Goddammit I hate memory sometimes.
And everything it leads to. Nostalgia. Reminiscence. A concrete sense of Self. Rambling, confessional blog posts about supposed childhood sexual traumas. And so forth.
After all that, after my whole humiliating confessional frenzy here in my last few posts (holy crap, was that all the way back in February??), I have to admit now that I'm not entirely sure my memory of these early experiences is even correct. And I've wanted to write and post this explanation for a good while now, because those posts are still sitting there on the front page, like a severed head at a dinner party; but I've been alternately too busy, or, mostly, too embarrassed by the whole ordeal to want to return to it. But I can't just leave that shit up there for anyone to read without any context or resolution. I have to put this to bed.
So here's how it all started. I was driving to work that February morning, and there was a discussion on the radio of how children respond to parental abuse. I don't remember what it was exactly, but something they said reminded me of this childhood friend (I'm going to start calling him "Bill" just so that I have a name to refer to him by). I hadn't thought about Bill in many, many years. I remembered some of our experiences together, and I remembered his big, angry father. And that's when I suddenly made the connection and realized, "Oh! Bill was abused by his father!" And everything else just followed from that.
I still believe that to be true; I believe Bill was abused (at least mentally and emotionally, if not physically or sexually) by his father. But the rest of it, I must admit now, I am significantly less sure about. I know that Bill and I "played doctor," but I don't remember all that we did. I don't actually remember how far our sexual play went. And, I am forced to admit to myself and all of you now, I don't actually remember who suggested what. I thought I did at the time, but I've since realized that's not true. It was just too long ago now for me to remember it clearly. It was so long ago that even the things I do remember clearly are suspect. And through my research I discovered that I would be forced to admit something else, something much worse: it is entirely possible that I am the one who abused him.
Reading through literature on the subject, I was surprised to find out that one of the more common, and yet least often discussed, forms of childhood sexual abuse is to simply educate a child about sex too much at too early an age. (It had never even occurred to me before my research that this could possibly be considered a form of abuse.) Sex is one of the most complicated and complex of all human interactions, and a 4 or 5 year-old child is simply too underdeveloped to be able to fully understand it (hell, a lot of adults are too underdeveloped to be able to fully understand it, for that matter); and so therefore giving a child that age too much information on the subject can often lead them to act out behaviors that they are not able to fully understand, process, or deal with in a meaningful way. That's the basic idea.
My mother's policy was that if I was old enough to ask the question, then I was old enough to hear the answer. And she was always very quick to let me know that if I ever had any questions at all, she would do her best to try to answer them truthfully and completely. And she lived by that statement. And I was a very curious boy. I had a lot of questions. And she answered every one she could. So I remember that throughout my childhood, basically until high school, I always knew more about sex (among many other things) than any of my friends or classmates seemed to. I was proud of that, actually. It made me feel grown-up. It made me feel strong. And superior. (Realizing now, as I type this, that this may have something to do with why I value intelligence so highly, in both myself and others.)
But in terms of my memories of my experiences with Bill, that throws everything into a new light. I only actually remember one thing we did that was definitely Bill's idea, and while that was a little dirty, it also wasn't exactly sexual, either (we were naked, but there was no touching); it would fall squarely in the category of "normative childhood sexual play." I don't actually remember what else we may have done, or who might've suggested any of it. But I know that in my memories of all the other boys (and some girls) who came after Bill, I was definitely the aggressor.
The hard part to admit, is that when I suddenly realized that morning that Bill had been abused by his father, I didn't then "realize" that he had actually been acting out his abuse on me, as I originally wrote. No, the truth was that I actually just assumed that was the case, and didn't recognize that I was making an assumption. "OMG, Bill was abused by his father! What do abused children do? They act out that same abuse on others. He must've been doing that to me when we played doctor! So that's why I then went on to do it others; I was acting out his abuse on me! That's where it all started! It makes perfect sense." And it does make perfect sense. But that doesn't automatically make it true, either.
I still don't know what happened back then, and I probably never will. But I have to admit that the much more likely scenario seems to be that I was actually a victim of childhood sexual abuse, but the abuser was my mother, not Bill. And it seems much more likely that I was acting out my abuse on him (and all the other boys and girls that came after him) rather than the other way around.
Bill moved away before we even hit puberty. I haven't seen or heard from him since I was a child. I have no idea what his life has been like.
If you're still out there, "Bill," I hope you're okay. And if you're not... all I can say is, I'm so, so sorry.
It wasn't my fault. I was only a child.
Showing posts with label epiphany. Show all posts
Showing posts with label epiphany. Show all posts
Wednesday, May 27, 2015
Tuesday, February 10, 2015
Apparent Exaggerations...
Still need more time to write out the full story/explanation, but I did learn something that requires an immediate update.
I knew that the language I used yesterday didn't feel quite right. It seemed inflammatory, and loaded with a ton of connotations that were not actually part of the experience I was trying to communicate. But what other language was I supposed to use? How else was I supposed to describe it?
Well, finally getting around last night to doing some very preliminary research into the topic of child-on-child sexual abuse, revealed the rather obvious fact that I'm not the only person in the world who has ever had experiences like these, and that as such, there is already a whole lexicon available to me to describe it, if I had only bothered to look.
I learned right off the bat that I was not, in fact, molested. I was not abused. What happened to me would be characterized as "Normative Childhood Sexual Play," even if it was a little more advanced than most. The difference being, I was never coerced, or threatened, or manipulated, or made to do anything I didn't want to do. All this friend of mine did was suggest the ideas; I went along with them willingly, even excitedly. And I enjoyed them completely, to the point that I then went on to suggest them to all my other friends for the next 20 years.
What I went through was a normal part of growing up that pretty much everyone goes through at some point. The big difference for me, was that it happened to me about 10 years earlier than the average. I was regularly having sex in elementary school, and I was having the kind of sex that most other people don't even know about, much less start trying to engage in, until middle school or high school. (Oddly, I steadfastly maintained my virginity, however technical, until I was much older; I think having so much sex as a child made my virginity seem more precious to me somehow, and I was determined to save it until I found someone I really loved.)
I still think my friend was abused, though. It's the only explanation I have right now for how he could be so sexually aggressive, and adventurous, and knowledgeable, at such a young age. And so it's still possible that, from his point of view, he was acting out from his history of abuse. But whether he was attempting to abuse me or not (who knows how he would've responded if I'd said no), I wasn't abused. I went willingly, and loved every minute of it.
And while I feel a lot better now, knowing that I don't actually have to wear the "childhood sexual abuse victim" label for the rest of my life, there's still a lot left here that I need to unpack. I'm still not sure what all this means, or what I'm supposed to do with this new information.
I knew that the language I used yesterday didn't feel quite right. It seemed inflammatory, and loaded with a ton of connotations that were not actually part of the experience I was trying to communicate. But what other language was I supposed to use? How else was I supposed to describe it?
Well, finally getting around last night to doing some very preliminary research into the topic of child-on-child sexual abuse, revealed the rather obvious fact that I'm not the only person in the world who has ever had experiences like these, and that as such, there is already a whole lexicon available to me to describe it, if I had only bothered to look.
I learned right off the bat that I was not, in fact, molested. I was not abused. What happened to me would be characterized as "Normative Childhood Sexual Play," even if it was a little more advanced than most. The difference being, I was never coerced, or threatened, or manipulated, or made to do anything I didn't want to do. All this friend of mine did was suggest the ideas; I went along with them willingly, even excitedly. And I enjoyed them completely, to the point that I then went on to suggest them to all my other friends for the next 20 years.
What I went through was a normal part of growing up that pretty much everyone goes through at some point. The big difference for me, was that it happened to me about 10 years earlier than the average. I was regularly having sex in elementary school, and I was having the kind of sex that most other people don't even know about, much less start trying to engage in, until middle school or high school. (Oddly, I steadfastly maintained my virginity, however technical, until I was much older; I think having so much sex as a child made my virginity seem more precious to me somehow, and I was determined to save it until I found someone I really loved.)
