for they were blocked by a wall of intensity.

JDR said:

Your own belief in your knowledge of what is occurring here - your own belief in knowledge of more-of-you - subscribes to bulletins-of-resonance coming from . . . what I do here - supported by the awakened more-of-you.

These bulletins come into your self - and they are to you - direct sustenance that you are, in your self, desperately and wonderfully dependent on. They hone your awareness.

Carlos wrote:

We are not merely whatever our common sense requires us to believe we are. We are in actuality luminous beings, capable of becoming aware of our luminosity. As luminous beings aware of our luminosity, we are capable of unraveling different facets of our awareness, or our attention. That unraveling could be brought about by a deliberate effort, as we are doing ourselves, or accidentally, through a bodily trauma.

JDR said:

The conversion of your self … is the highly accelerated evolution of your self. Making up for time, far beyond any scope of your life. Bringing you into the more-of-you - accomplishing shared responsibility … in where everything - is going.

Carlos wrote:

The task of remembering, then, is properly the task of joining our left and right sides, of reconciling those two distinct forms of perception into a unified whole. It is the task of consolidating the totality of oneself by rearranging intensity into a linear sequence.

It occurred to us that the activities we remembered taking part in might not have taken long to perform, in terms of time measured by the clock. By reason of our capacity to perceive in terms of intensity, we may have had only a subliminal sensation of lengthy passages of time. . . . [If] we could rearrange intensity into a linear sequence, we would honestly believe that we had lived a thousand years.

JDR said:

By the time that lands, something entirely different . . . has landed on this planet - appealing only to the Innermost of what this planet is. Appealing not to its understood structures. Appealing not to its ways. Giving invitation for awareness from within its Outermost to surrender to knowledge coming up from within its Innermost - answering everything.

And the more . . . is all coming.

Carlos wrote:

To cross over to freedom does not mean eternal life as eternity is commonly understood--that is, as living forever. What the rule states is that one can keep the awareness which is ordinarily relinquished at the moment of dying. I cannot explain what it means to keep that awareness. My benefactor told me that at the moment of crossing, one enters into the third attention, and the body in its entirety is kindled with knowledge. Every cell at once becomes aware of itself, and also aware of the totality of the body.

This kind of awareness is meaningless to our compartmentalized minds. Therefore the crux of the warrior's struggle is not so much to realize that the crossing over stated in the rule means crossing to the third attention, but rather to conceive that there exists such an awareness at all.

JDR said:

Unseen-movement . . . accomplishing a different order of seen-movement.

Beautifully and perfectly. Bringing about levels of excellence in your self not possible before.

Carlos wrote:

To elucidate the control of the second attention, I've presented the idea of will. Will can be described as the maximum control of the luminosity of the body as a field of energy; or it can be described as a level of proficiency, as a state of being that comes abruptly into the daily life of a warrior at any given time. It is experienced as a force that radiates out of the middle part of the body following a moment of the most absolute silence [. . .]

It is a moment of blackness, a moment still more silent than the moment of shutting off the internal dialogue. That blackness, that silence, gives rise to the intent to direct the second attention, to command it, to make it do things. This is why it's called will. The intent and the effect are will; they are tied together.

We don't feel our will because we think that it should be something we know for sure that we are doing or feeling, like getting angry, for instance. Will is very quiet, unnoticeable. Will belongs to the other self. We are in our other selves when we do dreaming.

JDR said:

Your self doesn’t move perfectly. (Pause) THIS does.

Carlos wrote:

Will is such a complete control of the second attention that it is called the other self.

JDR said:

As the more-of-you awakens . . . the more-of-you in your awareness requisitions all belief of you-in-your-self into THIS.

Giving it . . . personal-ness.

Warts & Storms # 10: Diagnosing the World/Diagnosing the Self

2010-10-23T15:06:00.000-07:00

A.k.a. Satan’s Blues. Jason Kephas’ unauthorized collaboration with philosopher Slavoj Zizek, using clips from The Pervert’s Guide to the Cinema, discussing together the impotence of male fantasy, fear of the feminine, focused and unfocused awareness, the cowboy and the fool, the natural state of oneness, the psychic womb of the mother, developing identity consciousness, the overlap between entanglement and enmeshment, splitting the atom at birth, Norman bates’ mother and the three levels of subjectivity, the threat of the father to the son and the son to the father, father as original agent of child’s wounding, the Mystery Man in Lost Highway, father bonding and mother bondage, how focused awareness evolves out of unfocused, the co-ordinates of fantasy, Frank Booth of Blue Velvet, the psycho-baby and the spectacle of the father’s impotence, Dorothy’s passivity, the wounded husband, turning the wife into a model of satisfaction, the original wound of birth, the tragedy of Vertigo, the game of appearances, the ideal of the fatal woman, the ultimate abyss of the other, filling the void with fantasy, masculinity as an escape from subjectivity, the primary threat of female sexuality, tuning into dark matter through the womb, the supreme desire for merging, crushing female sexuality, Frank Booth and reality as an escape from dreams, the war between light and darkness, masculine and feminine, obliterating female desire, Scotty’s obsession, fantasy realized as nightmare, losing the imaginal realms through sexuality, individuation & fragmentation, the first impulse of anger, the hardening and closing of awareness, the beginnings of intellect, the psychopathic male, phallus as insignia, the drive to denigrate the female, replacing the anima, the male fantasy of control, Eyes Wide Shut, Kubrick’s self-diagnosis, Masonic Sorcery Theater as a result of masculine impotence, the old seers’ dream realized, Kali’s desserts.

