One of the most amazing features of American life and "values" is the co-opting of the "Hard Core Religious"--I see this as "different" than the "Religious Right"--to support agendas that are so totally "un-Christian".
The rich man and the camel and the eye of the needle--remember THAT story, where did it go? We are bombarded with Bible verses supporting all this bull shit governmental policy but never does it dawn on any one that Christian values are at its core love, sharing, charity and goodness--not corporatism and greed and killing in "God's name".
The deeply religious too easily get sucked in to the corporation "Religion USA" and that makes it difficult sometimes to dialogue with them regarding how wrong the war in Iraq really is; WE are the devil now.
Many good people get caught up in the big-time PR campaigns of the Church and don't take it upon themselves to really question "the message".
Nietzsche's concept of "will to power" is often invoked as indicative of the "way things are". On one level, I can certainly understand that; a very strong case can be made that the "will to power" is a prevalent part of all of history. However, the fallacy, to me, is that because this instinct is there, that it is right.
I don't believe it is. I believe ALL wars are bad, violence is bad, and that goodness of spirit should over-ride the bullshit that we see happening around us now.
Great societies, great advances, all working towards destruction and death and breaking apart the world they created. A simpler friendlier BETTER world is one to work towards: less things more compassion, less will, more sweetness.
Nothing wrong with wanting a sane world without war--that doesn't make me weak it makes me stronger. Longer life better life peace to all. If no one starts a war there is no need to defend--that is the logic I am invoking.
If we, somehow, can collectively rise above this as a planetary unit then wars would not be necessary and we could live in some form of harmony with one another.
I realize there have always been attackers and always a need to defend. I understand that; I know history very well.
HOWEVER, there is still no GOOD reason to go to war and the optimal position is to rise above this. Peace should be the goal.
Sometimes that is not possible and that is sad. But it SHOULD be possible and I don't think it out and out impossible to attain.
Different mindset, that would be needed first--an understanding, not a vague conceptual understanding but a firm I KNOW understanding of the spiritual principles underscoring all life; with that we can rise above war and violence and greed.
To touch the spirit--that will change your thinking. I have been guilty too long of wanting women and money and things and I regret that now. I knew better all along but allowed myself to be seduced into short-term things.
The path of the spirit is the true WAY. Peace, love, God. All that IS.
Thursday, March 22, 2007
Wednesday, March 21, 2007
Beth Sover: Galaxy Girl
Beth Stover is an artist whose work integrates her childhood sense of wonder with a refined sense of spirituality. In her work, Beth explores themes of spiritual longing and through her depiction of her Galaxy Girls series she expands upon that spiritual vision with an exploration of cosmic themes, such as astrology and universal consciousness.
A successful graphic designer and illustrator for the past twenty years, Beth continues to expand her creative vision through her work. A loving mother, she incorporates the lessons learned through motherhood with memories of her own childhood as a Kansas farm girl, a childhood filled with a longing for union and knowledge of the greater world at large.
But one lesson motherhood provided her is one that most people would choose not to learn. Beth's second child died in utero after a perfect pregnancy. A beautiful perfectly formed and fully developed child, Lehna Jordann Brewer was brought into the world stillborn.
Grief is a transformative experience. After Lehna's death, Beth began working through her sense of loss with the tools at hand, in her case, canvas and brush. She then suddenly became conscious of butterflies all around her and through a series of synchronicities she began to equate the beauty and rebirth of this fabulous creature with her darling lost child.
Always drawn to the bright colors and interaction of music, color, and movement she observed as a child at the circus, Beth transforms that vision while using that same color palette in her work today. Calliopes, dancing bears, clowns and those daring acrobats of the flying trapeze inspire her. She strives to bring forth that sense of beauty and innocence, in conjunction with her longing for spiritual transcendence, through her use of color and her depiction of movement and form.
Through her many travels to Europe and throughout the United States, as well as her continual exploration of the world within, she is well equipped to comment on the alchemical dictum as above, so below. Inspired also by her love of techno and world music, she translates the rhythm she feels into a fully realized vision of a greater more beautiful world, a world where spirit and movement and cosmic consciousness merge. It is through her art that she lives most fully and through her life that she most fully expresses her vision and her art.
A successful graphic designer and illustrator for the past twenty years, Beth continues to expand her creative vision through her work. A loving mother, she incorporates the lessons learned through motherhood with memories of her own childhood as a Kansas farm girl, a childhood filled with a longing for union and knowledge of the greater world at large.
But one lesson motherhood provided her is one that most people would choose not to learn. Beth's second child died in utero after a perfect pregnancy. A beautiful perfectly formed and fully developed child, Lehna Jordann Brewer was brought into the world stillborn.
Grief is a transformative experience. After Lehna's death, Beth began working through her sense of loss with the tools at hand, in her case, canvas and brush. She then suddenly became conscious of butterflies all around her and through a series of synchronicities she began to equate the beauty and rebirth of this fabulous creature with her darling lost child.
Always drawn to the bright colors and interaction of music, color, and movement she observed as a child at the circus, Beth transforms that vision while using that same color palette in her work today. Calliopes, dancing bears, clowns and those daring acrobats of the flying trapeze inspire her. She strives to bring forth that sense of beauty and innocence, in conjunction with her longing for spiritual transcendence, through her use of color and her depiction of movement and form.
Through her many travels to Europe and throughout the United States, as well as her continual exploration of the world within, she is well equipped to comment on the alchemical dictum as above, so below. Inspired also by her love of techno and world music, she translates the rhythm she feels into a fully realized vision of a greater more beautiful world, a world where spirit and movement and cosmic consciousness merge. It is through her art that she lives most fully and through her life that she most fully expresses her vision and her art.
Tuesday, March 20, 2007
Conspiracies, Enron, 9/11: What the ?
I, LITERALLY, wrote the Disaster Recovery Plan for Enron. When Enron went to an outsourcing arrangement with CSC (May, 1999), I was part of the executive transition team and as part of my job I analyzed all of their billing, metering, customer service, accounting, etc departments and I knew (back when Jeff Skilling was always being called a genius and Enron was the most innovative company in the world--remember those days, well I was there) and also told my boss--(the 2nd in command of CSC Energy Services)--that Enron was going to have PROBLEMS soon.
I didn't know they would have the problems they had or the degree of shit they would face but I knew it was a house of cards then (in 1999). Also, I came to California working for another company (early 2001) and was here during those rolling blackouts and I knew in my heart with 100% certainty it was because of "spot deals" by Enron and the way they transported energy.
It doesn't strain the laws of probability or credulity to say that energy companies had a large hand in determining policy early in the Bush-Cheney presidency or that the dauphin King George II was the front person for the imperial regent, Sir Dick and his highness Lord Rumstud. Iraq is likely a result of a land-grab oil grab plan and Walt Disney could have ruled Iraq and they would have invaded any way because Mickey and Donald probably would have WMD's in their over-sized shoes.
Is 9-11 an inside job? Certainly, again, based on the evidence, not that far-fetched an idea. How many billion dollar fighter jets do we have in the US? If we flew a baby Cessna off-course towards Manhattan or downtown DC do you think we could just float along untouched? Or how is it possible that these mammothly TALL buildings just collapsed, imploded, without falling on all the other mammothly tall buildings in that part of New York. I have been there and worked there and let me tell you there is not a lot of room for a skyscraper to "fall over" without hitting SOMETHING unless it was "pulled" and went straight down--which means explosives would probably need to be located at strategic points throughout the building--more than just two planes. Plus there was a building that wasn't even hit that went "poof" and fell down in seconds besides the Twin Towers.
There are tons of things on the web showing the scientific reasons why the Twin Towers could not have just fallen over as they did UNLESS they were scheduled for demolition. Check out myspace for TONS of links to some stuff that will fry your mind and make you want to take to the streets.
Getting back to Enron, I believe it is very possible, if not highly likely, that there was some influence by Enron to artificially suggest shortages in hopes of inflating their fees in the blackouts of 2001. I don't know that but that was certainly what I believed at the time.
The only possible links between 9/11 and Enron would stem from a bias in thinking within certain business leaders whose ultimate purpose MAY have been to create a political climate in which plans to invade Iraq (as an adjunct to basic strategic business initiatives) would be "acceptable" to the public at large.
I am not saying ENRON is behind 9/11 or anything like that. NOT AT ALL.
But, the business cabal--what is often called the New World Order--driving policy (because policy is certainly driven by business; sometimes I think we as common people are not even allowed on the bus) TOWARDS an artificial manufacturing of a political climate in which the invasion of Iraq could be seen as just and necessary is very possible, if not down
It is, again my opinion, a very strong likelihood that ALL policy in the US is now ultimately corporate policy at some level.
If this were true (and of course we don't know if it is or not but--in my opinion--it is certainly not out of hand impossible) then it is possible that 9/11 could have been either 1) planned or 2) simply recognized as convenient and acted upon with lightening speed for doctrinal guidelines already developed.
The manner in which these buildings fell over is, to me, VERY suspicious.
I think we have to really consider the possibility that business leaders, specifically those with high level ties to the energy business, acting in such a way as to promote self-interests that would fly in the face of what most Americans would consider fair play is pretty likely and it is not a big leap (again my opinion) to think that Iraq and 9/11 were orchestrated in some way OTHER than what we have been lead to believe.
The truth WILL set you free.
Psychic Development 101
When I was 24, I took a class on Past Life Regressions and that night I went home and regressed myself and within a couple of months I was pretty much flying along. The regression class showed me a way in which I could slow myself down and could also more easily focus on sorting out the images I saw in my head.
I was lucky enough to meet Sanaya Roman at a cocktail party in Mill Valley and studied a bit with her and she showed me some techniques for opening up the "third eye" that I have used (and taught) ever since. I, literally, meditated for 4-5 hours a day 4-5 days a week for about 4 years and as you can imagine that "changed" me. In the beginning too I was extremely psychokinetic--shit moved, man, I was like a baby poltergeist on wheels--but after a few months of things being INTENSE all that slowed down to a trickle.
I believe that all psychics need to learn techniques to help them focus no matter how naturally gifted they may be.