I still think my friend was abused, though. It's the only explanation I have right now for how he could be so sexually aggressive, and adventurous, and knowledgeable, at such a young age. And so it's still possible that, from his point of view, he was acting out from his history of abuse. But whether he was attempting to abuse me or not (who knows how he would've responded if I'd said no), I wasn't abused. I went willingly, and loved every minute of it.
And while I feel a lot better now, knowing that I don't actually have to wear the "childhood sexual abuse victim" label for the rest of my life, there's still a lot left here that I need to unpack. I'm still not sure what all this means, or what I'm supposed to do with this new information.
Monday, February 9, 2015
We Are What We Remember We Are...
I realized this morning, that I was - rather technically, I must caveat - molested by one of my very first childhood friends. And that this series of events was directly responsible for shaping a very large portion of my personality; of who I still am today.
I'm honestly not sure how I feel about this. There's way too much story there to be able to tell it all right now. But I had to at least get this much, the realization of it, the acknowledgment of it, out of me and into existence, before I forgot it again, or subsumed it in some other way.
I feel like I'm supposed to be upset about this. But I don't think I feel particularly upset about it, at least not yet. (There is a small part of me, however, that is upset at myself for not being upset about it, for whatever that's worth.) I'd always remembered - and still remember - our "playing doctor" as being entirely consensual. (As much as it could be, at least. We were about the same age at the time, so technically, legally, neither of us could consent; but we were also the only ones involved. So how does that work?) So, I've never felt - and still don't feel - victimized in any way. I feel no enmity or ill-will towards this individual, and never have. And the parts of my Self that I can now suddenly attribute to my early friendship with this person (at least, the ones I know about) are not things that I've ever felt particularly bad about or wished to be different. Nor have I ever felt a need to investigate their root, or determine their origin.
Which I guess is part of why it feels so strange to suddenly know where they all come from. I received an answer to an absolutely massive question, before I had ever even asked it in the first place. There's an almost vertigo to it; the sensation of it makes you dizzy. A memory you've had for almost 40 years, and suddenly, from out of nowhere and apropos of nothing, one tiny little detail you'd left behind somewhere along the way comes back into focus; and it fits like a keystone into place with all the other memories it connects to: that time, that place, those people; filling in a hole you never knew was there; and now you see it all so clearly, understanding it all for the very first time, after 40 years; and that realization leads to another, which leads to another, cascading down through your history like a line of dominoes, until suddenly four decades of Self have been re-written. You understand yourself now in a new, better, more complete way, a more whole way, than you ever have before. But you also know now, that you're not who you thought you were; and you never have been. So, then, who are you?
That's kind of a lot to handle when it all hits you in a matter of seconds while you're driving down the highway late to work on a Monday morning.
So, yeah. This one's gonna take a while to unpack, I guess.
I'm honestly not sure how I feel about this. There's way too much story there to be able to tell it all right now. But I had to at least get this much, the realization of it, the acknowledgment of it, out of me and into existence, before I forgot it again, or subsumed it in some other way.
I feel like I'm supposed to be upset about this. But I don't think I feel particularly upset about it, at least not yet. (There is a small part of me, however, that is upset at myself for not being upset about it, for whatever that's worth.) I'd always remembered - and still remember - our "playing doctor" as being entirely consensual. (As much as it could be, at least. We were about the same age at the time, so technically, legally, neither of us could consent; but we were also the only ones involved. So how does that work?) So, I've never felt - and still don't feel - victimized in any way. I feel no enmity or ill-will towards this individual, and never have. And the parts of my Self that I can now suddenly attribute to my early friendship with this person (at least, the ones I know about) are not things that I've ever felt particularly bad about or wished to be different. Nor have I ever felt a need to investigate their root, or determine their origin.
Which I guess is part of why it feels so strange to suddenly know where they all come from. I received an answer to an absolutely massive question, before I had ever even asked it in the first place. There's an almost vertigo to it; the sensation of it makes you dizzy. A memory you've had for almost 40 years, and suddenly, from out of nowhere and apropos of nothing, one tiny little detail you'd left behind somewhere along the way comes back into focus; and it fits like a keystone into place with all the other memories it connects to: that time, that place, those people; filling in a hole you never knew was there; and now you see it all so clearly, understanding it all for the very first time, after 40 years; and that realization leads to another, which leads to another, cascading down through your history like a line of dominoes, until suddenly four decades of Self have been re-written. You understand yourself now in a new, better, more complete way, a more whole way, than you ever have before. But you also know now, that you're not who you thought you were; and you never have been. So, then, who are you?
That's kind of a lot to handle when it all hits you in a matter of seconds while you're driving down the highway late to work on a Monday morning.
So, yeah. This one's gonna take a while to unpack, I guess.
Saturday, August 11, 2012
Friendships In Chaos, pt. 2...
We also did a ritual last weekend, my friends and I.
I haven't done that in a very long time. Not even by myself, let alone with my old Temple-mates.
It wasn't even a proper ritual, really. Just a little, nothing, throw-away rite. But I was amazed at how it made me feel. To be in that place. To be with those people.
To be doing magick.
I had completely forgotten just how much I love doing that. How much I love even just the sensation of doing it! The feeling of energy flowing through me, like a conduit. Finding the sense of the "flow" of the ritual, and then letting it pull me along. The pleasure of power coming into me, and erupting out of me. The drama, the spectacle, the art, the dance and the poetry of The Ritual.
It felt like making love with a best friend I hadn't seen in years.
When it was over, I found myself swallowing back tears. And once again, I was struck by the sudden and almost overwhelming realization of just how desperately I missed this thing that I had willingly let go, honestly believing that I no longer had any use for it.
And maybe I didn't have any use for it back then. And maybe I still don't. But it's clear to me now, that I need to find a reason to do it. Because it is obviously a lot more important to me than I had allowed myself to believe. It is clearly filling a hole in my life that I didn't know was there; that I thought I had already filled long ago.
I know now that I need to do this. I don't know why I need to do it yet, but I know I need to do it.
And I can't help but notice that this all happened only two weeks before I get the opportunity to spend an entire week doing nothing but playing with magick, with a group of the best magickians from all over the world. Isn't that strange?
I'm sure it's just a coincidence.
I haven't done that in a very long time. Not even by myself, let alone with my old Temple-mates.
It wasn't even a proper ritual, really. Just a little, nothing, throw-away rite. But I was amazed at how it made me feel. To be in that place. To be with those people.
To be doing magick.
I had completely forgotten just how much I love doing that. How much I love even just the sensation of doing it! The feeling of energy flowing through me, like a conduit. Finding the sense of the "flow" of the ritual, and then letting it pull me along. The pleasure of power coming into me, and erupting out of me. The drama, the spectacle, the art, the dance and the poetry of The Ritual.
It felt like making love with a best friend I hadn't seen in years.
When it was over, I found myself swallowing back tears. And once again, I was struck by the sudden and almost overwhelming realization of just how desperately I missed this thing that I had willingly let go, honestly believing that I no longer had any use for it.
And maybe I didn't have any use for it back then. And maybe I still don't. But it's clear to me now, that I need to find a reason to do it. Because it is obviously a lot more important to me than I had allowed myself to believe. It is clearly filling a hole in my life that I didn't know was there; that I thought I had already filled long ago.
I know now that I need to do this. I don't know why I need to do it yet, but I know I need to do it.
And I can't help but notice that this all happened only two weeks before I get the opportunity to spend an entire week doing nothing but playing with magick, with a group of the best magickians from all over the world. Isn't that strange?
I'm sure it's just a coincidence.
Friday, August 10, 2012
Friendships In Chaos, pt. 1...