A six minute youtube clip for the first part of this podcast is here.

Songs used in this podcast: “How Do We Slow This Thing Down?” by the Gothic Archies. “Apple of Sodom,” by Marilyn Manson.

Warts & Storms # 9: The Energetic Nature of Enmeshment

2010-10-16T12:38:00.000-07:00

Part One, Big Picture: JK discusses soul loss and spirit possession, fragmentation of the psyche through trauma abuse, the creation of sub-personalities as a means to control the victim, MKULTRA and sex slaves, installing energy threads into another like strings on a puppet, the cosmic predator, mining the earth plane for awareness, psychic vampirism, the foreign installation or “flyer mind,” enmeshment seen shamanically, the grid, being driven by psychic wounds, fragments and hungry ghosts, the anxiety of want and need, patterns of thought and feeling, the perpetuation of trauma and abuse to create psychic fragmentation, the virus of abuse grows exponentially, “do unto others,” scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours, co-dependency, sexual relations, considering the other’s feelings as a way to get what we want, the pressure of fragments, matching others, working for the cosmic predator, fragments as plug-in-pods in our matrix pod, hooked into the grid, the agitation of fragments, the fundamental purpose of existence, putting our life force in service of want and need, what SWEDA is for, exposing the flyer mind, identifying the patterns of enmeshment or “plug-in” points, how our conscious minds are grown by alien intelligence inside the matrix of the collective unconscious, one size fits all, the same patterns at play in all of us.

Part two, Small Picture: JK talks with Mark on compulsive behavior, being used by our fragments, Mark’s very own hungry ghost, entity possession as the result of soul loss, nature abhors a vacuum, containing the fire of desire, experiencing the split, being still inside the agitation of the fragments, recognizing that the part is not the whole of you, the beginning of integration, not blaming the fragment, children as receptacles for disowned fragments, parenting our fragments, finding the more of you, being a loving parent and not a reactive one, communicating with the fragment, holding a healing space, sending okayness through time, spanning the abyss between child and adult selves, old trauma in the body causing current anxieties, the prison of sex, being seen in distortion, the pressure cooker of SWEDA, facing the truth, changing orientation from self-interest to what you know is true, impotent revolt of the ego, letting our patterns burn us, the wound manifest.

Heart of a Child

2010-10-09T11:27:00.000-07:00

(with thanks to JDR)

the simplicity of living a true life
is astonishing to see
it is effortless
notice the subtleties of goodness
as living points of knowledge
give your awareness to those points
and the heart is softened
the way to give awareness
to the subtleties of goodness
is to bring fairness to your interior
the quietest kind of honesty
first give your face
to the subtlety of goodness
then
give your voice to that
that's it
now go live your life
it all begins
with noticing the subtlety of goodness
that's why we need John
or someone
to see that
let your face light up
and know
it is radiating goodness
even when you don't know
where it comes from
and ride it
until your body lights up
and is carried by that goodness
and the voice follows the face
it's not you
not yourself
and yet it is
becoming what you are
and I limp along
inside that current
it is so easy to lose
and yet so very easy
to find
as soon as you try
and use the voice
before the face
you lose it
the face conveys everything
an open face, opens space
for the voice to move into
not only do we use the voice to get
we even use our faces
every little movement and expression
to conceal, secure, defend, obtain
poker players know it
and how to hide it
an open faces hides nothing
smiles like a child
it is the only way to be
the only way
sorcery is suicide
without the heart of a child

