Re: Bath Re-Birth...

It's Memorial Day, and I'm sitting on my front porch as I type this, enjoying a simply spectacular Spring day. It's the perfect temperature, the sky is a brilliant shade of blue, with little wispy, cotton clouds. The air smells of warmth and life and flowers of all kinds, with the occasional scent of the sea carried in off the canal on a cool breeze. The courtyard below is a hundred brilliant hues of green and red and pink and yellow and orange and violet, and the sound of the fountain tinkling softly is as comforting and relaxing as a babbling brook. And I can't help but remember that only 6-months ago, I could not enjoy this. I might have been able to look at it and call it "pretty", I might even have been able to sit out here and pronounce it "serene", but I could not have truly enjoyed it. Not like this. I was simply incapable of experiencing these feelings; of perceiving on this level. The only thing in my life that I could find joy in, was getting high. Escaping into pleasure, into sex and drugs. Disappearing into fictional worlds, losing myself in other lives. Taking refuge in baths.

I can pinpoint now where that all began to change, though I was unaware of it at the time. It was one particular bath, back around the beginning of February. I still don't know where exactly this compulsion came from, but for some reason, when my bath was over and I started to get out, I suddenly had an overwhelming urge to simply shut out the lights and lay back down. So I did. The water was tepid, only slightly above room temperature, as I'd already been soaking an hour or more. I was, as usual, drunk and high. And in the pitch blackness of my small bathroom, I laid down in the still dark and attempted to submerge myself as completely as possible. I leaned my head back to fill my ears with water. I kept my eyes open, staring into the black, watching starbursts of color dance kaleidoscopic waltzes in the void before me. I listened to the sound of my breathing, hearing it through the water and through my body, rather than my ears. It was indistinguishable from the sound of the ocean crashing repeatedly against the shore. My life of summers at my family's cottage on Bethany Beach (the one my grandfather sold shortly before he died, the proceeds from which became my inheritance) have granted me an inherent familiarity with that sound. How many thousands of hours have I played in that very surf? How many hundreds of nights have I fallen asleep to that very sound? To this day, I use a white-noise machine when I go to sleep, tuned to replicate the sound of ocean surf crashing against a beach. I know that sound, that rhythm, as I know my own voice. Pull back, rear up, crescendo, CRASH, reach out, pull back... And I could hear it in my own breath in the still darkness. The great, vast ocean, within me. Dark beyond all dark. Seemingly endless. But there is movement within it, a rhythm repeated. And underneath it all, the steady pulse of a heartbeat. The heartbeat of the world. The heartbeat of life. My heartbeat.

Despite my purple prose description here, at the time, I thought the experience to be quite boring. My breath sounds like the ocean. That's kinda neat. But, so what? I recognized that what I had just done amounted to a minor sensory deprivation experience (not the full equivalent of being in a sensory deprivation tank, but close enough), but I didn't feel that I had experienced anything worthwhile or inspirational or transformative, or even really interesting. I didn't feel like I'd learned anything or that my circumstances had changed at all as a result of it. I didn't feel any different afterwards. So I just filed it away in my mind under "useful meditation/trance techniques" for possible use in some later ritual or exercise, and got out of the tub. I didn't know it at the time, but everything actually had changed just then. And the next day, I would begin to notice the difference.

It wasn't until several months later, after all of these events had transpired, when I was telling my family this story of my recent epiphanies and transformations, that I began to understand why this experience triggered a series of changes in my life and my Self. As I came to this point in the story, the sense-dep tub experience, I explained that I knew this was where everything had changed, but that I hadn't yet figured out why that was. My stepmother, an ordained minister in a local church, said, "Well, it's obvious, isn't it? You had a re-birth experience. You went back to the womb." It seemed so obvious when she said it. I can't believe I hadn't noticed it before. Of course, that's exactly what I'd done. And that's exactly why after that experience, I began to see everything in new and different ways. I'd gone back to the very beginning. It was as if I'd re-started my Self; hit the RESET button in my mind.