Even though I can't talk about my concerns about the upcoming AGM, I had an experience with the IOT last weekend that I actually can talk about. As usual, I can't discuss what we were doing, but for whatever reason, I had cause to get together with my old Temple this weekend, and that brought up a lot of feelings that went beyond simple nostalgia.
I realized, first and foremost, just how much I miss my friends. It's a shame that my friendships got all wrapped up in the Temple the way they did, but it just worked out that way; most of my best friends were in the Temple, and the rest of my relationships with the larger group of my friends were through my friendships with my Temple-mates. And so when the Temple slowly dissolved, and I lost interest in (and reasons to do) magick, then I also suddenly lost my connection to almost all of my friends. They all live at least an hour away from me, so it's a bit of an investment of time and energy (and finances as well, with current fuel prices - even with my new fuel-efficient car) to go see them. And over the years I'd just gotten used to having this set reason to see them all regularly: the Temple and the IOT. So, with that gone, I no longer had a regular excuse to get together with them. If we were going to see each other, I was going to have to make the effort to stay in touch, and make the trips out there and back, just for the sole purpose of hanging out together.
But I didn't want to do that. For a lot of reasons. A lot of it boils down to the fact that I just don't do that. Maybe I don't do it just because I've never had a reason to before, I don't know; but I know that it isn't something I do. I like having friends, but I don't feel like I need friends in order to be happy. So, if it takes any significant amount of effort to maintain a friendship, I just won't bother. And I can't overlook the fact that I was high and drunk during a lot of this time, as well, which affected things in a variety of ways. It left me with even less energy to expend towards maintaining long-distance friendships, as well as numbing me to any sense of loneliness I may have otherwise felt; I was comfortably drunk and/or high, so I never felt like I was missing anything by not having relationships with these people anymore. And it was also creating a lot of other negative effects in my life, as well, and I wasn't exactly eager to share those parts of myself with my friends, people whom I'd like to impress, if I'm able. And beyond being a fat and lazy drunk, I was also going through a lot of other issues at the time that I didn't really feel like advertising: identity crises, marriage problems, spiritual voids, etc. Frankly, I just didn't want anyone to see me like that.
And it's only now, after seeing everyone again this weekend, and the "looking back" that naturally flows from that experience, that I realize - it wasn't just that I didn't feel like I needed friends, or that I felt it wasn't worth the energy to maintain those relationships - it's that, for a variety of reasons having to do with my own feelings about myself, I actively did not want any friends. I wanted to be alone. So, I just went about my life, and didn't bother trying to maintain these friendships, and didn't think much about it. And before I knew it, two years had gone by. And if it weren't for the fact that I had to get together with them again for the AGM this year, it almost certainly would've been even longer before I saw any of them again.
But seeing everyone again this weekend also made me realize, I don't feel that way anymore. I miss my friends. And I want to be a part of their life again. And I want them to be a part of mine. And it is very much worth my time and energy to make that happen.
But I'm worried that I won't be accepted. I'm really not the same person that I was two years ago. And I know they're all expecting me to be. Not because they're trying to force me into some pre-determined mold or anything; that's not what I mean. It's just, that's the person they've known me to be for years, so who else could they expect me to be? But I'm really not him anymore. I'm not dark the way that I used to be. I'm not a pervert the way I used to be. I'm not into the same things I used to be into. I'm sober for fuck's sake. I'm not even really a magickian anymore. I've mellowed out and matured so much in my old age (I'm not even forty yet, but I feel like an old man). And I'm worried that when they get to know this new version of me, that they'll find him boring, and lame. (And, I have to admit, a part of me is worried that I might feel the same way about them, as well.) Being around them makes me feel pressured to be the person I was. And I have to try keep that from changing me too much; I have to let it affect me a little (what's the point of having a relationship with someone if you don't let them affect you at all?), but I can't let it affect me so much that I compromise myself in order to fit my perception of their expectations of me, or in order to gain their approval. I need to be myself - or at least the version of myself that they bring out in me - and I need to be okay with the fact that maybe some people won't like me as much anymore.
But I definitely know that I need to try now. Because being with them again just felt good. And it felt like the right thing to do. And it made me realize that, even though I haven't let myself feel it for a long time, I really do miss them.
I realized, first and foremost, just how much I miss my friends. It's a shame that my friendships got all wrapped up in the Temple the way they did, but it just worked out that way; most of my best friends were in the Temple, and the rest of my relationships with the larger group of my friends were through my friendships with my Temple-mates. And so when the Temple slowly dissolved, and I lost interest in (and reasons to do) magick, then I also suddenly lost my connection to almost all of my friends. They all live at least an hour away from me, so it's a bit of an investment of time and energy (and finances as well, with current fuel prices - even with my new fuel-efficient car) to go see them. And over the years I'd just gotten used to having this set reason to see them all regularly: the Temple and the IOT. So, with that gone, I no longer had a regular excuse to get together with them. If we were going to see each other, I was going to have to make the effort to stay in touch, and make the trips out there and back, just for the sole purpose of hanging out together.
But I didn't want to do that. For a lot of reasons. A lot of it boils down to the fact that I just don't do that. Maybe I don't do it just because I've never had a reason to before, I don't know; but I know that it isn't something I do. I like having friends, but I don't feel like I need friends in order to be happy. So, if it takes any significant amount of effort to maintain a friendship, I just won't bother. And I can't overlook the fact that I was high and drunk during a lot of this time, as well, which affected things in a variety of ways. It left me with even less energy to expend towards maintaining long-distance friendships, as well as numbing me to any sense of loneliness I may have otherwise felt; I was comfortably drunk and/or high, so I never felt like I was missing anything by not having relationships with these people anymore. And it was also creating a lot of other negative effects in my life, as well, and I wasn't exactly eager to share those parts of myself with my friends, people whom I'd like to impress, if I'm able. And beyond being a fat and lazy drunk, I was also going through a lot of other issues at the time that I didn't really feel like advertising: identity crises, marriage problems, spiritual voids, etc. Frankly, I just didn't want anyone to see me like that.
And it's only now, after seeing everyone again this weekend, and the "looking back" that naturally flows from that experience, that I realize - it wasn't just that I didn't feel like I needed friends, or that I felt it wasn't worth the energy to maintain those relationships - it's that, for a variety of reasons having to do with my own feelings about myself, I actively did not want any friends. I wanted to be alone. So, I just went about my life, and didn't bother trying to maintain these friendships, and didn't think much about it. And before I knew it, two years had gone by. And if it weren't for the fact that I had to get together with them again for the AGM this year, it almost certainly would've been even longer before I saw any of them again.
But seeing everyone again this weekend also made me realize, I don't feel that way anymore. I miss my friends. And I want to be a part of their life again. And I want them to be a part of mine. And it is very much worth my time and energy to make that happen.
But I'm worried that I won't be accepted. I'm really not the same person that I was two years ago. And I know they're all expecting me to be. Not because they're trying to force me into some pre-determined mold or anything; that's not what I mean. It's just, that's the person they've known me to be for years, so who else could they expect me to be? But I'm really not him anymore. I'm not dark the way that I used to be. I'm not a pervert the way I used to be. I'm not into the same things I used to be into. I'm sober for fuck's sake. I'm not even really a magickian anymore. I've mellowed out and matured so much in my old age (I'm not even forty yet, but I feel like an old man). And I'm worried that when they get to know this new version of me, that they'll find him boring, and lame. (And, I have to admit, a part of me is worried that I might feel the same way about them, as well.) Being around them makes me feel pressured to be the person I was. And I have to try keep that from changing me too much; I have to let it affect me a little (what's the point of having a relationship with someone if you don't let them affect you at all?), but I can't let it affect me so much that I compromise myself in order to fit my perception of their expectations of me, or in order to gain their approval. I need to be myself - or at least the version of myself that they bring out in me - and I need to be okay with the fact that maybe some people won't like me as much anymore.