Not for You

2010-09-30T20:45:00.000-07:00

whatever we are not ok with
is what we must experience
otherwise how are we going to be ok with it?
either i find a way to be ok
with being like my father
or i end up like him
i have no third option
it's the same with everything
all down the line
that's why nothing works
but surrender
surrender is being ok
with absolutely everything
forever
total freedom
it's the easiest thing there is
okayness is the only thing we need
any time
and its always right there
inside the knowing
it is right next to the truth
of our utter insignificance
that ability to move
while being within the utter insignificance
is hard
in my case, literally
so then, I get to be ok
with an inability to move
that is the essence of it
never ever move
when there is even the slightest resistance
that's the pathless path
that's surrender
and that's freedom
there is no way to ever fail on that "path"
because the moment "doing" isn't working
you go back to being
the trick is letting go
the first moment you know
that your doing
is taking you away
from what you know
just let it go
not making it 'work' for you
because everything already works just fine
just not for you

2010-09-26T19:52:00.000-07:00

shamanic dismemberment

shamanic dismemberment underway
it's a fine line, between accepting and surrendering
and being passive and defeated
let go of thoughts and feelings about the pain
the internal dialogue gets hold of those signals
and interprets them
as a defense
there is one thing that i can appreciate about it
it is bringing an inner condition to the surface
my lameness is now manifest
there is a sort of relief in that
no way to hide it anymore
i get to find out, if the wound is critical
if my distortions can be integrated
has my life been straight enough
to cancel out my father's
deviations?
the real question isn't am i i fucked or not
but am i ok with being fucked
or not?
it's already been decided anyway
where i get to contribute
is by paying attention or not
can i be neutral enough to be curious
about my dismemberment?
the process
pain is awakening
awakening = pain
dismemberment is energetic
losing the human form?
i am becoming more ok with death anyhow
everything that happens to us
is the result of some sort of sorcery or another
the point of no return has been reached
it's my own fault
for preaching so much
now i get to practice

fundamental paradox

there's a fundamental paradox
at the core of "you"
your identity hinges on being alone
yet alone is the one thing
you can never be
alone = all one
only G*d is allone
alchemical partners will never see eye to eye
want to know why?
because they are facing the same direction
all that leaves is merging
into that forward motion
this separateness
is what all couples strive for
but don't dare to get to
it isn't possible unless both are individuated
individuated means you can let the other be themselves
a separate being
and be ok with that separation
then like two substances, fusion can happen
at a shallow level
it means allowing one's hate for the other
to be there
hate can destroy a relationship
if its not allowed to enter into the mix
hate is not personal
it's the result of making love personal
confining it to the personal
that is doing violence to one's being
indifference, the higher octave of hatred
both are the opposite of love
and giving the other freedom
to be what they are
requires some indifference
hate is the result of not being ok
with the other's difference
BE LIKE ME!!
or else....
we get to be indifferent
to the reality of our differences
and after all
that's the joy of sex
our difference

Infinite Waters Interview

2010-09-21T13:24:00.000-07:00

More Poems from SWEDA exchanges

2010-09-21T10:18:00.000-07:00

dis-enmeshment blues
it is hardest of all
to dis-enmesh with close ones
it is like betraying
and being betrayed
we only ever open our mouths
when we want something
i am feeling that so acutely today
i couldn't even say it
to my closest other
it was like i wanted something
by saying it
it is a frightening thought
and undercuts everything
it goes back to being an infant
crying when hungry
and later, "look at me daddy!"
as adults
what do we need?

love & death
i am searching
only and always
for a more honest way of being
it isn't complicated
or mysterious
there is only one thing to be looked at
how honest am i being now?
what do i know?
with loved ones
we only really know two basic things
we love them
and they are going to die
we may know other stuff
but these two knowings are profound
and love is not complete
without the knowing
of death
else we treat those we love
as if they will always be around
as long as we are thinking of death
as a negative
then we are not in a knowing
how can what is a part of life
be negative?
if you strip away all the intellectual fear
death is a negative for one reason only
we do not want to say goodbye
to those we love
life is hardly long enough
to say a proper hello
and then we are gone
at the time
the moments were eternal
the summers endless
and now
they are gone, gone, gone
either those moments still exist
somewhere
or they don't
we know they still exist
we are speaking of them now
but the sadness of their passing
out of our senses
is so profound
THAT is life
profound sorrow is a part of life
it can be allowed to be present
ALL TIMES

baby eyes
do we look at the sun
or do we look at the ground?
looking is not that important
seeing is
for a tree to ask that question
would be absurd
we get to let go of all we do
to keep the wounds out of awareness
because everything we do
for that reason
is bogus
compulsive
destructive
we cross a million lines of knowing
to avoid those wounds
it becomes impossible to grow
a flower that wants to see the sun
and not the earth
won't allow its roots to go deep
it will never see the sun
only an idea of what the sun might be
we have not even sprouted yet
we think this is life, but it isn't
not yet
the sun is LIKE something you feel
when you expect nothing
and then feel it glowing
all over you
an unexpected gift
expect nothing
it is not easy to do
imagine living a life that way
expecting nothing
with baby eyes