Funny enough, the first new thoughts and feelings I experienced, were stirred up by a cartoon of all things. I guess that makes sense in its own way; if I'd just been re-born the day before, then it'd be like I was a kid again, so why shouldn't I be moved by a cartoon? It was an episode of Nickelodeon's Avatar: The Last Airbender. The plot of this particular episode revolved, in large part, around the spirits of the Moon and the Ocean. These spirits resided in two Koi fish that lived in a sacred pool; one fish was black, with a white spot on its head, the other was white with a black spot. They circled each other continuously, endlessly chasing each other's tails, their swirling pattern forming a dynamic tai-chi in the water. The interplay of the fish was supposed to mirror the interplay of the Moon and the Ocean: locked together, eternally united, the two separate but as one, push and pull, give and take, advance and retreat, back and forth, cycle and tide, their constant movement creating a perfect balance. It was an expression of the principles of the Tao. In a kids' cartoon show. And it reminded me of the eternal mystery that I had been attracted to for so long. It reminded me that it didn't matter whether magick was real, whether I'd been deluding myself or not; the fact remains that there is a world to be explored behind the curtain, there still is mystery in life, if I cared to look for it.

I was attracted to this representation of the Tao in a cartoon. I was inspired by it! I hadn't been inspired by anything in months! And then I was further inspired by the realization that I'd just been inspired! I suddenly knew that I had to do something with this information. I had to take this event and make something out of it. Something to do with the Moon. And Tao. But what, exactly? Then I remembered a story I'd heard on the news that very morning about a total lunar eclipse coming up in a few weeks. I immediately jumped online and began researching. I learned there would be a total lunar eclipse on February 20th. That was also the night of the Full Moon. And, in fact, the two events synched almost perfectly: for our area, the eclipse would zenith at 10:26p and the Moon would reach total Fullness at 10:31p. And what's more, I remembered that day was also the Equinox! My mind nearly exploded with this realization! It was as if our local corner of the universe was going to be aligned almost perfectly to represent cosmic balance! First we'd have the Equinox, the very essence of "balance", when the Earth was at its most upright on its axis, and poised perfectly between the Sun and Moon. Then we'd have a total eclipse of the Full Moon, yin and yang merging in the heavens, a gargantuan tai-chi shining down on us for a few brief moments, infusing all the Ten Thousand Things with eternal Tao. The cosmos would be vibrating to the frequency of "balance", "harmony", and "Tao", and I knew that I had to do something to harness that energy! I knew that I had to perform some ritual or ceremony or pathworking or something during this cosmic event in order to synch my self up with that current. And even though I had no idea what I would do, exactly, I didn't care; it felt incredible just to know something, anything, with absolute certainty again. I knew what I had to do, and nothing else mattered just then.

The weeks went by, and my certainty faded bit-by-bit, as I fell back into old patterns. I was growing more and more anxious about the coming event, about which I still had no idea what to do, but still felt I had to do something. The morning before the eclipse, I suddenly realized, out-of-the-blue as I was getting ready for work, This is the Spring Equinox. How could the *Spring* Equinox be in February? Wait! The Spring Equinox is in MARCH!! I was completely floored by the absolute DUH of this realization. It was like waking up from a dream and suddenly realizing that you were, in fact, only dreaming. But I'd been awake the whole time. How could I possibly have spent 3 full weeks believing, absolutely, that the Spring Equinox was going to take place on February 20th?? How did I even end up thinking that in the first place?! I couldn't remember. I still can't remember. I believe now that I had to think this in order to be inspired and roused to action. That would be consistent with the fact that I can't remember how I became convinced of this in the first place, that I managed to go for 3 full weeks believing something so obviously wrong, that none of the people I told about the Equinox/Full Moon/Eclipse cosmic triumvirate during those 3 weeks ever realized it themselves and corrected me, and with the way it all suddenly hit me at once out of nowhere while I was thinking about something completely unrelated the very day before the big event. It was as if a spell had been lifted.

But that realization came later, after the fact. At the time, my main concern was, what did this mean for the working I had been planning to do the next night? The entire premise that had inspired me was based on a fallacy. It wasn't an Equinox and a Full Moon and a total lunar eclipse. It was just a Full Moon and a total lunar eclipse. I had been inspired by the idea of all 3, and now thinking of just the latter 2, I wasn't sure what it meant anymore. I didn't know if I should still go ahead or not. And if I did go ahead, should I go ahead exactly as I'd been planning to do, or did I need to change my plans to fit the new scenario? And if so, how exactly? I was right back to having handfuls of questions with no answers. I didn't know what to do anymore. I couldn't figure anything out. All I knew was that I definitely did not feel inspired by this turn of events. I felt stupid and disappointed.