But I definitely know that I need to try now. Because being with them again just felt good. And it felt like the right thing to do. And it made me realize that, even though I haven't let myself feel it for a long time, I really do miss them.
Friday, April 20, 2012
The Night of Walpurgis...
Believe it or not, meditation isn't always relaxing.
Sometimes, there is no void. Sometimes, there is instead a flood of creative energy. Sometimes, meditation can be almost overwhelmingly stimulating.
And today was one of those times.
The rush of ideas was so intense that I could barely concentrate on my breathing, and frequently lost focus. And count - I counted to 108 breaths, but I'm sure I actually breathed twice that many. And the inspiration was as varied as it was relentless. I had ideas for stories I want to write, people I want to contact and the reasons why and the things I want to say to them, projects I want to work on and how I want to go about them, reminders, notes, insights and realizations of every sort. For a while, try as I might to ignore it and focus on counting my breaths, I was even aware of this very post writing itself out in my head. But the biggest and most immediate idea that occurred to me during this creative blitzkrieg, and the subject of this entry, is how I'm going to handle the Walpurgisnacht.
So, I had my last drink this past Sunday, and I had my last toke the Sunday before that (that's a story for another post), though it's been many months since I've smoked on a regular basis. The plan was/is to spend a full year completely sober for the first time in my adult life. This is something I've known I needed to do for a long time. I'm a particular kind of addict (I'm sure there's a word for it, but I don't know what it is) - I can be addicted to this for awhile and then put it down, and then be addicted to that for awhile and then put it down, and so on. I don't really have a drug of choice, per se, though I do have preferences, and there's some drugs I absolutely can't stand. But what I'm actually addicted to, is getting high, however that happens. When I quit smoking cigarettes, I compensated by smoking more pot. When I quit smoking pot, I compensated by drinking more. And I always knew I was robbing Peter to pay Paul, but at the time Paul was the one threatening to break my kneecaps, so I just told myself I'd deal with Peter later. But I'm getting older now, and feeling more mortal by the day, and it's time to finally deal with my addictive behavior at the root, rather than dealing with any given addiction to a particular substance one at a time.
But there are some other reasons to do it, as well. Purely from a health perspective, it'd just be good to give my body a bit of a rest from all the punishment I've put it through the last twenty years or so, now that I'm getting older. It's also partly an experiment - I just want to see what will happen if I stay completely sober for a year. It's partly to give my brain chemistry a chance to return to some semblance of normal, and then to re-evaluate and see how I feel, and who I feel I am. And in part it's also a test - I want to see if I can do this.
Ok, so what does all that have to do with Walpurgisnacht? The night of April 30th*, aka Walpurgisnacht, or Hexennacht, or Witches' Night, or May Eve, is a very important holy day on the Heathen calendar. It is the counterpart to Yule, the holiest season of the year, and marks the other pole of the ancient pagan year (the two holidays being approximately six months apart). As during Yule, it is believed that the barriers between the material world and the spirit world are more permeable on the Night of Walpurgis. The Eddas (ancient Heathen holy epic lore-poems that comprise much of our knowledge of their religion and culture) tell us that it was on Walpurgisnacht that Odin earned the knowledge and power of the Runes. He stabbed himself through the chest with his spear, pinning himself upside-down to the World Tree, Yggdrasil, and hung there for nine nights. On the ninth night, May Eve, he "died" as much as a god-creator can, his consciousness leaving his body and descending to the three wells at the root of the World Tree, wherein he found and took up the Runes.
The Havamal
It is also the night before May Day (hence "May Eve"), which is, of course, the generative fertility holiday of Spring that gives us Easter and Beltane and all of the other "sex and babies" holidays associated with this time of year in the West. And so for all of these reasons, Walpurgisnacht is traditionally associated with magick and sorcery (magick, like sex, being another form of creation).
For almost ten years now, I have celebrated Walpurgisnacht in the same way: enjoying a specific psychedelic sacrament, and performing all manner of sorcery and divination and psycho-spiritual exploration until the Sun comes up on May Day. So that's put me in a bit of a dilemma regarding how to celebrate this year. Because I don't want to break this spiritual tradition that I have kept for so long now, but I also don't want to fail at staying sober almost immediately after I've started. And it's further complicated by the fact that, though I realize it is technically a drug, and would affect my neurochemistry in the exact way I'm trying not to do right now, I really do not view this particular experience to be at all related to what I'm currently attempting to avoid. What I'm struggling with right now is regular, recreational drug-use, and this is neither of those things. This is not a fun, pleasurable drug that makes me feel good so that I want to do it all the time. This drug is an intense, exhausting, highly spiritual experience for me, and more often than not Walpurgisnacht is the one and only time I'll do it all year. It is impossible to get addicted to it, and I have never craved it. So, while treating it the same as booze and pot might not be comparing apples and oranges exactly, it certainly doesn't feel like comparing oranges to oranges, either. More like oranges to tangerines, perhaps.
I've been thinking about this a lot lately, and it's been weighing on my mind heavily. My gut, my sense of flow, my sense of my Tao was telling me to go through with it, but when it comes to my instincts telling me to use drugs, it's hard to tell whether it's really my Tao or my addiction masquerading as such. And I've spent so long training myself to ignore that voice inside me telling me to get high, and I'm focused so much on doing that right now, that even though I felt so strongly in my heart and my gut that it was the right thing to do, in my mind it's seemed like a death-sentence. But when I examine my feelings, I really do not want to drink or get high right now, which leads me to believe that my desire to do this must be about something more than that. But then again, "Denial is how it kills you," and I've learned to never let myself accept even the possibility of living in denial. And so lately I've been leaning towards a compromise, wherein I celebrate the holiday as normal, only minus the sacrament. It seemed like the only way to do it, really, but it left me feeling very sad for the loss of this unbroken chain of tradition (almost ten years!) and I just could not shake the feeling that I was doing something wrong.
But now I know what to do. In that lightening storm of ideas that assaulted me during my meditation, it hit me. And, as so often seems to happen with those "Eureka!" moments, the solution seems so obvious now that I cannot believe I couldn't see it earlier.
I will stay sober from now until Walpurgisnacht, as planned. And I will celebrate that night, as usual, as I have so many years before. And then I will start counting my one year of sobriety from the next day, May Day, the day of birth and re-birth and life and renewal. I'm not really losing anything by restarting my year-countdown on May Day (oh, woe is me, I had to stay sober one year and two weeks minus one day, instead of just one straight year - waah), and I'm gaining a lot more in return. And the spiritual meaning of it all lines up so nicely: my year of sobriety, a year of monasticism and self-sacrifice, will span from Walpurgis to Walpurgis, the holy day celebrating self-sacrifice for the acquisition of power and wisdom; and it will begin on May Day, the holy day celebrating life and love and creation. And having this period of sobriety line up with my spiritual model so well will give me another powerful incentive to see it through, and will significantly increase my chances of success.
It's perfect. And in my heart, I feel it's true. I feel it in my gut. And I feel it too, in my head. It all lines up. It all feels right. It flows, finally.
To sacrifice Self to my Self, with no drink from a horn, until screaming, I fall back from there.
This is my Tao.
...
*corrected from 31st - duh - 4/23/12
Sometimes, there is no void. Sometimes, there is instead a flood of creative energy. Sometimes, meditation can be almost overwhelmingly stimulating.
And today was one of those times.
The rush of ideas was so intense that I could barely concentrate on my breathing, and frequently lost focus. And count - I counted to 108 breaths, but I'm sure I actually breathed twice that many. And the inspiration was as varied as it was relentless. I had ideas for stories I want to write, people I want to contact and the reasons why and the things I want to say to them, projects I want to work on and how I want to go about them, reminders, notes, insights and realizations of every sort. For a while, try as I might to ignore it and focus on counting my breaths, I was even aware of this very post writing itself out in my head. But the biggest and most immediate idea that occurred to me during this creative blitzkrieg, and the subject of this entry, is how I'm going to handle the Walpurgisnacht.