shamans and men
what's wrong isn't our actions
but our rationalizations
if we let go of the rationalizations
then our actions change of their own accord
no longer supported
everything needs to be questioned
examined
a shaman, they say,
is gifted at healing those
who were wounded as he was
in the same capacity
what he did not get as a child
he is adept at giving to others
there is a big difference
between what a shaman does
and what an average man does

sweda exchanges made poems

2010-09-18T11:48:00.000-07:00

holding space

what you care about
you cannot protect
from this world
from you
we only protect that which is important to us
personally
guarding our investments
you cannot afford to care about
what is in your care
no stillness
no inner silence
no protection
when we protect our interests
we forget that it is all going
that we can't secure anything
nor do we need to
it enmeshes
and keeps the person we are "protecting"
from growing
so they don't grow away from us
and so we can't grow either
as if by expanding
we are moving further away
when the reverse is true
you can hold a space
for those in your care
and never let it not be there
that space of stillness
and inner silence
that is protection and care
only that space

boundaries

when there is a feeling
of where the boundary is
with the other
that is a very good feeling
the feeling of do not cross!
which makes it ok
to say anything
how does it manifest, not having boundaries?
in lack of spirit
forever giving up one's own space
to make room for another
terrible
one result is
we can only ever see the other
either as a threat
or as a source of need
or to meet a need
predatorreality
enmeshment is a jungle

Opaque Lens Draws Aeolus the Esoterrorist Out of His Hole in Afganistan

2010-09-16T18:09:00.000-07:00

Chat with Niall on Hampstead Heath about War of the Worlds and the Sublime-Ness of Catastrophic Death, on Shamanic Freedom Radio # 69. Download here.

Aeolus Kephas joins the chat, talking about how his view of the world was particularly apocalyptic leading up to 911, and that 911 was a positive day because it was a ‘tear in consensus reality’, but in the long term, consensus reality became more restricted. Aeolus also theorises that 911 may have been a ripple back in time from a more apocalyptic event in the future. Also mentioned it Neo’s (Thomas Anderson’s) passport in the matrix expiring on Sep 11 2001 (the film was released in 1999).

The Path of Knowledge

2010-09-14T16:03:00.000-07:00

without the desire to be a somebody

who would embark upon the path of knowledge?

accepting that we are nobody

feels like being a real somebody

how many people can accept they are nobody?

the flaw in the sorcerers path

is it attempts to transform the person

by will

but the person doesn't need to be transformed

what makes it seem in need of transformation

is that it is so shallow

so then, let it be that

there is a transformation

but it's not what it seems

"and nothing has changed, yet nothing's the same"

everything is changed equally

and we see that it was always that way

and we laugh and laugh

time is not linear

so death is not an end

we make time linear

in order to exist as selves

and that conjures death into the picture

the shadow of the self

quite beautiful really

past the terror of it

always with you

the self

wooing

not quite understanding

why we are so afraid of our own natures

a billion billion thought forms

created from that primal fear

a billion billion ways to be not okay

and we get to experience every last one

cheer up

we just wrote another poem

The Thing About Gurus

2010-09-09T11:37:00.000-07:00

from Stormy Weather forum:

SWEDA isn't a realm for spiritual discussions and it doesn't promote "spiritual" disciplines or a "spiritual path." Spirituality as a word and even a concept is very much anathema to the SWEDA "method."

SWEDA does encourage and nurture an on-going dialogue with an animistic reality, however, and many would regard that as "spiritual," so in the end it comes down to words. At SWEDA, those who practice viewing their daily reality as an on-going dialogue with a conscious Universe see that it is as pragmatic an approach to existence as plumbing or carpentry. This is why the term "spiritual" seems to me to be a misnomer.

However, Doug Lain (of diet soap) is correct to the degree that reason is insufficient to a deeper experience of reality as I and others in the group perceive it. Reason depends on all reality being quantifiable and broken into parts. An animistic perception of reality does not allow us to separate ourselves from our environment, not even theoretically, much less practically.

As for knowings and universal truths; they exist, but by definition they must be corroborated by a person's own experience to be fully known: truth cannot be passed on or learned, it can only be embodied. A "guru" embodies truth, a "disciple" matches the guru and embodies the same truth him or herself, and so "owns" it.

The greatest challenge and potential for guru-disciple roles is for the disciple to experience the guru as his or her future self, and the guru to interact with the disciple as his own past self, an aspect of his being still being integrated and fully understood. There is then an implicit understanding and acceptance, both of equality and lack of equality, between the two parties. The guru is merely one who has, as mentioned above, gone further and deeper into his own unconscious, thereby making it conscious. He has cleared up space previously occupied by socially programmed patterns, a space that his (true) being can move into and occupy.