The night of the Full Moon eclipse came, and I still didn't know anything. I hadn't figured anything out. I still didn't know why I'd thought it was the Equinox. I still didn't know what a Full Moon total eclipse meant to me, if it meant anything at all. I still didn't know if I should do anything anymore, and if so, what, and to what purpose. I was still agonizing over all of these questions when the appointed time came. I was ready to just give up and get high and go to bed. And then Precious said to me, "Just do it. The worst that could happen is that nothing would happen again, just like the other times. But at least then you'd know one way or the other. And who knows? Maybe it'll work and something will happen and you'll feel better. You'll never know if you don't try." I still haven't thanked her enough for saying that. I wonder if she even knows that she almost certainly saved my life just then, with that little bit of thoughtful compassion. I hope so. It's important for her to know that. It's important for her to know just how much her Love means to me. How much it's changed me. How she's helped me to be a better man.

I took her advice, of course. It's good advice. I decided to go ahead and do it, even though I still didn't know what "it" was, exactly. I decided to just figure it out as I went along. I didn't want to do anything big or elaborate; no ceremonial rituals, no sorcery. Just something small and spare and straight to the point, whatever it was. Just kind of put myself out there, and see what happened. I put on some simple ritual clothing. Then I lit a single candle on my altar. I turned on a CD of Taoist monks chanting. Figuring out each step as I did it, one after another. I lit some incense designed for astral illumination work. I decided to sit down in front of my altar and put on my Mindfold and see what happened. Then at that point, I decided to run though an energetic banishing ritual that I had used a lot a few years back, when I was doing a whole lot of heavy sorcery.

I visualized myself sitting in front of my altar as I was, as though I were standing behind my body looking down at it. I "moved in" and visualized my brain in my skull. Then I "moved in" again and visualized the corpus callosum at the center of my brain. Then the individual dendrites, axons, and synapses in the corpus callosum. Then the individual cells that make up a single dendrite. Then the nucleus at the center of one of those cells. Then the genes inside the nucleus. Then the protein at the center of a single DNA helix. Then the chemicals that make up that protein. Then the molecules that make up one of those chemicals. Then the particles that make up one of those molecules. Finally, I visualized my point of view moving into the center of one of the electrons of one of those particles. Inside the electron, I found an endless, white expanse of nothing. The Void. After a moment of stillness and silence in the Void, I visualized a tiny black dot at the very center of the endless white expanse. I visualized the black dot growing, so that it quickly grew to encompass my entire field of vision. I "backed out" to the particles, and the black dot engulfed the electron I had been in, growing out of it, and quickly grew again to engulf all the other particles and encompass my entire field of vision once more. I "backed out" again to the chemical-level, and the blackness followed me again. Back to the proteins. Back to the genes. Back to the nucleus, the blackness following me all the way. Back to the cells. Back to the dendrites. Back to the corpus callosum. Back to my brain. And once the black dot expanded to this point, all the way from the very center of my mindbrain, I willed it to stop, leaving a 2-dimensional black circle about 2-inches across, floating in the center of my brain.

Next, I visualized eight rays growing from the circle to form a 2-dimensional chaosphere. Then I visualized that the 2-dimensional image "popped" into a 3-dimensional one, and began to slowly rotate counter-clockwise on the point of one ray. (I'm going to dispense with the formality of typing "I visualized" before each event from here on out; it's getting irritatingly redundant at this point, and I'm only about a quarter of the way through the description of this banishing ritual as it is. Please simply note that everything I describe regarding the events of this banishing ritual from here on out, I willed to happen. I visualized things happening this way, and so they did; I did not passively witness these events as they were happening to me.)

As the chaosphere began to rotate, its movement created energy. This energy was attracted to the magickal tattoos that I have on my chest. (They were created to act as batteries for "chaos" energy; one is positively charged, the other negative.) The energy (or ch'i) arched like lightning bolts from the chaosphere to each tattoo, then arched between the two tattoos, forming a triangle. Then it arched from the two batteries on my chest through my body, to a third tattoo on my back (this tattoo represents my magickal will and potency), located over my spine, directly between the two on my chest, forming a second triangle parallel to the floor that crossed through my upper body. Finally, the ch'i arched from the tattoo on my back, back up to the chaosphere in my mind from which it had originated, creating two more triangles, and forming a tetrahedron of glowing lines of ch'i extending from the center of my brain down to the middle of my upper body. Then the chaosphere poured ch'i into the tetrahedron, filling it in, until it was solid.