So, I had my last drink this past Sunday, and I had my last toke the Sunday before that (that's a story for another post), though it's been many months since I've smoked on a regular basis. The plan was/is to spend a full year completely sober for the first time in my adult life. This is something I've known I needed to do for a long time. I'm a particular kind of addict (I'm sure there's a word for it, but I don't know what it is) - I can be addicted to this for awhile and then put it down, and then be addicted to that for awhile and then put it down, and so on. I don't really have a drug of choice, per se, though I do have preferences, and there's some drugs I absolutely can't stand. But what I'm actually addicted to, is getting high, however that happens. When I quit smoking cigarettes, I compensated by smoking more pot. When I quit smoking pot, I compensated by drinking more. And I always knew I was robbing Peter to pay Paul, but at the time Paul was the one threatening to break my kneecaps, so I just told myself I'd deal with Peter later. But I'm getting older now, and feeling more mortal by the day, and it's time to finally deal with my addictive behavior at the root, rather than dealing with any given addiction to a particular substance one at a time.
But there are some other reasons to do it, as well. Purely from a health perspective, it'd just be good to give my body a bit of a rest from all the punishment I've put it through the last twenty years or so, now that I'm getting older. It's also partly an experiment - I just want to see what will happen if I stay completely sober for a year. It's partly to give my brain chemistry a chance to return to some semblance of normal, and then to re-evaluate and see how I feel, and who I feel I am. And in part it's also a test - I want to see if I can do this.
Ok, so what does all that have to do with Walpurgisnacht? The night of April 30th*, aka Walpurgisnacht, or Hexennacht, or Witches' Night, or May Eve, is a very important holy day on the Heathen calendar. It is the counterpart to Yule, the holiest season of the year, and marks the other pole of the ancient pagan year (the two holidays being approximately six months apart). As during Yule, it is believed that the barriers between the material world and the spirit world are more permeable on the Night of Walpurgis. The Eddas (ancient Heathen holy epic lore-poems that comprise much of our knowledge of their religion and culture) tell us that it was on Walpurgisnacht that Odin earned the knowledge and power of the Runes. He stabbed himself through the chest with his spear, pinning himself upside-down to the World Tree, Yggdrasil, and hung there for nine nights. On the ninth night, May Eve, he "died" as much as a god-creator can, his consciousness leaving his body and descending to the three wells at the root of the World Tree, wherein he found and took up the Runes.
- I know that I hung on a windy tree
- nine long nights,
- wounded with a spear, dedicated to Odin,
- sacrifice self to myself,
- on that tree of which no man knows
- from where its roots run.
-Runatal ("Odin's Rune Song")
- No bread did they give me nor a drink from a horn,
- downwards I peered;
- I took up the runes, screaming I took them,
- then I fell back from there.
The Havamal
It is also the night before May Day (hence "May Eve"), which is, of course, the generative fertility holiday of Spring that gives us Easter and Beltane and all of the other "sex and babies" holidays associated with this time of year in the West. And so for all of these reasons, Walpurgisnacht is traditionally associated with magick and sorcery (magick, like sex, being another form of creation).
For almost ten years now, I have celebrated Walpurgisnacht in the same way: enjoying a specific psychedelic sacrament, and performing all manner of sorcery and divination and psycho-spiritual exploration until the Sun comes up on May Day. So that's put me in a bit of a dilemma regarding how to celebrate this year. Because I don't want to break this spiritual tradition that I have kept for so long now, but I also don't want to fail at staying sober almost immediately after I've started. And it's further complicated by the fact that, though I realize it is technically a drug, and would affect my neurochemistry in the exact way I'm trying not to do right now, I really do not view this particular experience to be at all related to what I'm currently attempting to avoid. What I'm struggling with right now is regular, recreational drug-use, and this is neither of those things. This is not a fun, pleasurable drug that makes me feel good so that I want to do it all the time. This drug is an intense, exhausting, highly spiritual experience for me, and more often than not Walpurgisnacht is the one and only time I'll do it all year. It is impossible to get addicted to it, and I have never craved it. So, while treating it the same as booze and pot might not be comparing apples and oranges exactly, it certainly doesn't feel like comparing oranges to oranges, either. More like oranges to tangerines, perhaps.
I've been thinking about this a lot lately, and it's been weighing on my mind heavily. My gut, my sense of flow, my sense of my Tao was telling me to go through with it, but when it comes to my instincts telling me to use drugs, it's hard to tell whether it's really my Tao or my addiction masquerading as such. And I've spent so long training myself to ignore that voice inside me telling me to get high, and I'm focused so much on doing that right now, that even though I felt so strongly in my heart and my gut that it was the right thing to do, in my mind it's seemed like a death-sentence. But when I examine my feelings, I really do not want to drink or get high right now, which leads me to believe that my desire to do this must be about something more than that. But then again, "Denial is how it kills you," and I've learned to never let myself accept even the possibility of living in denial. And so lately I've been leaning towards a compromise, wherein I celebrate the holiday as normal, only minus the sacrament. It seemed like the only way to do it, really, but it left me feeling very sad for the loss of this unbroken chain of tradition (almost ten years!) and I just could not shake the feeling that I was doing something wrong.
But now I know what to do. In that lightening storm of ideas that assaulted me during my meditation, it hit me. And, as so often seems to happen with those "Eureka!" moments, the solution seems so obvious now that I cannot believe I couldn't see it earlier.
I will stay sober from now until Walpurgisnacht, as planned. And I will celebrate that night, as usual, as I have so many years before. And then I will start counting my one year of sobriety from the next day, May Day, the day of birth and re-birth and life and renewal. I'm not really losing anything by restarting my year-countdown on May Day (oh, woe is me, I had to stay sober one year and two weeks minus one day, instead of just one straight year - waah), and I'm gaining a lot more in return. And the spiritual meaning of it all lines up so nicely: my year of sobriety, a year of monasticism and self-sacrifice, will span from Walpurgis to Walpurgis, the holy day celebrating self-sacrifice for the acquisition of power and wisdom; and it will begin on May Day, the holy day celebrating life and love and creation. And having this period of sobriety line up with my spiritual model so well will give me another powerful incentive to see it through, and will significantly increase my chances of success.
It's perfect. And in my heart, I feel it's true. I feel it in my gut. And I feel it too, in my head. It all lines up. It all feels right. It flows, finally.
To sacrifice Self to my Self, with no drink from a horn, until screaming, I fall back from there.
This is my Tao.
...
*corrected from 31st - duh - 4/23/12
Friday, April 16, 2010
"Sicilians are great liars..."
Oddly enough, "Drug addict" and "President of the United States" share one thing in common. Both titles, once earned, are yours forever, and can never be disowned.
I am a drug addict. Whether I use or not, I will always be a drug addict. The only difference between me and the sad sacks you see on shows like Intervention, is that I'm good at it. I am a smart, and successful drug addict. Those unfortunate people are ignorant, and weak, and they just seem to run headlong off the deep-end as quickly as possible. They don't have the knowledge or the will to keep from being completely consumed by their addiction, so they just go straight up in flames. It's not their fault (usually); it's just how things turned out for them. But I'm smart, and strong. And I have the intuitive understanding of addiction that can only come from being raised by a family of drug addicts. I am a GREAT fucking drug addict.
I'm still killing myself. Obviously. No different from those pathetic zombies on the TV; not in the end. But see, I know what I'm doing. I know how to make it laaaast. I know how to keep it from killing me too quickly, so that I can continue to use. Make it take as long as possible so that I can suck every single molecule of meaningless, masturbatory bio-pharmacological bliss out of it before it inevitably kills me.
THAT is the mark of a great addict. Exerting only just enough control to keep it going, to make it last, but not enough to stop. "We called him 'Mother Superior' on account of the length of his habit." Too much control and you quit, and the fun's over, and you live a long, boring life of wishing you could get high; too little, and you end up dying of the DT's in the gutter before you ever even get to live.