The guru's person is no more advanced than the disciple's or anyone else's; it is, on the contrary, reduced, and it is this reduction that allows a true(r) way of being to show through. Anyone who recognizes that, and manages not to fall for the allure of charisma and personality of the "guru," will eventually see that what they are seeing in the guru exists in themselves - and that they are only able to see it at all because it exists in themselves. At which time, the guru is no longer a guru, but merely a future point of reference by which the disciple, now student, can, if need be, check his own inner compass of knowing.

The sort of "knowings" or universal truths that are preached and practiced at SWEDA have nothing to do with inorganic beings or any other sort of occult realities, however. They don't pertain to anything that can't be confirmed (eventually) through direct action and experience.

For example: honesty is the only way to act responsibly in our lives, and dishonesty is therefore an invalid approach to any circumstances, under any and all circumstances.

This is an absolute truth that anyone who is honest with themselves will have to admit to, eventually and however much trial and error they insist upon before admitting it. It is only "spiritual" insofar as it seems idealistic or unrealistic to those who have practiced dishonest ways of being for most of their lives, in keeping with the social contract of enmeshment which says, among other things, that it is better to lie or distort our true natures than to hurt another person's feelings or give offense.

We have been trained from birth in dishonest ways of being, to the degree that the idea of practicing honesty at all times seems not only a rigorous and ascetic discipline, but an abstract, spiritual or "moral" path. But when put into practice, it quickly becomes apparent that honesty is, simply and logically, the only true way of being there is.

New Season of Warts & Storms

2010-08-21T23:15:00.000-07:00

Here It Is, for What It's Worth.

Art by Mr. and Mrs.

SWEDA as Fire-Fighting

2010-08-12T08:44:00.000-07:00

Example of a Meta-Narrative

Firstly, when I arrived at the changing room, a young boy, blond, perhaps 7, was changing. He was friendly and talkative, the first time this has happened in Hope. (Most young boys are pretty shy with adults, or with me at least.) He asked if I was here to swim, and we chatted while I got undressed.

When I took my hat off he said, "You have funny ears."

Since his ears stuck out very obviously, I said, "So do you."

He didn't respond to that, so I said that it was all relative, and that if I were an elf, in Lord of the Rings, my ears would probably seem quite normal.

Then, when I took my shirt off, he stared and said something about how I had three points, or spots (at least that's what I heard). When I showed puzzlement, he said that I had those things "like strong men have," or words to that effect. I realized he was talking about my "abs," my washing board stomach. I told him that I used to do kung fu.

Finally, as he was leaving, I smiled at him, and he said, "Why do you have that funny tooth?" (Protruding upper tooth, like a fang.)

I told him, "My father gave me that." He seemed surprised.

I did sauna and steam, then swam 20 laps, thinking about my talk with Gabe (during which I was more excited than usual); I was feeling a little sheepish about all the quasi-military talk, wondering if it was a little premature, or just plain goofy.

I sat in the hot tub for a spell and a small native boy, maybe 5, climbed in near me. He touched my left hand by accident as he did. I said Hi, and he said Hi back.

I returned to the sauna; a muscular guy was in there, but he left soon after. Another muscled guy with a blond beard came in and sat opposite me. We exchanged a look, and I said "Hey." I got the sense he wanted to connect so I stayed open, kept my eyes open without looking at him. I wasn't going to search my mind for something to say, but I wanted to stay open in case there was some sort of movement to connect. It occurred to me that he was probably a fire fighter, as those guys hang out at the pool sometimes. I looked through the glass to see if there were other muscled and tattooed guys out there, and saw a few, so I asked him if he was a fire fighter. He said he was. I joked that I had guessed because of all the "manly men" around, since usually there are only kids and old people at the pool.

(Meta-narrative: like SWEDA, where everyone is a wounded child, with a constructed identity that is like a decrepit old fart. The manly man ~ the solar upright aspect ~ is only now beginning to show itself.)

Since I had heard there were about 350 fires raging in BC recently, I commented that he must be keeping busy. He said that the work came and went. I asked if he fought forest fires or buildings (forest), and whether you could only do one or the other, not both (yes, the training is entirely different).

I commented that, presumably, forest fires couldn't be fought, so much as contained. He said that was how it was.

He talked about fighting forest fires and how it's done: soaking the ground so the fire stays within certain confines, it can then be directed towards another fire in the area. Since the two fires consume everything in their path, when they meet, there is nowhere for them to go (everything behind them has burned up), so they merge into one another and settle down (I forget the phrase he used), eventually dying out. I said it was like the two fires canceled each other out.