The first thing you do when you try to "teach" psychic development is work with imagery techniques to control the body. Anything that you do, if you stay calm you will do it better. Right? So when I was a basketball player if I could stay calm I would play better and part of my ability to stay calm was to KEEP A PICTURE IN MY HEAD that I was a good player and try not to stress about things.
OK, so far so good. With visualization techniques, in essence what you are trying to do is "trick" the body in to conforming to what you want so that the body will get out of your way and you can then see more easily. Think of clairvoyance as if you are a passenger on a train. The train is going really fast and there is stuff flying by out the window. Maybe the window is dirty and grimy and hard to see through.
The first thing you need to do is slow down your train. The second thing you need to do is clear your window, get a little mental windex and THEN you have a better shot because images fly by--what you want is to hold on to the image longer so you can more easily make sense of it.
One technique involves "pushing light" out of your third eye, the pineal gland, the area just above your nose in the middle of your forehead.
First, deep cleansing breath, sitting (I find I like laying down but do much better sitting up) straight imagine sending energy out the
Next imagine a rod of light working through your body. Feel it getting hotter. Keep picturing this rod and light expanding and warming the body while maintaining your connection to both the ground and the heavens.
Now feel yourself protected. Picture a bubble around yourself. Imagine a warm glowing light glowing in your stomach. The light and color expands to fill your body and the protective bubble around you.
Be strong. FEEL yourself getting strong, powerful, CONNECTED. KNOW that you ARE connected. Allow that feeling to grow within your body. When you are ready then PUSH light out your forehead, strain if you have to.
Push the light out through your forehead. This is one way to open your third eye.
Another technique to help develop psychic awareness is by using past life regressions. Most regressions involve some form of "image quest"--you are directed to climb a mountain and then look in a mirror or you're directed to go look for your guide or any of a number of different scenarios.
Another important "tip" in developing "psychic ability" is to think of information as, literally, being on a grid, an info super-highway, that you can tap in to. This information grid, analagous to what Jung called the collective unconscious and what some psychics (including myself) believe is akin to David Bohm's theories of the implicate order in physics, is a vehicle for remote viewing and reading the akashic records.
I have done this for close to 30 years now and I believe that the mind is a powerful force that can be molded to a large extent to fit your will: "do what thou will",
Is it man’s “nature” to make war?
Is it man’s “nature” to make war? I may be in the minority but I don’t really believe it is. Human nature (if it is reflective of what we see in the animal world--and there is no way REALLY of saying if this is a valid comparison) would probably suggest that the bigger fish will attack the smaller one and the smaller one is best advised to fight back or swim fast.
BUT we don't know if this is “true” or not since the possibility exists that man's cognitive or spiritual base is so fundamentally different than a "lower animal” that observed behavior patterns in other animals are, as a result, just not applicable to humans. Of course, I don't KNOW the answer to this--nor does anyone else, it is all speculation.
However, if there is no aggressor then no counter-punch is needed so if we can stop ourselves from beginning a war then we won't have to fight. It is that simple. That is the peaceful, and I think superior, position. Really? Why kill each other IF you can somehow work it out?
Maybe it can't be done but shouldn't we try a little harder than we do to avoid it. And--By seeing wars as noble or justified, it only makes their likelihood increase.
I think most large-scale wars ultimately are undertaken due to a profit motive and munitions suppliers and defense contractors--like the Krupps or Basil Zaharoff or others--often times pull the strings behind the scenes to maneuver countries in to full-scale conflicts so that they can make a profit. I don't think this position can be totally discounted nor do I think this is late breaking news, either. Wouldn't it be a better place if we could find diplomatic means of settling things--a compromise--as opposed to might makes right the biggest baddest dude wins.
I don't think war is inevitable nor do I think it justified. So? Why do we typically go to war?
Because somebody has something we want and they won't let us have it.
Most wars are based on a simple problem (at its core) no matter how much complexity lies atop the core issue and the core issue is this:
"You won't do what I want so I am going to kick your ass". That is war.
For example, in World War II, yes I believe the US was justified in responding as they did to Germany but this WAR was NOT JUSTIFIED at all because GERMANY was not justified and THEY are the ones, along with Japan in the Far East and Italy in North Africa, who were the primary agents starting WWII.
War was not justified then nor is it now. I need oil, Iraq won't give me a deal--fuck 'em I want it anyway. The Poles won't willingly give me 80% of their farmland and live in high rise ghettos in Cracow--fuck 'em I want it.
I am not getting enough return on my investment--this president is anti-business, get rid of him. We need water, you have a well I want it fuck you I will take it . . .
On and on and on--somebody has something I want they won't give it to me for the price I am willing to pay I get angry fuck you I declare war.
That is war . . .
I believe as my good friend Sven says as well: creative solutions and love. That is the way. Build, do not destroy. Peace first. Aggression should be seen as a last, a very last resort. Make love, not . . .
Suicide in G Minor (fiction)
In the cheating hour, when the stains from some secret sin creep like dead soldiers along the pale blue walls, he sits, hands pressed hard against cheek and head, and thinks, of her. He thinks of her face, perfect, carved from the wheel of a potter's son, or the strong slow curve of her cheek, the pout and sweet breath of her lips and eyes, the sinewy play of light and dark in her breasts and legs. He thinks of her, too, in love, gently arching, the slow then sudden breath quicker then quicker arching up and then the delicate whoosh of her voice, her hips and legs dropping slowly into place and when it is done she lies, still, dancing silently to the beating of wet wings on a red willow. The nights the days the perfect breath and skin and beat of her heart. The perfect beat of her heart.
He is a sad man.
Memories like a scarecrow's whisper, he sits in the dark, counting stolen angels on a slippery pin. First a finger, then two, then a finger and thumb, gently stroking caressing her lips and thigh, smooth skin like silk through a Chinaman's finger, he bends down to kiss the sweet dark hairs of her sex. He touches her sex he is her sex she is nothing but sex. Nothing but sex. He dances now, alone. Stolen angels on the head of a slippery pin.
In the morning when the night has dissolved into faded tomboys and blue trombones he will wake and look at the warm day too soon twisted into frozen night. He thinks, hard, too, about the days past, the days of her.
Picture it. A man—tall but not too tall, with broad sloping shoulders, narrow cowpoke hips and the crooked swagger of a man chasing a mule. He is a pack rat, a seller of dreams, a snake-oil desperado with a leather case and a platinum tongue, quick-witted but quick to take offense, famous as a cool head but privately white hot.
He is a lover a fool a spinner of tales tall and deep. He is troubled, too, damaged long past unable to be too talented not to be good too fractured not to discard all that he gets too blessed to lose for long too twisted not to wish, to lose.
He is a sad man.
He lands in shit and smells like roses. Again and again. His glass is always half full yet he still pours wine onto barren ground then prays for light where light cannot truly be found. He is a golden child a fair-haired boy.
He is an angel.
Yet demons are his friends. He is nothing, if not unique.
He thinks, always, of her. He is thinking now.
Of her.
Demons are his friends. He is a golden child. The glass is always . . .
For those in the know this is a confessional a trip down memory lane a suicide note for pregnant ears and aficionados of the night. He is acquainted with the night. He lives for the night. The right night.
But not in the way one might think. He is neither dark nor devious nor cool. He does not wear nor worship a dark or twisted cross, does not wring the necks of tiny birds nor wish ill of elderly women or babies with inappropriate birth marks or mothers with multiple tattoos. He is a lover of art, of birth of Jesus and Gods one or many-sided. He is a student too he knows many things he has read many, many things.
Experienced—
many
things . . .
He is an angel yet demons are his friends. He has seen angels dance devils spit and walk upright in to the bold light of a perfect day. He has seen things many things that live deep in the night. He wants to share his gift the gift of the night. This is a gift his gift—to you.
The gift
of
the
night.
The gift
of
death . . .
The gift of his death
for you
he is dying
for
you
he thinks
only
of you
your arms and legs
are perfect
he remembers he thinks
of nothing
but
you he is nothing
if not
unique
he thinks
of nothing but
you this
IS
his
gift
--to you
the gift of memory, memory like the stolen whisper on a scarecrow's chilled lips, the stain of a thousand moon beams dragged screaming into the sun, the swollen thighs of one freshly born.
For those in the know this is a confessional
a note
a ring-side ticket to death
my
death
a gift
to
you
this is my gift
to
you
my words my death my story the story of my life
THIS IS THE STORY OF MY LIFE
Where to begin? I was born on a cold snowy day in Ohio the only son of parents proud and true. No.
Try again.
I was an only child blonde and beautiful with a bag full of toys and marbles and puppy dog tails and all was well and then I fell off the world and the world grew dark and my hair turned brown like shit and I lost my soul and . . .
No that is not the story, either.
Although there are ELEMENTS of truth in all the words they are after all only words; words chosen as much to hide as to reveal for that as you say is his nature to hide to hide behind a string of words so let us start again.
He was a fat child.
Ah, that perhaps is truly a part of the story. Already he is hiding behind the impersonal third person pronoun "he". He is no longer willing to claim this part of his story as his own. There is pain in his words. Can you feel it? He is as he says to you in pain. Perhaps this part of the story may ring with some small semblance of TRUTH.
He was a fat child. Maybe you can feel some of the pain in what he is saying, feel the hurt in his use of these particular words: "a fat child".
He was a fat child.
I am only able to say just so much. Part of it is hidden part of it I wish to hide part of the hidden is hidden by choice but most is simply unknown. For all my searching my desperate searching to know myself to know the "truth" about who I REALLY am the greatest part of me is a mystery to me still.
But this part I know: he was a fat child.
It is/was not a happy thing to be fat to be a fat . . .
child.
But surely that can't be all of it. He is a handsome some might say extraordinarily handsome man what difference can that make now?
All demons leave their mark. Can you see it?
He was a fat child. He would sell his soul to be thin. He was a fat child.
He would sell his soul to be thin.
He would sell his soul.
Not for a moment though did he play Faust and offer his immortal coil to Lucifer to shed a pound or three. He is dramatic some might say (and have said, you have said so yourself) overly dramatic. He is making up a story. Yes he was a fat child but the part about the Devil and selling his soul well that is all fluff all make believe. He is making up a story perhaps to prove a point.