Next, I copied the tetrahedron, and grew its double up, down, and out, until I was sitting inside a solid tetrahedron of glowing ch'i that extended from a point just above my head, down to the floor, with the original tetrahedron still positioned in my body, extending from the chaosphere in the middle of my brain down to the three tattoos on my chest and back. Then I copied the larger, external tetrahedron, but this time the copy was directly below the original, such that now I was sitting in the center of a diamond shape of glowing ch'i, made from the two tetrahedrons stacked together, base-to-base. Then I began to slowly spin the tetra-diamond clockwise. Then a little faster. Then a little faster. Picking up speed, more and more, until it was spinning at a blur. I heard the high-pitched whine of a hyper-accelerated engine. And the energy this spinning tetra-diamond created began to pour down from the point above, and up from the point below, forming the beginnings of a spherical shape. The tetra-diamond spun and whirred and the energy accumulated from the points until the two hemispheres met in a flash, leaving behind a solid sphere of glowing ch'i, surrounding a solid tetra-diamond of glowing ch'i, inside of which, I sat, cross-legged on my meditation cushion, hands folded in my lap, in my ritual clothing, with my Mindfold on, and a glowing tetrahedron of ch'i extending from the slowly rotating 3-dimensional chaosphere in the center of my brain, down to the three tattoos on my upper chest and back.

Now that I had created the energy construct that would mark my working space, I proceeded on to the last part of the banishing ritual, wherein I prepared myself to perform the work at hand (whatever that happened to be). Using a directed breathing technique, I began to draw a line of ch'i down from the chaosphere, down my spine, all the way to my lower tan-t'ien (one of the three "sacred spots" in Taoist internal alchemy, it also corresponds to the perineum or root chakra). I continued to draw down ch'i, collecting a pool of it at my lower tan-t'ien. When I had collected enough, I formed it into a black lotus pod. Then, continuing to draw down ch'i from the chaosphere using the breathing technique, I opened the Black Lotus at my lower tan-t'ien. Next, I repeated this process for my middle tan-t'ien (the second sacred spot, in the middle of the chest, corresponding to the heart chakra), pulling the energy down from the chaosphere to my lower tan-t'ien, and then up the front of my body from the lower tan-t'ien to the middle.

Once I had opened the Black Lotus at my middle tan-t'ien, I began to cycle the ch'i up from there to the upper tan-t'ien (the third sacred spot, corresponding to the pineal gland in the brain, and the third-eye chakra), which is also where the chaosphere was floating. This circuit, down the spine from the brain, up the front back to the brain, is the reverse flow of a ch'i pathway known in Taoist internal alchemy as "the microcosmic orbit". Once I had opened a third Black Lotus at my upper tan-t'ien, I began to cycle my ch'i in this pathway, down and back up, down and back up, faster and faster, until it built up enough speed and suddenly shot a white line of glowing light like a laser up out of the top of my head and down out of my root. This line of light extended to the edges of the universe, as far as reality goes. It represents the Axis Mundi, or "Axis of the Universe" and it is the "pole" from which all of creation hangs. Now that I was connected to it, I was, essentially, at the center of creation.

All of this took maybe about 10 or 15 minutes "real" time. It's much more complicated to describe than it is to actually perform, believe me. I spent several minutes just visualizing myself that way. Sitting inside my tetra-diamond which was inside my sphere, glowing tetrahedron inside my head and chest, rotating chaosphere in the center of my brain, the three Black Lotuses at my tan-t'ien, connected by a cycle of ch'i flowing between them, and an axis of white light extending from one edge of the universe, down my head, down my spine, out my ass, and on to the other edge of the universe. After a while of simply sitting there, wondering what to do, I felt that I should go to the Moon and witness this cosmic event for myself. So I let my astral body (the energetic copy of my physical self) rise out of my physical body along the axis of light. I floated up and up and up (still filled with all the various energy constructs of lotuses and geometric shapes, still surrounded by the tetra-diamond inside the sphere) and up and up. I saw my town as if from a plane, and then it turned into dots of light in a grid pattern, and then there were just collections of lights from several points all over, and then I was looking at the mid-atlantic section of the eastern seaboard, and then I was passing through the clouds, and looking down at the entire east coast of the US. And finally, I was floating free above the Earth, in outer space, with the Earth directly below me, and the Moon directly above. I rotated my astral form slightly to orient myself, so that the Earth was behind me and the Moon directly in front.

And the sight that greeted me there was simply awesome, in the truest sense of the word. I was overwhelmed with awe and reduced to tears at the beauty of the vision before me. But that's going to have to wait until next time. Until then, remember, "All Things that Are, are Fire."