He talked about the training they have to do, and how a lot of the work entails not fighting fires but cutting down the burned trees left in the wake of the fire. These can be as dangerous as the fire. They fall silently and fire fighters are often getting clobbered, even killed, by them. I said that the burned trees were like the "back-up" for the fire; he nodded and said, "If the fire doesn't get you, the trees might."

I said something about the fire not being an enemy.

I made a comment about how it must be invigorating work, he said that it was but that the guys got antsy when there wasn't anything to do; I almost asked, or joked, about setting fires to have something to fight, but I refrained as it might come out wrong. (Later on this guy Josh, not a firefighter, told me ~ and not because I asked, he brought it up by himself ~ that this does happen.) Instead, I asked what they do in order not to get antsy. He said they have to do a lot of studying, because part of the job entails learning how to measure environmental factors, such as ground humidity, wind, and such, to determine how dangerous the fire is. He talked about fires on hills being especially dangerous, because they proceed slowly at first, so that the ground ahead gets dried out by the heat, and then they suddenly start racing, because the land is so dry.

I saw an opening for a more psychological angle, and asked him if he found himself noticing details like this even when he wasn't working. He said that he did, his training became second nature, so he was constantly noticing these things even if there was no fires about.

Two more fire guys came in at that point, a heavy white guy and a wiry Native with a goatee.

I asked the first guy if he found that his awareness was enhanced overall by his work. He said it was, and used the example of being in a forest, hearing a twig snap and immediately becoming alert to danger. I made a comment about how, even if it wasn't a fire, it might be a bear. He said something about falling trees, and I added that it was like guys who've been in war.

He said, "Yeah you get jumpy." I said that it was better to be too jumpy than not enough, which he agreed with.

I said that presumably the key was to respond rather than react, from fear, because if you heard a snap and just bolted, you could just as easily run into a falling tree as away from it. He nodded and said, "React, and then respond." I was pleased by this because I'd thought maybe I was getting too esoteric for him. Apparently I was speaking his language ~ or the language of his training at least.

(Meta-narrative: this reflects exactly when Gabe and I were talking about how being in the crucible of SWEDA provides training that we can then take into ordinary life, our "senses" now enhanced by the experience in the field.)

That was pretty much it for the conversation. The guy got up to leave and I made a crack about doesn't he get enough heat at work, as a way to smooth my own exit. He said, "Training," and I followed him out the sauna.

Back in the pool for more laps. Some more fire-fighters were jumping off the diving board. At one point, I noticed that the little Native kid (pretty sure it was the same one who touched my hand) was lining up with them to jump also.

I swam 20 more laps then went to the hot tub, where I ran into Josh, who talked about Tai Chi (his wife gives a class nearby), and who told me the thing about fire-fighters sometimes starting fires.

What's On the SWEDA Menu?

2010-07-30T08:41:00.001-07:00

Alright, it’s time to make ye olde sales pitch once more.

But first, some background information that you’ve all been waiting for.

SWEDA is currently an all-male private forum, consisting of two groups. The first group is the group to which I belong, of which none of the original members (not even my Wife) are still part. There are four other men in this group.

This group was once made up of the original Argonauts: Cary, Steve W., Ezra, Keith Z., Julian, and myself, as well as Nick (Ascension) and Alginojr, who (along with Keith, and two women, who left early on, though eventually came back) were at SWEDA in the very early, pre-ARGO days, before the group was named as Thessaly. Thessaly also included my Wife, Lucinda, and the mysterious Wangwei.

Cary, Julian, and Steve left this group at different times for different reasons. Ezra “graduated” when he grokked that the letting go process of SWEDA inevitably culminated in letting go of his attachments to SWEDA itself. Because of this, Ezra became the first (imaginary) “graduate.”

There are no SWEDA “graduates,” per se, because it's not a school system and there’s no actual “end” to the deconstruction process. Well, there is; but you won’t be there to receive your diploma.

A few months back, another group formed, Lemnos, which went through a similarly rocky development, until a time when what was left of Lemnos was taken into Thessaly. This coincided with a new group forming (recently named Doliones), made up of the successful Try-Outs at Anomalies Anonymous (AA), the “no-charge” area of the (still private) forum. (The AA is no longer operational.)

Still following me so far?

The remaining members of Lemnos, having kept up the SWEDA grind for several months, were then “upgraded” into Thessaly, expanding the ranks considerably. Soon after this, four of the core members of Thessaly left, reducing the ranks once again. Bizarrely, each time this happened, new arrivals also showed up at the exact time: men go out, men come in. This was timed not only to the day, but sometimes to the hour.

This indicates that SWEDA functions as a living consciousness system. As with an organism, whenever cells “die,” they are immediately replaced.