Perhaps, though, he is trying to pull some sleight of hand. To pull the wool over one's eyes.
He is, after all, a magician with words. Words are his tools his Ace in the hole.
They may prove to be his downfall, too, though, don't you think? He is drunk with words he is in love
with
words in love
with
HIS
words. He is a magician with words.
Can you believe anything he says?
Yes, because he was a fat child and being a fat child has left a mark and even though it is invisible to the naked eye he still wears it like a thorn and he is sharing that scar with you so that you will know him better. He is weaving a story partly true partly not true but a story none the less designed to REVEAL TO YOU the story of who he is.
One of my favorite games as a little boy was marbles. You don't see marbles so much anymore not like you did back then. I remember having two big coffee tins full of all different kinds of marbles, big cobbs, "shooters", and all sorts of assorted colors and patterns of colors. I would sit in the front yard on Van Buren Drive and draw out a circle with a stick and shoot marbles for what must have been an hour or more all by myself. Sometimes the marbles would roll down the slope of a hill in the front yard but they never got very far.
When I was a little boy I used to have lots of guns to play with, too. I remember having my detective pistol and a wad of play money I kept in my desk drawer. Once my mother bought me a beautiful new bedroom suite with big brown bookcases that wrapped all the way around my room. I loved that room but mom sent it all back and I left my pistol and the money in the drawer even though my mother warned me not to leave anything I didn't want to lose in the furniture. The workmen heard it rattling and gave it back to me but I was sad nevertheless.
Big brown furniture filled with books and toys. I had it for a few days when I was three or four—who remembers exactly how old they are when things happen as a child—but it was taken away from me by the workmen on the truck and so I was determined to never let it happen again.
Maybe this says something about me. About why I do things. I know that a lot of what I do, or what anyone does for that matter, says a lot about them sometimes big and loud other times subtle like a whisper or a secret shared only amongst friends but you never want those whispers to turn and run loose behind your back or in school or church or wherever. I'm rambling a little but I'm trying, honestly, to piece it all together, even now after all these years of wandering in the dark of the night, when the furniture all comes and goes but the torments never end.
I have thought about killing myself a lot over the years, a lot, but I'm afraid to die and besides I'm just so damn curious to know what's going to happen to everyone else. It's not like I'm nosey, which I'm really not, so much, but I'm just intellectually mad for knowledge so maybe that mania to know and collect and covet keeps me going when the times don't ring so true.
Hemingway wanted to live but he wanted so much, too, to check out which is what he finally did. I don't think I'll go that way. I don't want to. I want to die when I'm old with a couple of dozen books and my family by my side like Clifton Webb in those old movies from the fifties.
I read a lot and so I have a tendency to remember everything through the context of a book or a play. For example, just yesterday I read in a book by the German writer W. G. Sebald, Vertigo, about Henri Beyle (later to go by the nom de plume of Stendhal) and how he could never remember things clearly as they really were but, rather, through the lens of a painting he had seen years later. In other words, memory is a tricky fellow not always to be trusted, a coquette with red lips and grey blue gums, a bottle of glue found open in a crowded drawer. Memory lies, a fool's gold, in the frozen arms of a subjective truth.
One of my earliest memories is of the hospital when I was a little boy; I was in Cincinnati to get my tonsils yanked. There are two or three pictures that twist around my brain even now. One is of the hospital room itself. I remember the bed butting up against the wall on my right side with the door at the foot of the bed. Was this the way the room was laid out? Probably, but am I certain? Certainly not. Especially since one of the strongest and most compelling memories of my life not only may not have happened but, in looking back now, forty-eight years later, seems so unlikely as to beg the question of whether god or gods exist and to what extent they come out of their cocoons in Heaven if they do and come down to earth and play amongst us.
Who am I? This is a common enough question but yet it is the one driving force of our narrative. Who am I? Who is he, the narrator of this tale?
Who are any of us, really? Are we the sum of our experience? The stuff of our dreams? Why are we here on this twisted speck of rock three stones from the sun?
Why
are
we . . .
Here and not some other place? That is what he wants to know, what I want to know. Why here? Why not some place
. . . else?
Do you believe in reincarnation? In life, after death?
Well, it turns out that during the first regression we did I was some kind of king in Eighteenth Century Germany and as a result of my karmic heritage (and natural good looks) I got invited to a couple of parties in Mill Valley. The advantage of attending said parties was to allow me the opportunity to not get into the pants of some very very hot little New Age divorcees from Southern California since I was entirely too stupid to realize what was coming down and, therefore, would have the opportunity for the next thirty years to feel bad about it. However, it did afford me the opportunity between bites of tofu to hook up with one of the best psychics in the world—at a time when finding somebody like her was ultra-critical to my development (and maybe sanity, too, perhaps). At the time of the regression, though, I really didn't know shit about Eighteenth Century Germany or psychic development so when the crazy old wench in our class from Austria filled in the blanks as to just how accurate my little trip down (past life) memory lane really was—while taking the sideline opportunity to belittle the American educational system (quite justified it would seem judging on how little I knew, don't you think?)—it just made my cinematic inner journey all the more compelling.
After all, I have a kingly kind of persona. Maybe it was true. How else could I have seen the things I saw that night?
Of course, all of you of a somewhat philosophical bent are poking big whale-sized holes in my twenty-four year old logic but (at the time) it made perfect sense to me. I knew I had lived before. And I still believe it because I think it's true. However, the ways and means of justifying that belief (and what, really, is life if not an elaborate means to justify some half-baked idea or two?) have gone through a somewhat erratic evolution.
Like all stories, there has to be a beginning. Once upon a time—or some other variant of the once upon a time theme—that is how the story should begin.
Once upon a time, high above the city, in a manger filled with straw, the three wise men descended upon Jerusalem.
Sorry, wrong story. Let's try again.
Once upon a time, a little boy was born. He was chubby with long coal black hair and a dimpled chin and his mama and poppa loved him very much. He was an energetic lad with a quick mind and—
Sorry, AGAIN, this once upon a time shit can get kind of boring so I'll sum it up by saying that I was born in Ohio in 1955. I was an only child who grew up to become a tormented teen with a crazy mother and a KKK totin' factory workin' father. Since my family was from Appalachia (with the accents to prove it) there was a very distinct form of snobbism at work in my home town directed towards them and their kind; this was reserved by native Ohioans for those families who had fled Kentucky during the war to come up to Ohio and work in the factories. The point you are supposed to get from all this is that the trickle down effect of this snobbery rained down upon my psychically vulnerable little head and caused irreparable damage to the even development of my self-esteem and sense of self worth. The economics of 1960's America were such, though, that a factory worker with a good job (in my father's case General Motors) and the drive to succeed could make a very good living. My father was many things but idiot was not one of them. Out of place, yes. Politically incorrect, yes. But, idiot, no.
My mother, though, might qualify for a big Yellow Y on both the out of place and the idiot ticket; although her heart was (I think) in the right place her means of execution often was a tad twisted. Since my father was something of a poor man's money making machine we lived in the best area of town with all the bank presidents and executives from Kroger.
As a result, my childhood often had a kind of reverse Eddie Munster in Hell look and feel to it. Escaping to California and the attendant terrors (and joys) of the way deep subconscious mind was, therefore, a consummation devoutly to be wished. That night after I got back from San Francisco (the class was held in the attic of a house on 15th Avenue) and before settling in to bed in my Berkeley rooming house bedroom, I tried to recreate in my mind the steps I'd gone through during my earlier regressions.
I remembered that we had gone through a series of commands where we were supposed to imagine someone rubbing our feet and legs and upper body so as to relax ourselves. I had never done this before. Of course the visions really started after that and for many years they never stopped. But I don't want to see visions anymore or sing late night songs to the darkening stars while tribes of tiny little wet-haired angels fornicate on a crooked pin.
All I really want now is just to water my perfect green lawn on a sunny Sunday afternoon, curl up with a good book or a good ballgame, and let the moons roll past, one by one by one.
Of course the truth if such a term exists when it comes to self revelatory types of things is that I do see angels fornicating on the head of a pin and the songs I hear floating up beside me in the silky white night make that morning drive to work a little more difficult. Some days, though, when I feel like it, I can still see the stories of all the people around me trailing behind them like the long red train of a stolen wedding gown.
Every story is a sad story too even the happy people their stories are all so sad. So sad buried deep down in the worn blue folds of some long forgotten midnight slight or the bright sunny burst of fire from a demon sun all so sad.
And Death is a terrible thing.
Even if you want to die even if the wheel of karma may spin around a little bit higher the next time through still the thought of death for what really is death but a thought because once it comes then the thoughts are all that is left here vapor trailing behind you even then you must admit it is a terrible thing. It is a terrible thing to die. For beauty to die. Or love. Or the sweet heroic stories of a perfect history.
The heroes are all dead. Don't you think? Bones rotting worms singing in the lonely night. So on we go as best we can weaving consensual sunny day stories all masking a deep dripping secret pain too stony for the fertile ground of a midwestern Tuesday afternoon. To die to sleep.
No more will we love the night you say, say it out loud you do I know you do don't you?
You are worrying about me again; that's OK I've come lately to expect it. After all, the wisdom of death is a terrible secret to share for it is the secret I'm sharing. To die to sleep. No more will you sing no more will the sweet sudden breathes of a warm touch touch you touch you deep inside where the songs won't sing off key key to what secret door to what secret passageway we've all heard all heard but forgotten too soon forgotten and buried deep inside. It is death of which I sing.
I am the troubadour of death.
Come along with me you sinners and defilers of the sun come with me and raise a toast to the only god that really matters. The god with the key to turn
you
and
me
off
There I've said it. The god of which I sing of which I am asking you to join me in a chorus or three is the god of death.
Thanatos of thee I sing. Of thee
I
sing sing with me won't you all sing with me better yet take a journey with me walk with me and the god we all call Thanatos and walk through his secret chambers let his warm crooked smile crease ever so gently across your wet upper lip for too soon we will see him see him standing there in the sweet
in the sweet
by and by in the sweet by and by we will see him
standing
there
He is a sad man.