I want to live as long as possible. But I also want to feel good as much of that life as I possibly can. I know, in the end, that I'll die screaming. But will I regret the choices that brought me there? I mean, honestly - doesn't everyone scream when they die? Still, the greatest addict who ever lived, was still just a fucking junkie when you get right down to it. How am I any different?
We're defined by how we live, not how we die. (Unless you end up winning a Darwin award.) I never felt a need to be great. Never had any desire to change the world, or "leave my mark" for future generations. I just want to live my life with as little pain, and as much pleasure, as I possibly can. And so, every day, I get up and walk that line between living well and dying young.
I'm not sure where it's leading me, but the view is breath-taking. On both sides.
I am a drug addict. Whether I use or not, I will always be a drug addict. The only difference between me and the sad sacks you see on shows like Intervention, is that I'm good at it. I am a smart, and successful drug addict. Those unfortunate people are ignorant, and weak, and they just seem to run headlong off the deep-end as quickly as possible. They don't have the knowledge or the will to keep from being completely consumed by their addiction, so they just go straight up in flames. It's not their fault (usually); it's just how things turned out for them. But I'm smart, and strong. And I have the intuitive understanding of addiction that can only come from being raised by a family of drug addicts. I am a GREAT fucking drug addict.
I'm still killing myself. Obviously. No different from those pathetic zombies on the TV; not in the end. But see, I know what I'm doing. I know how to make it laaaast. I know how to keep it from killing me too quickly, so that I can continue to use. Make it take as long as possible so that I can suck every single molecule of meaningless, masturbatory bio-pharmacological bliss out of it before it inevitably kills me.
THAT is the mark of a great addict. Exerting only just enough control to keep it going, to make it last, but not enough to stop. "We called him 'Mother Superior' on account of the length of his habit." Too much control and you quit, and the fun's over, and you live a long, boring life of wishing you could get high; too little, and you end up dying of the DT's in the gutter before you ever even get to live.
I want to live as long as possible. But I also want to feel good as much of that life as I possibly can. I know, in the end, that I'll die screaming. But will I regret the choices that brought me there? I mean, honestly - doesn't everyone scream when they die? Still, the greatest addict who ever lived, was still just a fucking junkie when you get right down to it. How am I any different?
We're defined by how we live, not how we die. (Unless you end up winning a Darwin award.) I never felt a need to be great. Never had any desire to change the world, or "leave my mark" for future generations. I just want to live my life with as little pain, and as much pleasure, as I possibly can. And so, every day, I get up and walk that line between living well and dying young.
I'm not sure where it's leading me, but the view is breath-taking. On both sides.
Friday, August 15, 2008
Hail ManniMoonYin (2.20.08)...
I wasn't cold. I remember being surprised by that. Floating in outer space, thousands of miles above Earth, I somehow expected I would feel cold. But, then again, I wasn't in my body just then, either. It was only my astral body, my self-image, a mental projection of my Self, that was hovering there in the darkness; surrounded by a pseudo-spaceship of geometric forms woven from my own ch'i, the three Black Lotuses flowering at my tan-t'ien connected by a line of ch'i in the loop of the microcosmic orbit, the Chaosphere slowly rotating counter-clockwise in the center of my mind, and my form firmly attached to the glowing, white light of the infinite Axis Mundi passing straight down through my head, my spine, and out to the ends of everything.
I also hadn't expected the Moon to be so goddamned big. It was ENORMOUS! It filled almost my entire field of vision and appeared to be much larger than either the Earth or the Sun behind me. I had apparently arrived just in time for the eclipse, as there was only a sliver of glowing white Moon left visible on the left hand side of its face. Behind me, the Earth was ringed in a corona of fire, as it was positioned directly between the Sun, and myself and the Moon. I was left awestruck at the beauty of these sights, and I just floated there, overwhelmed, as the shadow crept westward across the surface of the Moon. As it inched closer and closer towards the westward edge, towards the totality of the eclipse, my anticipation grew. I eagerly awaited that penultimate cosmic moment when the eclipse would zenith, and the heavenly bodies would align, and the vibratory frequency of the universe would begin to resonate "harmony", "balance", and "Tao". I didn't know what to expect, exactly, but I knew that was the moment I was waiting for, that was the event I was working towards. Finally, the big moment arrived, the shadow moved that final inch, the Moon completely disappeared beneath the shadow of the Earth, and...absolutely nothing happened.
I sat there for a few moments, waiting for something, anything to happen, but nothing did. The sensation was very much as if a symphony had just worked up to its climax, and then everyone had suddenly just stopped playing; no cannons booming, no cymbals crashing, no horns crescendo-ing, nothing. At first, for a moment, I was simply confused. How could this be happening? But quickly I transitioned into disappointment. Once again, I felt like a fool. I'd gotten my hopes up, but once again, I'd ended up just talking to myself. I felt useless and stupid. As the shadow began to move off the westward edge of the Moon, and the first crescent of white light appeared on its eastward edge, the eclipse now ending, I decided it was time for me to leave, to return to my body and go to bed. But just then, I heard a voice in my mind, completely distinct from my own internal monologue, say:
"All things that are, are change."
I knew this was the Spirit of the Moon. The Spirit of the Moon, speaking directly to me. And for some reason that I still cannot explain, instead of being completely elated by this turn of events (after all, this meant that I hadn't failed, after all; that I wasn't just talking to myself out here), instead I felt bitterly disappointed by what the Moon Spirit had said. It was a paraphrase of Heraclitus: "All things that are, are Fire." And it was an idea with which I was intimately familiar, and had been for a long time. So, yeah, the Moon Spirit was talking to me, but it still didn't change anything; it was just telling me what I already knew. It was telling me that the only constant is change. That nothing lasts forever. That everything is mutable. Basically, the philosophy that had guided me for the past ten years. And so I sarcastically replied back to the Spirit:
"Yeah. Tell me something I don't know."
To which it immediately replied, "You cannot be good. You cannot be bad. You can only be."
The realization of the truth of this statement hit me like a hammer blow. It was as if God himself had just personally forgiven me of all my sins; had told me, in fact, that I could never have even sinned to begin with. Of course, I can't be good or bad! How had I not realized that before? "Good" and "bad" are arbitrary concepts; ideas that each individual person defines for themselves in any given situation based on their own experience and point of view. That doesn't make them real. The only thing that's real, the only thing I can be certain of, is that I exist. Cogito ergo sum. That doesn't mean, "I exist because I think." It means "The only thing I can be certain of is my own existence, because there has to be some thing existing to think of the question in the first place." "I am" is the only universally true statement. Everything else is relative.
I really hate to resort to the cliché "it felt as if a weight had been lifted off of my chest," but in this case it's absolutely true. I physically felt lighter, as though I had finally dropped a weight of chains that I had been carrying coiled around my body for months now. I knew something with certainty again. What an incredible feeling! I had found one tiny piece of solid ground to stand on, after being adrift and lost in an endless void of empty questions for so long. And I wasn't a bad person. And I wasn't a good person, either. I was just Michael. The months of self-abuse, of giving in to my desires, of escaping into selfish pleasure, of hurting the people I Loved most just because I didn't know how to care about anything else...none of it mattered. It was done, and I couldn't undo it, or make up for it. But it didn't make me who I am, either. What's done, is Done, and in any given moment, I am free to define myself as I see fit, regardless of what has come before. I am only who I decide to be. I wept uncontrollably with joy, and relief, and the overwhelming knowledge of all the possibilities inherent in life.
As I wept, dazed and dumbfounded, the Moon Spirit continued:
"Your new mantras will be 'Look on the bright side.' and 'Make the most of it.' This is the only life you get. 'You walk but once among the living, so no regrets, and no forgiving.' And since 'there's nothing good nor bad in this world but thinking makes it so,' then find the good in everything. Even your mother's suicide was a good thing when you figured out how to look at it the right way. Choose joy, and you will be joyous."