Like all organisms, it wishes to grow.

For the past year, the size of SWEDA has remained fairly constant, varying between perhaps a minimum of five and a maximum of 17 members, but keeping to an consistent average of about 10 or 12.

Its current size (following the most recent shift, pertaining to a woman’s group which lasted all of two weeks, and which I talk about on today's Vagabond Blues podcast) is ten: five inside Thessaly, and six in the new group. There is one member who belongs to both groups, so in this case, five plus six = ten.

Members of Thessaly can read and interact with the threads of the second group, Doliones, but not vice versa. The nominal leader of the second group has access to Thessaly. This is about to change, however, as I intend to allow the more long-standing members of Doliones read-only access to Thessaly. Today, in fact.

Having summed all that up, hopefully I have satisfied your curiosity enough to make you more curious than before.

As posted below, I recently decided to focus more on voice consultations, and less on text. These Skyped consultations usually run a little over an hour in length, and are recorded for the group to listen to.
With the co-operation of the group, we will be making some of these consultations public in the near future, depending on both parties’ agreements, and with the input of other group members as to which talks will make the best podcasts. This way, SWEDA can begin to extend into the public realm and become more of an open project. I began motion this with Warty Theorems, but those podcasts were done as podcasts. This will be private consultations that are then aired, if and when it’s agreed to do so. (Possibly with some editing.)

Now to brass tacks.

Signing up for SWEDA will cost you $100 for the first month. This price includes two talks with myself, that's Aeolus (consults which may or may not become podcasts), and a month of interaction at the forum with the other group members. There is no obligation to stay past the first month.

Because of this, you will not belong to either of the groups, but be in a sort of trial space where the other two groups can read and respond to your posts, even though you can’t see anything going on in their space. (A space filled up with months of soul-searching and personal disclosures.) Whether you are part of a small group of first-timers or not will depend on how many others sign up during a given month. If you choose to sign up and don't want to be doing it alone, then you can simply wait until a small group is assembled, however long that takes.

So for those who want to find out what really goes on inside the mysterious labyrinth of unbecoming that is the Stormy Weather Existential Detective Agency, you can do so now, for the cost of five trips to the grocery store, half a dozen trips to the movies, ten bottles of beer, 20 packs of smokes, or half an hour with a medium-rate hooker.

For more of what SWEDA entails, see here.

Sign up here.

The Dis-Enmeshment Chamber

2010-07-15T17:46:00.000-07:00

"Enmeshment refers to an extreme form of proximity and intensity in family interactions...In a highly enmeshed, over-involved family, changes within one family member or in the relationship between two family members reverberate throughout the system... On an individual level, interpersonal differentiation in an enmeshed system is poor...in enmeshed families the individual gets lost in the system. The boundaries that define individual autonomy are so weak that functioning in individually differentiated ways is radically handicapped.

"We're enmeshed when we use an individual for our identity, sense of value, worth, well-being, safety, purpose, and security. Instead of two people present, we become one identity. More simply, enmeshment is present when our sense of wholeness comes from another person.

We hear enmeshment phrases everyday such as, "I'd die without you," "You're my everything," "Without you, I'm nothing," "I need you," or "You make me whole." Many of us find our identity and self-worth by becoming the mate, parent, or friend of a successful and/or prestigious individual, or we find the need to fix and caretake individuals to give us a sense of purpose.

Enmeshment doesn't allow for individuality, wholeness, personal empowerment, healthy relationships with ourselves or others, and, most importantly, a relationship with our Higher Power."

Someone at SWEDA recently complained that they couldn’t see the difference between friendship and enmeshment.

I replied that there really wasn't a difference, not in our present culture.

Here’s why.

Our patterned wants and needs are laid down in those first few years of life. We carry them with us wherever we go. In every single interaction, in every relationship, we are unconsciously driven to seek what we didn't get in childhood, or to help alleviate the pain of not getting it, and we will use the other person in any way we can. Ordinary friendship, then, is always based on a secret agreement to service the wants and needs of the other person, in return for the same treatment: "You ease my pain, I'll ease yours."

The problem is that pain relief never addresses the source of the pain itself, any more than alcohol heals emotional trauma: it just blocks it out of awareness. And since the source of the pain is buried deep in the past, all our attempts to get what we want from friendship and love relationships in the present invariably fail. Because no matter how much the other person gives us what we want, it won't heal that wound. We are the only ones who can do that.

SWEDA potentially allows for real friendship, or true alliance, to bloom, because it provides a space within which everyone is continuously looking out for their patterns of enmeshment and everyone else's, and in which no secret agreement stays secret for long.