Memories like a scarecrow's whisper, he sits in the dark, counting stolen angels on a slippery pin. First a finger, then two, then a finger and thumb, gently stroking caressing her lips and thigh, smooth skin like silk through a Chinaman's finger, he bends down to kiss the sweet dark hairs of her sex. He touches her sex he is her sex she is nothing but sex. Nothing but sex. He dances now, alone. Stolen angels on the head of a slippery pin.
In the morning when the night has dissolved into faded tomboys and blue trombones he will wake and look at the warm day too soon twisted into frozen night. He thinks, hard, too, about the days past, the days of her.
Picture it. A man—tall but not too tall, with broad sloping shoulders, narrow cowpoke hips and the crooked swagger of a man chasing a mule. He is a pack rat, a seller of dreams, a snake-oil desperado with a leather case and a platinum tongue, quick-witted but quick to take offense, famous as a cool head but privately white hot.
He is a lover a fool a spinner of tales tall and deep. He is troubled, too, damaged long past unable to be too talented not to be good too fractured not to discard all that he gets too blessed to lose for long too twisted not to wish, to lose.
He is a sad man.
He lands in shit and smells like roses. Again and again. His glass is always half full yet he still pours wine onto barren ground then prays for light where light cannot truly be found. He is a golden child a fair-haired boy.
He is an angel.
Yet demons are his friends. He is nothing, if not unique.
He thinks, always, of her. He is thinking now.
Of her.
Demons are his friends. He is a golden child. The glass is always . . .
For those in the know this is a confessional a trip down memory lane a suicide note for pregnant ears and aficionados of the night. He is acquainted with the night. He lives for the night. The right night.
But not in the way one might think. He is neither dark nor devious nor cool. He does not wear nor worship a dark or twisted cross, does not wring the necks of tiny birds nor wish ill of elderly women or babies with inappropriate birth marks or mothers with multiple tattoos. He is a lover of art, of birth of Jesus and Gods one or many-sided. He is a student too he knows many things he has read many, many things.
Experienced—
many
things . . .
He is an angel yet demons are his friends. He has seen angels dance devils spit and walk upright in to the bold light of a perfect day. He has seen things many things that live deep in the night. He wants to share his gift the gift of the night. This is a gift his gift—to you.
The gift
of
the
night.
The gift
of
death . . .
The gift of his death
for you
he is dying
for
you
he thinks
only
of you
your arms and legs
are perfect
he remembers he thinks
of nothing
but
you he is nothing
if not
unique
he thinks
of nothing but
you this
IS
his
gift
--to you
the gift of memory, memory like the stolen whisper on a scarecrow's chilled lips, the stain of a thousand moon beams dragged screaming into the sun, the swollen thighs of one freshly born.
For those in the know this is a confessional
a note
a ring-side ticket to death
my
death
a gift
to
you
this is my gift
to
you
my words my death my story the story of my life
THIS IS THE STORY OF MY LIFE
Where to begin? I was born on a cold snowy day in Ohio the only son of parents proud and true. No.
Try again.
I was an only child blonde and beautiful with a bag full of toys and marbles and puppy dog tails and all was well and then I fell off the world and the world grew dark and my hair turned brown like shit and I lost my soul and . . .
No that is not the story, either.
Although there are ELEMENTS of truth in all the words they are after all only words; words chosen as much to hide as to reveal for that as you say is his nature to hide to hide behind a string of words so let us start again.
He was a fat child.
Ah, that perhaps is truly a part of the story. Already he is hiding behind the impersonal third person pronoun "he". He is no longer willing to claim this part of his story as his own. There is pain in his words. Can you feel it? He is as he says to you in pain. Perhaps this part of the story may ring with some small semblance of TRUTH.
He was a fat child. Maybe you can feel some of the pain in what he is saying, feel the hurt in his use of these particular words: "a fat child".
He was a fat child.
I am only able to say just so much. Part of it is hidden part of it I wish to hide part of the hidden is hidden by choice but most is simply unknown. For all my searching my desperate searching to know myself to know the "truth" about who I REALLY am the greatest part of me is a mystery to me still.
But this part I know: he was a fat child.
It is/was not a happy thing to be fat to be a fat . . .
child.
But surely that can't be all of it. He is a handsome some might say extraordinarily handsome man what difference can that make now?
All demons leave their mark. Can you see it?
He was a fat child. He would sell his soul to be thin. He was a fat child.
He would sell his soul to be thin.
He would sell his soul.
Not for a moment though did he play Faust and offer his immortal coil to Lucifer to shed a pound or three. He is dramatic some might say (and have said, you have said so yourself) overly dramatic. He is making up a story. Yes he was a fat child but the part about the Devil and selling his soul well that is all fluff all make believe. He is making up a story perhaps to prove a point.
Perhaps, though, he is trying to pull some sleight of hand. To pull the wool over one's eyes.
He is, after all, a magician with words. Words are his tools his Ace in the hole.
They may prove to be his downfall, too, though, don't you think? He is drunk with words he is in love
with
words in love
with
HIS
words. He is a magician with words.
Can you believe anything he says?
Yes, because he was a fat child and being a fat child has left a mark and even though it is invisible to the naked eye he still wears it like a thorn and he is sharing that scar with you so that you will know him better. He is weaving a story partly true partly not true but a story none the less designed to REVEAL TO YOU the story of who he is.
One of my favorite games as a little boy was marbles. You don't see marbles so much anymore not like you did back then. I remember having two big coffee tins full of all different kinds of marbles, big cobbs, "shooters", and all sorts of assorted colors and patterns of colors. I would sit in the front yard on Van Buren Drive and draw out a circle with a stick and shoot marbles for what must have been an hour or more all by myself. Sometimes the marbles would roll down the slope of a hill in the front yard but they never got very far.
When I was a little boy I used to have lots of guns to play with, too. I remember having my detective pistol and a wad of play money I kept in my desk drawer. Once my mother bought me a beautiful new bedroom suite with big brown bookcases that wrapped all the way around my room. I loved that room but mom sent it all back and I left my pistol and the money in the drawer even though my mother warned me not to leave anything I didn't want to lose in the furniture. The workmen heard it rattling and gave it back to me but I was sad nevertheless.
Big brown furniture filled with books and toys. I had it for a few days when I was three or four—who remembers exactly how old they are when things happen as a child—but it was taken away from me by the workmen on the truck and so I was determined to never let it happen again.
Maybe this says something about me. About why I do things. I know that a lot of what I do, or what anyone does for that matter, says a lot about them sometimes big and loud other times subtle like a whisper or a secret shared only amongst friends but you never want those whispers to turn and run loose behind your back or in school or church or wherever. I'm rambling a little but I'm trying, honestly, to piece it all together, even now after all these years of wandering in the dark of the night, when the furniture all comes and goes but the torments never end.
I have thought about killing myself a lot over the years, a lot, but I'm afraid to die and besides I'm just so damn curious to know what's going to happen to everyone else. It's not like I'm nosey, which I'm really not, so much, but I'm just intellectually mad for knowledge so maybe that mania to know and collect and covet keeps me going when the times don't ring so true.
Hemingway wanted to live but he wanted so much, too, to check out which is what he finally did. I don't think I'll go that way. I don't want to. I want to die when I'm old with a couple of dozen books and my family by my side like Clifton Webb in those old movies from the fifties.
I read a lot and so I have a tendency to remember everything through the context of a book or a play. For example, just yesterday I read in a book by the German writer W. G. Sebald, Vertigo, about Henri Beyle (later to go by the nom de plume of Stendhal) and how he could never remember things clearly as they really were but, rather, through the lens of a painting he had seen years later. In other words, memory is a tricky fellow not always to be trusted, a coquette with red lips and grey blue gums, a bottle of glue found open in a crowded drawer. Memory lies, a fool's gold, in the frozen arms of a subjective truth.
One of my earliest memories is of the hospital when I was a little boy; I was in Cincinnati to get my tonsils yanked. There are two or three pictures that twist around my brain even now. One is of the hospital room itself. I remember the bed butting up against the wall on my right side with the door at the foot of the bed. Was this the way the room was laid out? Probably, but am I certain? Certainly not. Especially since one of the strongest and most compelling memories of my life not only may not have happened but, in looking back now, forty-eight years later, seems so unlikely as to beg the question of whether god or gods exist and to what extent they come out of their cocoons in Heaven if they do and come down to earth and play amongst us.
Who am I? This is a common enough question but yet it is the one driving force of our narrative. Who am I? Who is he, the narrator of this tale?
Who are any of us, really? Are we the sum of our experience? The stuff of our dreams? Why are we here on this twisted speck of rock three stones from the sun?
Why
are
we . . .
Here and not some other place? That is what he wants to know, what I want to know. Why here? Why not some place
. . . else?
Do you believe in reincarnation? In life, after death?
Well, it turns out that during the first regression we did I was some kind of king in Eighteenth Century Germany and as a result of my karmic heritage (and natural good looks) I got invited to a couple of parties in Mill Valley. The advantage of attending said parties was to allow me the opportunity to not get into the pants of some very very hot little New Age divorcees from Southern California since I was entirely too stupid to realize what was coming down and, therefore, would have the opportunity for the next thirty years to feel bad about it. However, it did afford me the opportunity between bites of tofu to hook up with one of the best psychics in the world—at a time when finding somebody like her was ultra-critical to my development (and maybe sanity, too, perhaps). At the time of the regression, though, I really didn't know shit about Eighteenth Century Germany or psychic development so when the crazy old wench in our class from Austria filled in the blanks as to just how accurate my little trip down (past life) memory lane really was—while taking the sideline opportunity to belittle the American educational system (quite justified it would seem judging on how little I knew, don't you think?)—it just made my cinematic inner journey all the more compelling.
After all, I have a kingly kind of persona. Maybe it was true. How else could I have seen the things I saw that night?
Of course, all of you of a somewhat philosophical bent are poking big whale-sized holes in my twenty-four year old logic but (at the time) it made perfect sense to me. I knew I had lived before. And I still believe it because I think it's true. However, the ways and means of justifying that belief (and what, really, is life if not an elaborate means to justify some half-baked idea or two?) have gone through a somewhat erratic evolution.