And again, the sheer force of the truth of the Moon Spirit's words drilled right to the core of my Self. My mother had been right. In fact, she was the only one in the situation who had been right. With her repeated suicided attempts, she was telling us that she had to go. She kept trying to leave, but we wouldn't let her. It's not just that she couldn't take the constant pain and depression any longer. It was that she knew that she was destroying our family; dragging all of us down with her into her madness and into the agony of her slow death. Her suicide wasn't a selfish act. It was a self-less act. It was an act of Love. The ultimate act of Love, in fact. She had given her life so that we wouldn't have to suffer. She'd died to save us. All I have to do to see the truth of this is to look at our family now, and then imagine what it would be like if she were still here. Looking at where each of us is now, and the lives we have, there's simply no denying that we wouldn't have anything we have now if she were still alive and suffering and mad. Our lives are better in every way now than they were then, and things would only have continued to have gotten worse for everyone if she hadn't died. She would've gotten sicker and sicker, and crazier and crazier, and fallen deeper and deeper into addiction and abuse. And we all would've gone crazy ourselves trying desperately and futilely to help her and to keep her alive. It sounds so horrible to say that our whole family is better in every way because our mother committed suicide, but as horrible as it might be, that doesn't change the fact that it is also unarguably true. She was right. She was trying to do what she needed to do to save her family. But we wouldn't listen to her. We wouldn't let her go. We wouldn't even let ourselves entertain the possibility. "How can you think that? What's wrong with you? How can you say those things? You have to live! You have to stay with us!" As though she didn't have any choice in the matter. As though she didn't have any say in how she lived her own life.
We were the bad guys here. She was the hero.
So then, that would mean that the part I played in bringing about her death was a good thing, too, wouldn't it? My intent had never been to kill her. My intent had been to "end her pain, and bring her peace." And isn't that exactly what happened? She wasn't suffering anymore. And neither were the people she Loved. Yeah, it hurt a lot when she died. But we're all better off now because of it. I didn't want to hurt her. I Loved her. As crazy and abusive and fucked up as she was, she was also wonderful and caring and thoughtful, and I Loved her. My ritual that night had been as much an act of Love as her suicide had. I just didn't want her to be in pain anymore. And obviously, she felt the same. So what's the point of beating myself up about it? Yes, I could truthfully say "I killed my mother." But I could also truthfully say "I saved my mother, and our entire family from a slow, painful death." It all depends on which side of the street you're standing on. And if they're both true, then why would I choose to view it from the side that makes me into an evil monster, when I could just as easily view it from the side that makes me a powerful savior?
I knew then, that everything would be different from here on out. I knew, with absolute certainty, that nothing is good, and nothing is bad. Everything is both good and bad. The only thing that changes, is our perception. So I would "look on the bright side." I would "make the most of it." I would try to find the good in everything from now on, and not let myself get depressed or miserable or angry when things didn't go the way I wanted. I'd know that, in those situations, there really isn't anything wrong or bad to be upset about; it's simply my point of view that would make it appear that way. So I would change my point of view. I would choose to be joyous.
To say that I was overwhelmed at that point (as I've said several times already here myself) would be a gross understatement. I felt absolutely transformed, transfigured, transmogrified! I felt changed on a genetic level. I could feel my focus slipping, my grip on the mental image beginning to loosen under the effects of such a deep and profound catharsis. Sensing that it was time to go, I bowed low to the Moon Spirit, in deep gratitude and sincere appreciation, and thanked it profusely for showing me so many truths. As I began to descend along the Axis Mundi back to my body, the Spirit said to me:
"There is one more thing you should know before you return. You are amazing. And so is everyone else."
Aleister Crowley said, "Every man and every woman is a Star." Jesus said, "Let he who is without sin, cast the first stone." We are all human. We all live the same human lives, on the same planet, spinning through the same universe. Just as "good" and "bad" are merely points of view, so, too, there is really no such thing as a person who is "better" or "worse" than anyone else. Think of all that we are capable of! Memory. Emotion. Reason. Language. Consciousness. Science. Magick. Each and every human being is a truly magnificent and amazing thing. The probability of our coming to exist at all is basically nil, and yet here we are, doing the most extraordinary things. The idea of another person being better or worse than me is just an illusion created by the angle of my view. And I also can't let myself forget, that I am one of these amazing monkeys, myself. No matter what I do, no matter how I fuck up, no matter how down on myself I might get, I am still amazing. Just the mere fact of my existence is miraculous, in and of itself. So I won't beat myself up when I don't live up to my own standards. And I will count every human being as my brother or my sister. And when they do something that hurts me, I won't consider them inferior to myself; I will remember that I have done similar things myself, that everyone has, and that in a similar situation, I could appear to someone else just as they appear to me now. And when I meet someone who seems greater than myself, I will remember that they are just a person, like me, and while they may be able to do some things better than I can, there are also surely many things that I can do better than they.
Still reeling from the weight of so many epiphanies experienced so quickly, I descended through space, through the clouds, down to Earth, and back into my body. It felt as if I'd been gone for at least an hour. I removed my mindfold and looked at the clock. It had been only 20 minutes.
That night I slept peacefully and deeply and contentedly, in a way that I had forgotten was possible.
But it didn't end there. Over the next few days, this experience, and the four truths I learned here, would continue to challenge and change me, and lead me to even greater discoveries and epiphanies, which would result in the most profound personal transformation I could ever have hoped to experience. Until then, remember, You Cannot Be Good, You Cannot Be Bad; You Can Only Be.
I also hadn't expected the Moon to be so goddamned big. It was ENORMOUS! It filled almost my entire field of vision and appeared to be much larger than either the Earth or the Sun behind me. I had apparently arrived just in time for the eclipse, as there was only a sliver of glowing white Moon left visible on the left hand side of its face. Behind me, the Earth was ringed in a corona of fire, as it was positioned directly between the Sun, and myself and the Moon. I was left awestruck at the beauty of these sights, and I just floated there, overwhelmed, as the shadow crept westward across the surface of the Moon. As it inched closer and closer towards the westward edge, towards the totality of the eclipse, my anticipation grew. I eagerly awaited that penultimate cosmic moment when the eclipse would zenith, and the heavenly bodies would align, and the vibratory frequency of the universe would begin to resonate "harmony", "balance", and "Tao". I didn't know what to expect, exactly, but I knew that was the moment I was waiting for, that was the event I was working towards. Finally, the big moment arrived, the shadow moved that final inch, the Moon completely disappeared beneath the shadow of the Earth, and...absolutely nothing happened.
I sat there for a few moments, waiting for something, anything to happen, but nothing did. The sensation was very much as if a symphony had just worked up to its climax, and then everyone had suddenly just stopped playing; no cannons booming, no cymbals crashing, no horns crescendo-ing, nothing. At first, for a moment, I was simply confused. How could this be happening? But quickly I transitioned into disappointment. Once again, I felt like a fool. I'd gotten my hopes up, but once again, I'd ended up just talking to myself. I felt useless and stupid. As the shadow began to move off the westward edge of the Moon, and the first crescent of white light appeared on its eastward edge, the eclipse now ending, I decided it was time for me to leave, to return to my body and go to bed. But just then, I heard a voice in my mind, completely distinct from my own internal monologue, say:
"All things that are, are change."
I knew this was the Spirit of the Moon. The Spirit of the Moon, speaking directly to me. And for some reason that I still cannot explain, instead of being completely elated by this turn of events (after all, this meant that I hadn't failed, after all; that I wasn't just talking to myself out here), instead I felt bitterly disappointed by what the Moon Spirit had said. It was a paraphrase of Heraclitus: "All things that are, are Fire." And it was an idea with which I was intimately familiar, and had been for a long time. So, yeah, the Moon Spirit was talking to me, but it still didn't change anything; it was just telling me what I already knew. It was telling me that the only constant is change. That nothing lasts forever. That everything is mutable. Basically, the philosophy that had guided me for the past ten years. And so I sarcastically replied back to the Spirit:
"Yeah. Tell me something I don't know."