Learning how not to enmesh takes years, however. We've spent most of our lives believing that enmeshment is the normal way of things, that it is what real friendship is made of. So to have a space in which all our interactions are clearly separate from our other relationships allows us to become more and more aware of the difference between true friendship and enmeshment. Ideally, what we learn daily in SWEDA, we can take into our "real-world" relationships, just as we bring those experiences back into SWEDA to look for patterns and distortions. So the two realms inform one another ~ but do not overlap.

For any of us to confuse what we are doing at SWEDA with ordinary friendship, or to pursue ordinary relationships with sweda folk outside the group, is going to blur that distinction, and hence undermine the whole purpose of being at SWEDA.

Four of the men closest to me have left the group in the last month or so, and so I have been becoming increasingly aware of my own enmeshment at SWEDA.

While undergoing the dis-enmeshment process, as I am, the tendency is to try and enmesh again, just as a baby grabs for the mother’s breast when it is being taken away. The challenge is to inhibit that fear-pain reaction, and just stay in the feelings.

The predominant feeling is one of being alienated.

I am beginning to see how enmeshment is a reaction against alienation.

Alienation is the result of the constructed identity, which keeps us as awareness from connecting to and experiencing our being, or from being in our knowing.

So then we are driven by the wants and needs of the constructed identity, which is all about likes and dislikes, securing the one and keeping at bay the other. This is the basis of enmeshment: relationships based on wants and needs.

When we are disconnected, we are constantly looking for a surrogate sense of connection and belonging, a surrogate womb. The way we create that surrogate womb is by enmeshing with others. Then it is like we have these threads ~ literally energetic threads of our being ~ that are constantly supporting us, when in actual fact they are entangling us, imprisoning us. But for our person it is safe, comfortable, because it feels like we are not alone.

We allow people to put their threads, their psychic matter, into us, and we do the same to them, because this is a surrogate for a real connection, for real union, community, communion, things which the constructed identity cannot allow for, ever.

As I begin to dis-enmesh, it’s like coming out of the womb, and feeling more and more separate and alone. It’s a terrible feeling.

This is the great paradox of SWEDA. It was created as a ritual space to dis-enmesh within, but my person was also looking for a way to feel at home and connected. So I tricked myself: I was unconsciously creating this space where I thought I could get what I wanted, but now it’s come into form, I see that I can't, because to go after what I want would be to compromise the space, to make it smaller and smaller, until everybody left and there was nothing but me, alone with my enmeshment.

It’s been a year since SWEDA started and we have recently completed a cycle. I know what it is now, and I know what it is that I am doing. It’s a business, a job, a project that has a very specific purpose. That purpose is dis-enmeshing. It's a dis-enmeshment chamber.

At SWEDA, I've been getting to fine-tune my awareness of exactly how I enmesh with the people in the group, by liking or disliking them, and by getting them to like or dislike me. There’s a feeling of security and power for my person that comes from having the power to make people like me or dislike me.

I enjoy everything I do at SWEDA, but I particularly enjoy making people feel good about themselves, because then I know they are going to like me more. The flip side of this, is that I also enjoy, in a darker way, pointing out people’s dishonesty and making them uncomfortable, knowing they are going to dislike that, and even dislike me. Presumably, this has to do with having control over the way people perceive me, and although this is necessary for what I do, the danger of this control is that my person can use it to get what it wants. As soon as I am trying to get a little something for myself, enmeshment begins.

This is natural and inevitable, however. There’s no way to combat enmeshment without seeing the process of enmeshment for what it is. This means seeing it happening in the present, not just finding evidence of it having happened in the past. We are at SWEDA to enmesh, as well as to dis-enmesh, at least to a degree. It would be unrealistic to think there wouldn’t be any enmeshment at all, because our persons are invested in being liked, and as such, that is all they really know how to do.

So then SWEDA isn’t about trying to kick bad habits, but just to own up to them and really see them for what they are, and just how pervasive they are in our lives. That seeing gradually allows a new awareness to dawn, because the part of us that sees our compulsive behavior as what it is, has a separate existence to the part that is being driven to act in these ways.

Put more simply: only when we become aware of the ways in which we are acting unconsciously, can we begin to act with consciousness.

The goal of SWEDA is to recognize ourselves as we are: spheres of consciousness-being, on our way to individuated existence, free from enmeshment ~ stars. A cool, clean, true existence. Paradoxically, in this solar isolation and in complete freedom from any personal interest in others, we are free to fuse into a collective experience, bound together by perfect indifference and deepest affection. And so what seems like isolation to the person, is the ultimate togetherness for our beings.

For free one-week SWEDA Try-Out, fill out the form here.

JK & JDR, The Movie

2010-07-06T12:42:00.000-07:00

My talk with JDR is now available as a download at his site, here.