Like all stories, there has to be a beginning. Once upon a time—or some other variant of the once upon a time theme—that is how the story should begin.
Once upon a time, high above the city, in a manger filled with straw, the three wise men descended upon Jerusalem.
Sorry, wrong story. Let's try again.
Once upon a time, a little boy was born. He was chubby with long coal black hair and a dimpled chin and his mama and poppa loved him very much. He was an energetic lad with a quick mind and—
Sorry, AGAIN, this once upon a time shit can get kind of boring so I'll sum it up by saying that I was born in Ohio in 1955. I was an only child who grew up to become a tormented teen with a crazy mother and a KKK totin' factory workin' father. Since my family was from Appalachia (with the accents to prove it) there was a very distinct form of snobbism at work in my home town directed towards them and their kind; this was reserved by native Ohioans for those families who had fled Kentucky during the war to come up to Ohio and work in the factories. The point you are supposed to get from all this is that the trickle down effect of this snobbery rained down upon my psychically vulnerable little head and caused irreparable damage to the even development of my self-esteem and sense of self worth. The economics of 1960's America were such, though, that a factory worker with a good job (in my father's case General Motors) and the drive to succeed could make a very good living. My father was many things but idiot was not one of them. Out of place, yes. Politically incorrect, yes. But, idiot, no.
My mother, though, might qualify for a big Yellow Y on both the out of place and the idiot ticket; although her heart was (I think) in the right place her means of execution often was a tad twisted. Since my father was something of a poor man's money making machine we lived in the best area of town with all the bank presidents and executives from Kroger.
As a result, my childhood often had a kind of reverse Eddie Munster in Hell look and feel to it. Escaping to California and the attendant terrors (and joys) of the way deep subconscious mind was, therefore, a consummation devoutly to be wished. That night after I got back from San Francisco (the class was held in the attic of a house on 15th Avenue) and before settling in to bed in my Berkeley rooming house bedroom, I tried to recreate in my mind the steps I'd gone through during my earlier regressions.
I remembered that we had gone through a series of commands where we were supposed to imagine someone rubbing our feet and legs and upper body so as to relax ourselves. I had never done this before. Of course the visions really started after that and for many years they never stopped. But I don't want to see visions anymore or sing late night songs to the darkening stars while tribes of tiny little wet-haired angels fornicate on a crooked pin.
All I really want now is just to water my perfect green lawn on a sunny Sunday afternoon, curl up with a good book or a good ballgame, and let the moons roll past, one by one by one.
Of course the truth if such a term exists when it comes to self revelatory types of things is that I do see angels fornicating on the head of a pin and the songs I hear floating up beside me in the silky white night make that morning drive to work a little more difficult. Some days, though, when I feel like it, I can still see the stories of all the people around me trailing behind them like the long red train of a stolen wedding gown.
Every story is a sad story too even the happy people their stories are all so sad. So sad buried deep down in the worn blue folds of some long forgotten midnight slight or the bright sunny burst of fire from a demon sun all so sad.
And Death is a terrible thing.
Even if you want to die even if the wheel of karma may spin around a little bit higher the next time through still the thought of death for what really is death but a thought because once it comes then the thoughts are all that is left here vapor trailing behind you even then you must admit it is a terrible thing. It is a terrible thing to die. For beauty to die. Or love. Or the sweet heroic stories of a perfect history.
The heroes are all dead. Don't you think? Bones rotting worms singing in the lonely night. So on we go as best we can weaving consensual sunny day stories all masking a deep dripping secret pain too stony for the fertile ground of a midwestern Tuesday afternoon. To die to sleep.
No more will we love the night you say, say it out loud you do I know you do don't you?
You are worrying about me again; that's OK I've come lately to expect it. After all, the wisdom of death is a terrible secret to share for it is the secret I'm sharing. To die to sleep. No more will you sing no more will the sweet sudden breathes of a warm touch touch you touch you deep inside where the songs won't sing off key key to what secret door to what secret passageway we've all heard all heard but forgotten too soon forgotten and buried deep inside. It is death of which I sing.
I am the troubadour of death.
Come along with me you sinners and defilers of the sun come with me and raise a toast to the only god that really matters. The god with the key to turn
you
and
me
off
There I've said it. The god of which I sing of which I am asking you to join me in a chorus or three is the god of death.
Thanatos of thee I sing. Of thee
I
sing sing with me won't you all sing with me better yet take a journey with me walk with me and the god we all call Thanatos and walk through his secret chambers let his warm crooked smile crease ever so gently across your wet upper lip for too soon we will see him see him standing there in the sweet
in the sweet
by and by in the sweet by and by we will see him
standing
there
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
Prophet and Loss
"The believer is happy, the doubter is wise."--
Hungarian proverb
I wrote the Disaster Recovery Plan for Enron. I realize that now this is analogous to saying I designed the life boat plan for the Titanic but there was a time when this actually looked pretty good on the old resume. I have done quite a few of these consulting/project management gigs over the past few years, bopping around the country like a migrant farm worker from project to project. But before my little path down management consultant lane, I had another fairly interesting job, one that also allowed me to travel and even be on radio and TV, too--something the business world never provided.
I worked as a professional psychic, like in the read your palm and tell you what’s going to happen next Tuesday kind of psychic which is not usually considered to be the perfect apprenticeship for a career in business.
Of course, being a punk rock anarchist bliss baby is not usually considered good form for the budding businessman, either. So I guess you have to make do with the goodies left over from a misspent youth as best you can.
If you suffered from bouts of insomnia back in the early nineties there is a good chance you may have seen me on TV. I’m sure most of you have seen the “1-900-Psychic” infomercials, you know the ones where the cast and crew from Another World or General Hospital sat around and talked about their own personal psychic friends.
Well, I was on one of those—along with Erik Estrada, Jenilee Harrison, Stuart Damon, Richard Roundtree, and a host of others. My little blast with prosperity consciousness aired throughout the U.S. and Canada twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, for about a year and a half, all to the sweet clanging tune of about 150 million dollars, all the while serenading multi-billionaires to sleep while simultaneously robbing lonely hearted waifs and welfare mothers who could not possibly afford the calls.
I don't know who called these lines but I do know the callers must have had their phones conveniently placed near their TV. Perhaps you’re wondering if these calls are really answered by the caring, talented professionals they advertise on TV? Or are they, instead, answered by some apprentice witch with a bad haircut and a brand new tarot deck, working the phones for $6.50 an hour, with no talent, no experience, and absolutely no understanding of the potential Pandora’s Box they may be unleashing in the collective psyches of America.
More likely than not, most callers are going to get the latter. I've seen people come in, right off the streets, literally, who taped interpretations to the backs of their cards and then read them ff, card by card, nothing more. Certainly nothing that anyone with twelve dollars for a tarot deck couldn't do for themselves.
As far as education, I dropped out of several very nice colleges--was once the academic wunderkind, then the creative writing wunderkind--never did graduate but have the fancy liberal education of a Ph.D. My real education is shamanic, metaphysical--out of this world. And as a former New Age poster boy, one labeled "The Psychic Adonis" I had what is commonly referred to as "attitude".
But I did kind of make it after all. I mean it’s the American Dream, right? Crazy rebellious white boy sucks it up and gets the BIG BOY job, plenty of cash, RESPECT(?), foldin’ the green, struttin’ the (new) STRUT. I had escaped—at least temporarily—the grave yard of failed bad boy poets and long haired layabouts who wake up to find they’re forty years old and working as a telemarketer (or worse) and see nothing but a long slow line to a soggy cardboard box and a hand-me-down bag of kibbles n’ bits. I am constantly seeking the reasons why we're here.
This, too, is just one more potential step on the road to financial and social oblivion but a boys gotta do what a boys . . . I believe so strongly in reincarnation and I look to the beauty and wisdom of many different spiritual systems to help me try to piece together the how and the why. I believe, also, very strongly, in the power of art as a means of expressing the soul.
Spirituality is kind of a tricky thing. I have been looking for a long time and still haven't quite figured it out. For now I am content to steal from several religions to make sort of a syncretic spiritual stew--the Sufis, Russian Orthodoxy, the Power Puff Girls, the Jewish Kabbalah, with New Agey stuff everywhere you look and a heavy dose of Paganism for those cold winter nights.
I also believe, very strongly, in the power of magick, with a "k". But my conception of magick is perhaps somewhat different than the norm. To me--Magick is awareness, awareness of self, awareness of the not self, awareness of the IS. Magick is not spells, rather not ONLY spells but instead is the ability to control one's self, so that in that control of self one can more easily attract those things/people/events most necessary for growth.
True Magick comes from within. It is born in the ability to focus, to concentrate. Focus leads to vision, vision leads to desire, desire leads to focus--the three become one.
All Magick is born first in the ability to control the self. This ability is the birthplace of all transcendence. Magick IS transcendence, the power of focus, the directed gaze. Magick is the ability to attract, the ability to attract is grounded in the ability to BE, like attracts like. To attract one must first become. To become one must first see.
Magick is Vision. It is seduction, it is self-awareness, it is power. The power of the self, which is ultimately the power to align. No one is bigger than the natural world, the law, but one can ALIGN themselves with the higher realm of the natural order. This is the goal of Magick. This is THE WAY, the way UP is always THROUGH.
The way is always through. As above, so below; that which was, will be. The way . . . is . . . always . . . THROUGH.
Hungarian proverb
I wrote the Disaster Recovery Plan for Enron. I realize that now this is analogous to saying I designed the life boat plan for the Titanic but there was a time when this actually looked pretty good on the old resume. I have done quite a few of these consulting/project management gigs over the past few years, bopping around the country like a migrant farm worker from project to project. But before my little path down management consultant lane, I had another fairly interesting job, one that also allowed me to travel and even be on radio and TV, too--something the business world never provided.
I worked as a professional psychic, like in the read your palm and tell you what’s going to happen next Tuesday kind of psychic which is not usually considered to be the perfect apprenticeship for a career in business.
Of course, being a punk rock anarchist bliss baby is not usually considered good form for the budding businessman, either. So I guess you have to make do with the goodies left over from a misspent youth as best you can.