To which it immediately replied, "You cannot be good. You cannot be bad. You can only be."
The realization of the truth of this statement hit me like a hammer blow. It was as if God himself had just personally forgiven me of all my sins; had told me, in fact, that I could never have even sinned to begin with. Of course, I can't be good or bad! How had I not realized that before? "Good" and "bad" are arbitrary concepts; ideas that each individual person defines for themselves in any given situation based on their own experience and point of view. That doesn't make them real. The only thing that's real, the only thing I can be certain of, is that I exist. Cogito ergo sum. That doesn't mean, "I exist because I think." It means "The only thing I can be certain of is my own existence, because there has to be some thing existing to think of the question in the first place." "I am" is the only universally true statement. Everything else is relative.
I really hate to resort to the cliché "it felt as if a weight had been lifted off of my chest," but in this case it's absolutely true. I physically felt lighter, as though I had finally dropped a weight of chains that I had been carrying coiled around my body for months now. I knew something with certainty again. What an incredible feeling! I had found one tiny piece of solid ground to stand on, after being adrift and lost in an endless void of empty questions for so long. And I wasn't a bad person. And I wasn't a good person, either. I was just Michael. The months of self-abuse, of giving in to my desires, of escaping into selfish pleasure, of hurting the people I Loved most just because I didn't know how to care about anything else...none of it mattered. It was done, and I couldn't undo it, or make up for it. But it didn't make me who I am, either. What's done, is Done, and in any given moment, I am free to define myself as I see fit, regardless of what has come before. I am only who I decide to be. I wept uncontrollably with joy, and relief, and the overwhelming knowledge of all the possibilities inherent in life.
As I wept, dazed and dumbfounded, the Moon Spirit continued:
"Your new mantras will be 'Look on the bright side.' and 'Make the most of it.' This is the only life you get. 'You walk but once among the living, so no regrets, and no forgiving.' And since 'there's nothing good nor bad in this world but thinking makes it so,' then find the good in everything. Even your mother's suicide was a good thing when you figured out how to look at it the right way. Choose joy, and you will be joyous."
And again, the sheer force of the truth of the Moon Spirit's words drilled right to the core of my Self. My mother had been right. In fact, she was the only one in the situation who had been right. With her repeated suicided attempts, she was telling us that she had to go. She kept trying to leave, but we wouldn't let her. It's not just that she couldn't take the constant pain and depression any longer. It was that she knew that she was destroying our family; dragging all of us down with her into her madness and into the agony of her slow death. Her suicide wasn't a selfish act. It was a self-less act. It was an act of Love. The ultimate act of Love, in fact. She had given her life so that we wouldn't have to suffer. She'd died to save us. All I have to do to see the truth of this is to look at our family now, and then imagine what it would be like if she were still here. Looking at where each of us is now, and the lives we have, there's simply no denying that we wouldn't have anything we have now if she were still alive and suffering and mad. Our lives are better in every way now than they were then, and things would only have continued to have gotten worse for everyone if she hadn't died. She would've gotten sicker and sicker, and crazier and crazier, and fallen deeper and deeper into addiction and abuse. And we all would've gone crazy ourselves trying desperately and futilely to help her and to keep her alive. It sounds so horrible to say that our whole family is better in every way because our mother committed suicide, but as horrible as it might be, that doesn't change the fact that it is also unarguably true. She was right. She was trying to do what she needed to do to save her family. But we wouldn't listen to her. We wouldn't let her go. We wouldn't even let ourselves entertain the possibility. "How can you think that? What's wrong with you? How can you say those things? You have to live! You have to stay with us!" As though she didn't have any choice in the matter. As though she didn't have any say in how she lived her own life.
We were the bad guys here. She was the hero.
So then, that would mean that the part I played in bringing about her death was a good thing, too, wouldn't it? My intent had never been to kill her. My intent had been to "end her pain, and bring her peace." And isn't that exactly what happened? She wasn't suffering anymore. And neither were the people she Loved. Yeah, it hurt a lot when she died. But we're all better off now because of it. I didn't want to hurt her. I Loved her. As crazy and abusive and fucked up as she was, she was also wonderful and caring and thoughtful, and I Loved her. My ritual that night had been as much an act of Love as her suicide had. I just didn't want her to be in pain anymore. And obviously, she felt the same. So what's the point of beating myself up about it? Yes, I could truthfully say "I killed my mother." But I could also truthfully say "I saved my mother, and our entire family from a slow, painful death." It all depends on which side of the street you're standing on. And if they're both true, then why would I choose to view it from the side that makes me into an evil monster, when I could just as easily view it from the side that makes me a powerful savior?
I knew then, that everything would be different from here on out. I knew, with absolute certainty, that nothing is good, and nothing is bad. Everything is both good and bad. The only thing that changes, is our perception. So I would "look on the bright side." I would "make the most of it." I would try to find the good in everything from now on, and not let myself get depressed or miserable or angry when things didn't go the way I wanted. I'd know that, in those situations, there really isn't anything wrong or bad to be upset about; it's simply my point of view that would make it appear that way. So I would change my point of view. I would choose to be joyous.
To say that I was overwhelmed at that point (as I've said several times already here myself) would be a gross understatement. I felt absolutely transformed, transfigured, transmogrified! I felt changed on a genetic level. I could feel my focus slipping, my grip on the mental image beginning to loosen under the effects of such a deep and profound catharsis. Sensing that it was time to go, I bowed low to the Moon Spirit, in deep gratitude and sincere appreciation, and thanked it profusely for showing me so many truths. As I began to descend along the Axis Mundi back to my body, the Spirit said to me:
"There is one more thing you should know before you return. You are amazing. And so is everyone else."
Aleister Crowley said, "Every man and every woman is a Star." Jesus said, "Let he who is without sin, cast the first stone." We are all human. We all live the same human lives, on the same planet, spinning through the same universe. Just as "good" and "bad" are merely points of view, so, too, there is really no such thing as a person who is "better" or "worse" than anyone else. Think of all that we are capable of! Memory. Emotion. Reason. Language. Consciousness. Science. Magick. Each and every human being is a truly magnificent and amazing thing. The probability of our coming to exist at all is basically nil, and yet here we are, doing the most extraordinary things. The idea of another person being better or worse than me is just an illusion created by the angle of my view. And I also can't let myself forget, that I am one of these amazing monkeys, myself. No matter what I do, no matter how I fuck up, no matter how down on myself I might get, I am still amazing. Just the mere fact of my existence is miraculous, in and of itself. So I won't beat myself up when I don't live up to my own standards. And I will count every human being as my brother or my sister. And when they do something that hurts me, I won't consider them inferior to myself; I will remember that I have done similar things myself, that everyone has, and that in a similar situation, I could appear to someone else just as they appear to me now. And when I meet someone who seems greater than myself, I will remember that they are just a person, like me, and while they may be able to do some things better than I can, there are also surely many things that I can do better than they.
Still reeling from the weight of so many epiphanies experienced so quickly, I descended through space, through the clouds, down to Earth, and back into my body. It felt as if I'd been gone for at least an hour. I removed my mindfold and looked at the clock. It had been only 20 minutes.
That night I slept peacefully and deeply and contentedly, in a way that I had forgotten was possible.
But it didn't end there. Over the next few days, this experience, and the four truths I learned here, would continue to challenge and change me, and lead me to even greater discoveries and epiphanies, which would result in the most profound personal transformation I could ever have hoped to experience. Until then, remember, You Cannot Be Good, You Cannot Be Bad; You Can Only Be.
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
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."
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."
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