If you suffered from bouts of insomnia back in the early nineties there is a good chance you may have seen me on TV. I’m sure most of you have seen the “1-900-Psychic” infomercials, you know the ones where the cast and crew from Another World or General Hospital sat around and talked about their own personal psychic friends.
Well, I was on one of those—along with Erik Estrada, Jenilee Harrison, Stuart Damon, Richard Roundtree, and a host of others. My little blast with prosperity consciousness aired throughout the U.S. and Canada twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, for about a year and a half, all to the sweet clanging tune of about 150 million dollars, all the while serenading multi-billionaires to sleep while simultaneously robbing lonely hearted waifs and welfare mothers who could not possibly afford the calls.
I don't know who called these lines but I do know the callers must have had their phones conveniently placed near their TV. Perhaps you’re wondering if these calls are really answered by the caring, talented professionals they advertise on TV? Or are they, instead, answered by some apprentice witch with a bad haircut and a brand new tarot deck, working the phones for $6.50 an hour, with no talent, no experience, and absolutely no understanding of the potential Pandora’s Box they may be unleashing in the collective psyches of America.
More likely than not, most callers are going to get the latter. I've seen people come in, right off the streets, literally, who taped interpretations to the backs of their cards and then read them ff, card by card, nothing more. Certainly nothing that anyone with twelve dollars for a tarot deck couldn't do for themselves.
As far as education, I dropped out of several very nice colleges--was once the academic wunderkind, then the creative writing wunderkind--never did graduate but have the fancy liberal education of a Ph.D. My real education is shamanic, metaphysical--out of this world. And as a former New Age poster boy, one labeled "The Psychic Adonis" I had what is commonly referred to as "attitude".
But I did kind of make it after all. I mean it’s the American Dream, right? Crazy rebellious white boy sucks it up and gets the BIG BOY job, plenty of cash, RESPECT(?), foldin’ the green, struttin’ the (new) STRUT. I had escaped—at least temporarily—the grave yard of failed bad boy poets and long haired layabouts who wake up to find they’re forty years old and working as a telemarketer (or worse) and see nothing but a long slow line to a soggy cardboard box and a hand-me-down bag of kibbles n’ bits. I am constantly seeking the reasons why we're here.
This, too, is just one more potential step on the road to financial and social oblivion but a boys gotta do what a boys . . . I believe so strongly in reincarnation and I look to the beauty and wisdom of many different spiritual systems to help me try to piece together the how and the why. I believe, also, very strongly, in the power of art as a means of expressing the soul.
Spirituality is kind of a tricky thing. I have been looking for a long time and still haven't quite figured it out. For now I am content to steal from several religions to make sort of a syncretic spiritual stew--the Sufis, Russian Orthodoxy, the Power Puff Girls, the Jewish Kabbalah, with New Agey stuff everywhere you look and a heavy dose of Paganism for those cold winter nights.
I also believe, very strongly, in the power of magick, with a "k". But my conception of magick is perhaps somewhat different than the norm. To me--Magick is awareness, awareness of self, awareness of the not self, awareness of the IS. Magick is not spells, rather not ONLY spells but instead is the ability to control one's self, so that in that control of self one can more easily attract those things/people/events most necessary for growth.
True Magick comes from within. It is born in the ability to focus, to concentrate. Focus leads to vision, vision leads to desire, desire leads to focus--the three become one.
All Magick is born first in the ability to control the self. This ability is the birthplace of all transcendence. Magick IS transcendence, the power of focus, the directed gaze. Magick is the ability to attract, the ability to attract is grounded in the ability to BE, like attracts like. To attract one must first become. To become one must first see.
Magick is Vision. It is seduction, it is self-awareness, it is power. The power of the self, which is ultimately the power to align. No one is bigger than the natural world, the law, but one can ALIGN themselves with the higher realm of the natural order. This is the goal of Magick. This is THE WAY, the way UP is always THROUGH.
The way is always through. As above, so below; that which was, will be. The way . . . is . . . always . . . THROUGH.
Tuesday, March 13, 2007
Why do so many people now HATE the Republicans?
I cannot agree with those who feel that President Bush's actions leading up to the invasion of Iraq don't really matter or with those who think that whether he lied or not is unimportant. I think the question of culpability here is VERY important because if Bush DID lie then that is indicative of potential issues that are more boogie man in the dark complicated than simply bungling Iraq due to poor planning or faulty intelligence.
The possibility that the invasion of Iraq was intentional is, of course, not news. The bigger issue is how much of this is systemic and how much situational because if Bush is leading this and there is a design afoot to dismantle the Constitution and focus on global banking/oil/defense contractor concerns rather than the good of the collective American populace then THAT is a problem, a problem which we should not take lying down, and is fundamentally different than just having things "not work out" in Iraq.
The Republicans have spewed such vitriol and hatred against all who dared oppose them that it is only fair that an equal amount of love and affection be shown them in return. I have never in my life seen such a concentrated effort at distortion of truth and suppression of individualism and I hope that we can wake up from this coup d'etat before it is too late.
I think Bush seems like a good guy if I was going over to his house for cheeseburgers and a beer to watch the Cowboys-Eagles game but as far as the policies of his administration--TOTAL Gestapo bullshit.
They deserve our hatred because they obviously HATE us!!
I believe the key to getting along is to love your neighbor and follow the golden rule and treat all people with dignity and respect. This administration does not practice that philosophy and even though I cannot personally harbor hatred in my heart towards anyone, if anyone EVER warranted that feeling I believe it is the people (and I don't believe they are necessarily politicians) running our government today.
I also recently read (and responded to) a group thread in which analogies were made comparing America's involvement in World War II to the situation today in Iraq; they were basically saying that America has always been the good guy and that any war America takes part in is, by default, good and that the past history of American intervention in World War I and World War II supports the premise that the US was right and justified in the invasion of Iraq. Germany was bad, America good. As it was before, so must it be today.
The problem with this line of thinking (as I see it) is that we are using the GEOGRAPHY of WWII as indicative of causal principles in the current war with Iraq rather than the ACTIONS AND MOTIVATIONS of the participating countries.
Most of us can probably agree that Nazi Germany was an aggressor and someone upon whom most forward thinking people would agree that to sit passively by was suicidal and the only viable option was war--all out war.
In that war, as in WWI approximately thirty years earlier, the United States came in midstream during full scale conflict in Europe and tipped the scales in favor of the Allied forces and helped defeat Germany, first under Kaiser Wilhelm and then again under Adolf Hitler.
The problem today though is that in this particular case we are not saving ANY countries from attack by another--instead WE are the aggressor, the instigator and in the analogy for WWII we are now Germany and Iraq is now Poland.
Hard to swallow for the flag wavers of America but in this case we are the ones who attacked, we are the ones who hold the country under our rule for our personal and monetary gain, and therefore it is not that much different than what Germany did to Poland in 1939 (and later France, Belgium, Holland, Hungary, Norway, etc etc during the early forties).
No one asked us to help save them from Iraq. This is what’s different between then and now. Iraq was not an aggressor as they were earlier in 1991. This time they were trying to mind their own business but Bush et al wanted them so they could have their oil and their land and also, in the process, show the world that we were studs and the baddest dudes on the street. “Don’t fuck with us,” that is what they were really saying. “If there is something we want we are prepared to take it, whether YOU like it or not.”
The US "decided" to attack Iraq, without legal provocation, and that, as the poet says, has made all the difference.
The possibility that the invasion of Iraq was intentional is, of course, not news. The bigger issue is how much of this is systemic and how much situational because if Bush is leading this and there is a design afoot to dismantle the Constitution and focus on global banking/oil/defense contractor concerns rather than the good of the collective American populace then THAT is a problem, a problem which we should not take lying down, and is fundamentally different than just having things "not work out" in Iraq.
The Republicans have spewed such vitriol and hatred against all who dared oppose them that it is only fair that an equal amount of love and affection be shown them in return. I have never in my life seen such a concentrated effort at distortion of truth and suppression of individualism and I hope that we can wake up from this coup d'etat before it is too late.
I think Bush seems like a good guy if I was going over to his house for cheeseburgers and a beer to watch the Cowboys-Eagles game but as far as the policies of his administration--TOTAL Gestapo bullshit.
They deserve our hatred because they obviously HATE us!!
I believe the key to getting along is to love your neighbor and follow the golden rule and treat all people with dignity and respect. This administration does not practice that philosophy and even though I cannot personally harbor hatred in my heart towards anyone, if anyone EVER warranted that feeling I believe it is the people (and I don't believe they are necessarily politicians) running our government today.
I also recently read (and responded to) a group thread in which analogies were made comparing America's involvement in World War II to the situation today in Iraq; they were basically saying that America has always been the good guy and that any war America takes part in is, by default, good and that the past history of American intervention in World War I and World War II supports the premise that the US was right and justified in the invasion of Iraq. Germany was bad, America good. As it was before, so must it be today.
The problem with this line of thinking (as I see it) is that we are using the GEOGRAPHY of WWII as indicative of causal principles in the current war with Iraq rather than the ACTIONS AND MOTIVATIONS of the participating countries.
Most of us can probably agree that Nazi Germany was an aggressor and someone upon whom most forward thinking people would agree that to sit passively by was suicidal and the only viable option was war--all out war.
In that war, as in WWI approximately thirty years earlier, the United States came in midstream during full scale conflict in Europe and tipped the scales in favor of the Allied forces and helped defeat Germany, first under Kaiser Wilhelm and then again under Adolf Hitler.
The problem today though is that in this particular case we are not saving ANY countries from attack by another--instead WE are the aggressor, the instigator and in the analogy for WWII we are now Germany and Iraq is now Poland.
Hard to swallow for the flag wavers of America but in this case we are the ones who attacked, we are the ones who hold the country under our rule for our personal and monetary gain, and therefore it is not that much different than what Germany did to Poland in 1939 (and later France, Belgium, Holland, Hungary, Norway, etc etc during the early forties).
No one asked us to help save them from Iraq. This is what’s different between then and now. Iraq was not an aggressor as they were earlier in 1991. This time they were trying to mind their own business but Bush et al wanted them so they could have their oil and their land and also, in the process, show the world that we were studs and the baddest dudes on the street. “Don’t fuck with us,” that is what they were really saying. “If there is something we want we are prepared to take it, whether YOU like it or not.”
The US "decided" to attack Iraq, without legal provocation, and that, as the poet says, has made all the difference.
Why are we really in Iraq?
I tend to side with the school of thought that sees Iraq as purposeful ONLY if it is designed to diminish the power and credibility of the US on the world stage because if it is really just ineptitude and greed driving the train then there are some pretty stupid people in positions of power.
Nothing in this is as it seems. The conspiracy theorists advocating NWO-Global Dominance do not, to me anyway, seem so far-fetched now. This is driven solely by greed but greed shared primarily with the happy few.
Whatever best serves the oil business and defense contractors will determine policy going forward and nothing else--not public sentiment, not "American values"--only greed. Policy will be dictated to enhance the power and wealth of those "already" powerful and wealthy, irregardless of wherever they may currently live.
Money talks, shit walks. Sad, very sad. But true.
Much of the pretext for attack is manufactured; the primary motive is oil and strategic control of the area. Oil is why we are in Iraq. It is the reason we went (everything else was a floating smorgasbord of bull shit--what reason can I give today?) and it is the reason we stay. Without the economic variables none of this makes any sense.
It is ALL about the oil because the oil means huge sums of money for the select happy few. Plus the defense BUSINESS is booming AND it also serves as a pretext for American leaders to eliminate all those pesky Iraqis who just take up space and use valuable resources.
This is a very cold-blooded war and there is no ethical/moral position that I can see for justifying American involvement in Iraq. It serves no purpose other than satisfying corporate greed and global imperialistic motives.
No one should discount the problems in Iraq nor the fact that soldiers on the ground are doing their best. An argument can be made that American soldiers are helping keep Iraqis safe from physical attack. I think it more likely that our presence is actually dangerous to the average Iraqi. There have been over a half MILLION people killed in Iraq and the country internally, from most reports, is not shall we say in an ideal place.
Soldiers have talked of saving Iraqi children and women from attack and that is a very noble thought.
However--As to individuals being raped or beaten or kids being in shit situations, we could make a case here in California for parts of LA or Oakland fitting that profile and some positive intervention would work perhaps even better here.
But there are no oil fields in downtown Oakland and no money to be made defending Oakland from San Jose. That is the issue.
I absolutely support the men and women doing the dirty work in Iraq. They are doing their job and have little or no say in how and why they do what they do and EVERYBODY in America should appreciate what foot soldiers are doing and the sacrifices they make and the bullshit they put up with.
Soldiers and Sailors and Marines and Airmen and women are doing what they are being asked to do, for their family, for their ideals of what is noble and good, for their brothers and sisters in the trenches. All good, ALL GOOD.
I just think the leaders (and by leaders I don't mean politicians, either) behind this are fucking everybody because they want (a) money and (b) acquiescence from the masses.
The American Army and other service branches are being used to line somebody's pockets and I, personally, think that is both a waste and a tragedy for all front-line soldiers.
Do you see some fat cat republican giving up his family for years on end to do this? No, but front line soldiers are stuck thousands of miles from home with no control as to how they can keep things together back home. This is not fair to them; it only serves the elite few—and fucks the rest.
Money makes THIS world go round. As far as solving problems, the question to ask is this?: is it solved, does it look like it will ever be solved?
The people at the top pulling the strings are not thinking about what is good for Iraq or good for the majority of Americans, either.They are thinking with their dick and their dick, in this case, is green and foldable and likes to hang out in Swiss Banks or sip champagne in the Cayman Islands.
The idea of "we the people"—the collective "idea" of nobility and fairness and openness to all—is being kicked to the curb. The average American has no say at all as to how the US should do business with the rest of the world. The concept of a free Democratic society in which the thoughts of the collective matter, that concept is being abolished. Orwell rules the day, Jefferson and Madison are dead.
This isn't your grandfather's America any more.
Again--MONEY talks and that is the ONLY voice you hear in Iraq. All the rest are details; the motivation driving the train is money--oil, guns, land, strategic postions.
Money makes the WORLD GO ROUND.
Nothing in this is as it seems. The conspiracy theorists advocating NWO-Global Dominance do not, to me anyway, seem so far-fetched now. This is driven solely by greed but greed shared primarily with the happy few.
Whatever best serves the oil business and defense contractors will determine policy going forward and nothing else--not public sentiment, not "American values"--only greed. Policy will be dictated to enhance the power and wealth of those "already" powerful and wealthy, irregardless of wherever they may currently live.
Money talks, shit walks. Sad, very sad. But true.
Much of the pretext for attack is manufactured; the primary motive is oil and strategic control of the area. Oil is why we are in Iraq. It is the reason we went (everything else was a floating smorgasbord of bull shit--what reason can I give today?) and it is the reason we stay. Without the economic variables none of this makes any sense.
It is ALL about the oil because the oil means huge sums of money for the select happy few. Plus the defense BUSINESS is booming AND it also serves as a pretext for American leaders to eliminate all those pesky Iraqis who just take up space and use valuable resources.
This is a very cold-blooded war and there is no ethical/moral position that I can see for justifying American involvement in Iraq. It serves no purpose other than satisfying corporate greed and global imperialistic motives.
No one should discount the problems in Iraq nor the fact that soldiers on the ground are doing their best. An argument can be made that American soldiers are helping keep Iraqis safe from physical attack. I think it more likely that our presence is actually dangerous to the average Iraqi. There have been over a half MILLION people killed in Iraq and the country internally, from most reports, is not shall we say in an ideal place.
Soldiers have talked of saving Iraqi children and women from attack and that is a very noble thought.
However--As to individuals being raped or beaten or kids being in shit situations, we could make a case here in California for parts of LA or Oakland fitting that profile and some positive intervention would work perhaps even better here.
But there are no oil fields in downtown Oakland and no money to be made defending Oakland from San Jose. That is the issue.
I absolutely support the men and women doing the dirty work in Iraq. They are doing their job and have little or no say in how and why they do what they do and EVERYBODY in America should appreciate what foot soldiers are doing and the sacrifices they make and the bullshit they put up with.
Soldiers and Sailors and Marines and Airmen and women are doing what they are being asked to do, for their family, for their ideals of what is noble and good, for their brothers and sisters in the trenches. All good, ALL GOOD.
I just think the leaders (and by leaders I don't mean politicians, either) behind this are fucking everybody because they want (a) money and (b) acquiescence from the masses.
The American Army and other service branches are being used to line somebody's pockets and I, personally, think that is both a waste and a tragedy for all front-line soldiers.
Do you see some fat cat republican giving up his family for years on end to do this? No, but front line soldiers are stuck thousands of miles from home with no control as to how they can keep things together back home. This is not fair to them; it only serves the elite few—and fucks the rest.
Money makes THIS world go round. As far as solving problems, the question to ask is this?: is it solved, does it look like it will ever be solved?
The people at the top pulling the strings are not thinking about what is good for Iraq or good for the majority of Americans, either.They are thinking with their dick and their dick, in this case, is green and foldable and likes to hang out in Swiss Banks or sip champagne in the Cayman Islands.
The idea of "we the people"—the collective "idea" of nobility and fairness and openness to all—is being kicked to the curb. The average American has no say at all as to how the US should do business with the rest of the world. The concept of a free Democratic society in which the thoughts of the collective matter, that concept is being abolished. Orwell rules the day, Jefferson and Madison are dead.
This isn't your grandfather's America any more.
Again--MONEY talks and that is the ONLY voice you hear in Iraq. All the rest are details; the motivation driving the train is money--oil, guns, land, strategic postions.
Money makes the WORLD GO ROUND.
Gustave Meyrink and The Magickal Golem
Gustav Meyrink uses this legend . . . in a dream- like setting on the Other Side of the Mirror and he has invested it with a horror so palpable that it has remained in my memory all these years." - Jorge Luis Borges
Gustave Meyrink, the Austrian dandy and author of the occult masterpiece The Golem, was born on January 19, 1868 in Vienna, the illegitimate son of a German aristocrat, Baron Karl Warnbüller von und zu Hemmingen, and a Jewish actress. Meyrink shares a birthday with an American writer with whom he shares many qualities—Edgar Allan Poe—and as a writer of brooding early twentieth century tales of dark foreboding and things that go bump in the night, and day, in his native Prague, he to a large extent out-Kafka's his more famous contemporary, Franz Kafka, himself. Meyrink, perhaps more than Kafka and another leading Prague writer of the day, the poet Ranier Maria Rilke, helped define the Czech capital as a city of mystery, the haunt of the alchemists and occultists of old.
Legend has it that Meyrink, on the brink of suicide with a loaded pistol in hand, heard someone scratching at his front door. Curious as to what it might be, he found a small pamphlet had been slipped under the door. The little pamphlet was entitled The Afterlife. Meyrink felt, perhaps understandably, as if the hand of God had intervened at his hour of need and he set off on a whirlwind quest to learn all that he could about mysticism, theosophy, and the occult.
The golem is a legendary man-made creature who comes into being, typically, as a result of an intense meditative experience—literally he is thought into being. Many magickal esoteric traditions hold dear the concept that knowing (and speaking) God's true name—the Tetragrammaton—imbues the speaker with magickal, invocative powers, quite literally the ability to cast spells or manifest thought into action. In Jewish tradition, and the golem is a traditional Jewish concept, speaking God's true name is forbidden. The four letters of the Tetragrammaton--YHVH, Yod Heh Vav Heh—have magickal correspondences with the four elements and are sign posts to a transformative journey of the soul. The four initiatory stages of the Tetragrammaton also correspond to the initiatory stages of development hinted at in the alchemist's goal of changing base metal into gold which is, in truth, a road map to personal transformation, the true magician's gold.
Think of the golem then as a rabbinical Frankenstein creature, perhaps, a being brought forth through the mixture of clay and virgin water and intense meditation, a wish made manifest in the real world. Legend has it that the golem of Rabbi Loew, from the sixteenth Century, still lives in an attic in Prague and that during World War II a nazi officer went into the attic with the intention of killing the golem and was, instead, killed himself. Rabbi Loew's golem is the most famous of all golems—a creature who was created, so the legends say, to defend the Jews of Prague from outside attack.
There is also a tradition that the biblical Adam, he who was brought in to being as a man of clay, was also a golem and that the breath of life given as God's gift was the power of the soul—the missing ingredient in the golem's quest for true manhood—and it is the soul, God's breath, that sets man apart from the manufactured body of water and clay—the golem. The word golem most probably is derived from the Hebrew word gelem, which means "raw material". There is also a legend that all golems cannot speak—hence the reason why golem has crept into Yiddish slang as a euphemism for dim-witted or stupid. If a golem could learn to speak he would also be given a soul—another metaphoric rendering of the idea, perhaps, of the power inherent in the utterance of God's true name.
Meyrink's literary genius was in taking the golem legend and transforming it into a work that hints at the initiatory path the aspiring master must travel. The power, truly, to create, to make the word of God manifest in physical form is the underlying thematic esoteric underpinning of this work. It is a tale of horror but a tale too showing a path to transformation.
Gustave Meyrink, the Austrian dandy and author of the occult masterpiece The Golem, was born on January 19, 1868 in Vienna, the illegitimate son of a German aristocrat, Baron Karl Warnbüller von und zu Hemmingen, and a Jewish actress. Meyrink shares a birthday with an American writer with whom he shares many qualities—Edgar Allan Poe—and as a writer of brooding early twentieth century tales of dark foreboding and things that go bump in the night, and day, in his native Prague, he to a large extent out-Kafka's his more famous contemporary, Franz Kafka, himself. Meyrink, perhaps more than Kafka and another leading Prague writer of the day, the poet Ranier Maria Rilke, helped define the Czech capital as a city of mystery, the haunt of the alchemists and occultists of old.
Legend has it that Meyrink, on the brink of suicide with a loaded pistol in hand, heard someone scratching at his front door. Curious as to what it might be, he found a small pamphlet had been slipped under the door. The little pamphlet was entitled The Afterlife. Meyrink felt, perhaps understandably, as if the hand of God had intervened at his hour of need and he set off on a whirlwind quest to learn all that he could about mysticism, theosophy, and the occult.
The golem is a legendary man-made creature who comes into being, typically, as a result of an intense meditative experience—literally he is thought into being. Many magickal esoteric traditions hold dear the concept that knowing (and speaking) God's true name—the Tetragrammaton—imbues the speaker with magickal, invocative powers, quite literally the ability to cast spells or manifest thought into action. In Jewish tradition, and the golem is a traditional Jewish concept, speaking God's true name is forbidden. The four letters of the Tetragrammaton--YHVH, Yod Heh Vav Heh—have magickal correspondences with the four elements and are sign posts to a transformative journey of the soul. The four initiatory stages of the Tetragrammaton also correspond to the initiatory stages of development hinted at in the alchemist's goal of changing base metal into gold which is, in truth, a road map to personal transformation, the true magician's gold.
Think of the golem then as a rabbinical Frankenstein creature, perhaps, a being brought forth through the mixture of clay and virgin water and intense meditation, a wish made manifest in the real world. Legend has it that the golem of Rabbi Loew, from the sixteenth Century, still lives in an attic in Prague and that during World War II a nazi officer went into the attic with the intention of killing the golem and was, instead, killed himself. Rabbi Loew's golem is the most famous of all golems—a creature who was created, so the legends say, to defend the Jews of Prague from outside attack.
There is also a tradition that the biblical Adam, he who was brought in to being as a man of clay, was also a golem and that the breath of life given as God's gift was the power of the soul—the missing ingredient in the golem's quest for true manhood—and it is the soul, God's breath, that sets man apart from the manufactured body of water and clay—the golem. The word golem most probably is derived from the Hebrew word gelem, which means "raw material". There is also a legend that all golems cannot speak—hence the reason why golem has crept into Yiddish slang as a euphemism for dim-witted or stupid. If a golem could learn to speak he would also be given a soul—another metaphoric rendering of the idea, perhaps, of the power inherent in the utterance of God's true name.
Meyrink's literary genius was in taking the golem legend and transforming it into a work that hints at the initiatory path the aspiring master must travel. The power, truly, to create, to make the word of God manifest in physical form is the underlying thematic esoteric underpinning of this work. It is a tale of horror but a tale too showing a path to transformation.
The Revolution will not be televised
. . . because BIG MONEY OWNS "big" media. But that does not mean that the revolution will not be BROADCAST or that our collective voices will not be heard. Blog baby blog march baby march raise your voice your collective power to the people take back the street put it to the MAN voice and make shit happen!
As Carl Jung said "there is no coming to consciousness without pain" and this is COLLECTIVE CONSCIOUSNESS (as opposed to Jung's theory of the collective unconscious) that is springing forth from the pains and trials and almost total darkness of the past six years.
The time is at hand to truly show love to all creatures, to embrace each other from our collective goodness and humanity, black white red brown male female straight gay no matter ALL PEOPLE as one voice one heart one purpose. That is the ONLY way out--the shamanic path the path of transformation the love of self and not-self and all that IS.
We can make a difference. We really can. Because if we don't stand up for what is RIGHT, not what is EASY not what will further my career or "social standing" but for once in our lives WHAT IS FUCKING RIGHT then we deserve the shackles and blinders that this New World Order has in store.
Power to the people the free people the people of ALL nations all continents. It is only through love that we can heal it is only through action that we can show love it is only by healing ourselves that we can save the world.
And there is just this much to it--the world needs us to save ourselves so we can reach out a hand to one another. FIGHT THE POWERS THAT BE.
peace . . .
As Carl Jung said "there is no coming to consciousness without pain" and this is COLLECTIVE CONSCIOUSNESS (as opposed to Jung's theory of the collective unconscious) that is springing forth from the pains and trials and almost total darkness of the past six years.
The time is at hand to truly show love to all creatures, to embrace each other from our collective goodness and humanity, black white red brown male female straight gay no matter ALL PEOPLE as one voice one heart one purpose. That is the ONLY way out--the shamanic path the path of transformation the love of self and not-self and all that IS.
We can make a difference. We really can. Because if we don't stand up for what is RIGHT, not what is EASY not what will further my career or "social standing" but for once in our lives WHAT IS FUCKING RIGHT then we deserve the shackles and blinders that this New World Order has in store.
Power to the people the free people the people of ALL nations all continents. It is only through love that we can heal it is only through action that we can show love it is only by healing ourselves that we can save the world.
And there is just this much to it--the world needs us to save ourselves so we can reach out a hand to one another. FIGHT THE POWERS THAT BE.
peace . . .
Report Card on Bush and Iraq
OK, let's see. We have the baddest kick ass Army of all time and yet we are stuck going on four years--
American Civil War (1861-1865), four years; World War I (1914-1918), four years; the US Army involvement in WWII, (Dec, 1941-August, 1945), LESS than 4 years--
against a country perceived by many as attacking us with 8 year olds carrying rocks riding camels
with no end in sight and a bill for our 4 years there that would, literally, choke a camel (maybe that is how we will win the war, choking camels with the budget defecit)
and somehow we took our budget SURPLUS and in six years became the biggest debtors on the planet;
we are a country that was once perceived by much of the world as a beacon of light and democracy that now has a reputation--quite justified, too--
as imperialists not much different than Hitler's Germany in the 30's and we also have an administration in charge that probably bombed NYC and DC in 2001 to scare the fuck out of us so they could ram the Gestapo Bill
(what they lovingly call The Patriot Act) up our ass and simultaneously bankrupt the middle class--don't even ask what is happening to those who weren't even middle class before because they are beyond fucked.
Other than that, though, I guess it's not SO bad . . .
American Civil War (1861-1865), four years; World War I (1914-1918), four years; the US Army involvement in WWII, (Dec, 1941-August, 1945), LESS than 4 years--
against a country perceived by many as attacking us with 8 year olds carrying rocks riding camels
with no end in sight and a bill for our 4 years there that would, literally, choke a camel (maybe that is how we will win the war, choking camels with the budget defecit)
and somehow we took our budget SURPLUS and in six years became the biggest debtors on the planet;
we are a country that was once perceived by much of the world as a beacon of light and democracy that now has a reputation--quite justified, too--
as imperialists not much different than Hitler's Germany in the 30's and we also have an administration in charge that probably bombed NYC and DC in 2001 to scare the fuck out of us so they could ram the Gestapo Bill
(what they lovingly call The Patriot Act) up our ass and simultaneously bankrupt the middle class--don't even ask what is happening to those who weren't even middle class before because they are beyond fucked.
Other than that, though, I guess it's not SO bad . . .
Does Slavery STILL matter?
Yes, racism is alive and VERY un-well in the USA today. Slavery is STILL an issue because it impacts the collective consciousness of a large group within this country and until we, as a collective, accept this and make some public overt effort to correct it we will always have a problem with it.
I have opportunities as a white boy that others don't have, pure and simple. I can open doors many black men cannot and it has nothing to do with me being so wonderful it has everything to do with me being so white.
If you are not on the receiving end of racism then sure it is easy enough for some folks to say "it is not a real problem to ME" but MOST blacks are victims of racism on some level and probably ALL blacks have, at one time or another, been verbally impacted (at a minimum) by racist comments.
I think we need to do something about it and quit saying blacks should just get over it because until WE (read: white middle and upper class) get over it and publicly apologize for the fuck-ups of our ancestors it will always be an issue.
Things are better than they used to be, no doubt, but they are STILL not right.
I have opportunities as a white boy that others don't have, pure and simple. I can open doors many black men cannot and it has nothing to do with me being so wonderful it has everything to do with me being so white.
If you are not on the receiving end of racism then sure it is easy enough for some folks to say "it is not a real problem to ME" but MOST blacks are victims of racism on some level and probably ALL blacks have, at one time or another, been verbally impacted (at a minimum) by racist comments.
I think we need to do something about it and quit saying blacks should just get over it because until WE (read: white middle and upper class) get over it and publicly apologize for the fuck-ups of our ancestors it will always be an issue.
Things are better than they used to be, no doubt, but they are STILL not right.
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