Hi, how are you? I have been feeling weird, as though I have reached the end up some rope and there is no rope left to move forward with. The person I am used to being feels foreign to me.
Recently, I lost all my friends, probably due to Mars- the God of War- making his way through my House of Relationships. This forced me to detox from my relational self and once the detox was complete, I couldn’t relate anymore to my personality. I am, once again, a person without a personality, a crab without a shell.
And I feel aimless. Life feels dry and pointless. All I want is an adventure. But it is this restless feeling that usually leads me straight to the hospital, rather than standing atop Everest, an intoxicating breeze through my hair.
Everything is a swirl. I have written a million blog posts recently, but by the time I get to the end, my thoughts have shifted so far I can no longer relate to anything I said. Then I delete it. This will probably be deleted to, we will see. Word salad.
It feels like I have already done everything there is to do. I know this can’t be true, and yet every road *feels* like a road I have seen before. Why is this?
We all live in a reality, I guess, and that reality has parameters. Eventually, you get a sense of where the parameters lie.
Sure, there are books I have yet to read, but I feel like anything they say will fall within the parameters of the world I already know. Boring. I want to open a book and have a dragon pop out. He will whisper in my ear where I can find buried treasure. I will go to dig it up and thus begin an adventure of epic proportions, dissolving my sense of reality and replacing it with something magical & expansive.
I know it can be done. To step outside the walls of your reality into a world that is fresh and new. But how? I’m sure I could figure it out, if only my brain could step outside this swirling wind.
Here is a picture, for people who can’t stand words without pictures. These are some deadnettles I picked from the yard to make into deadnettle vinegar. I don’t know what I will do with it. Some people say it cures allergies, or maybe I will use it to clean the house. But deadnettles were covering the whole front yard this spring and I felt like it had to be a sign. Don’t you believe that the plants with the physical or magical qualities you need the most will find a way of making it to your door?
Recently, I haven’t been feeling like myself. This could be from spending too much time on Facebook where you don’t get treated like yourself, but more as a dumping bin for people’s unwanted emotions.
The reason I was on Facebook, though, was because I couldn’t move for a while due to a kidney infection. And so I’ve been taking antibiotics which might also be causing me to feel strange as the bacteria I have loved and relied upon die off around me.
Last night in a dream, I was attacked by two men. A third one came up to save me, but it turned out he was a friend of the bad guys and stuffed me into their black van.
My life feels upside down. I live in a large historic house which requires money and care, but my husband’s job is building a cryptocurrency trading site that pays nothing. Nor does he want me to work, since he prefers I spend my time on music & other shadowy interests. So, financially, there is not just a paucity but a growing vacuum, with no sign of change in sight.
Psychically, I feel depleted because my husband sleeps through the day and works through the night, meaning I rarely see him. Lacking transportation or friends in this city, I rarely see anyone else either. I can make friends online, but there I am just a replaceable commodity. People are friends so long as political ideas align, but the second ideas diverge it is over. And still it is essential to talk about politics, because it is the only thing online people are passionate about.
And then I do astrology readings, which makes me feel both connected and depleted at the same time. I don’t charge for them, because it is easier that way. I learn a lot from looking at people’s charts and I enjoy it. If I turned this into a business, it would limit the number of charts I could see. Nonetheless this creates a void situation. Psychic energy going out, psychic energy not coming back in.
It feels like my whole life is a void, one that I must fill with my own energy. But sometimes this becomes exhausting and I don’t want to entertain myself anymore. I want the world to take me for a ride.
So, as usual, I have devised an impractical solution. Unless you have a lot of patience, you should probably stop reading now, since this may be difficult to explain…
Basically, I don’t believe all humans live in the same reality. In the USA, we believe we are living in a scientific world, and things generally appear that way. But that is not how all humans experience things.
The different realities a human can inhabit correspond to the different climates and ecosystems of the earth. For example, as you move closer to the equator and heat increases, the objective grid of reality starts to melt. Scientific laws become more mutable.
Likewise, in places with dense plant life, more energy starts to come in from an alternate reality which I call “the other world” for lack of anything better to call it. This ‘other world’ is not a scientific one, but more closely adheres to the laws of dreams & imagination. Anything conceivable can be.
Water and humidity also create a more fluid and malleable reality than dryness. Hence, why our Judeo-Christian religions- in which spirituality depends upon restraint and holding fixed beliefs- come from the desert.
Therefore, in a tropical rainforest, science is at its weakest and magic at its strongest. In a northern climate (less sun, drier air, sparser plant life) rationality is at its zenith.
Higher powers, of course, can still come into play in Northern climates, but they will play by the rules, maintaining the perception that a person lives within a fixed objective reality and not a swirling dreamlike one.
None of this means that location determines reality. Humans learn from nature for the purpose of re-sculpting it. Ecosystems are patterns. A northerner who felt their soul was dying could emulate the patterns of the south. A southerner who felt their brain was melting could emulate the patterns of the north. (Generally, northern patterns suppress the heart and enliven the brain, while southern patterns do the reverse.)
So, back to my own life. I am going to try to bring in more energy from the South- the tropical rainforest to be exact. Because in a rainforest, there are no voids. Voids belong to the north and to deserts. In the rainforest, energy is so plentiful, you are constantly beating it back with a stick.
But why am I even sharing this with you- my faceless, invisible readers? Normally, I prefer to keep my inner world safely hidden. But this is yet another experiment I am trying. I am going to imagine you, reader, as a wise and loving friend, someone who truly understands me. Perhaps I will pretend your name is Brad.* You are a perceptive and open-minded man with intense interest in everything I have to say. I love you, Brad.
* I might rethink that name. We will see.
Slippers & nature. Two forever friends. Plus, a very strained smile since we are so near the edge of a cliff, and Slippers loves to pull and is way stronger than me.
As I’ve said before, I never know what to say about songs. I don’t think they have literal meanings and yet it feels so haughty to say nothing at all. So, I will say I believe this song was inspired by my experiences with spirituality combined with the woozy feelings of spring.
My spiritual experiences have mostly involved the complete subjugation of myself to another person. This is why I got married the first time. First, I had to go on a private retreat with my spiritual guide to achieve enlightenment (I was a teenager at the time, so it seemed to make sense.) Then of course while driving me to the “retreat” (which turned out to be the basement of his parents’ house) he had to grab my crotch to subjugate my ego. Things degenerated from there until a few days later I had to marry him since I had now touched his naked body which was too pure to be touched out of wedlock.
I don’t think my experiences are unusual, but just what you should expect when dealing with a Spiritual Person. When you see Spiritual Things going on, rest assured there is something dark and perverted behind the curtain.
But why? I don’t know. Maybe because humans can’t be spiritual. It isn’t real. The spiritual world is something we connect to- just like we connect to dogs and plants- but not something we can embody.
If it wasn’t unpopular to do so, I would want to warn people away from all Buddhist & Hindu spin-off movements practiced in America. “Eastern Religions” as we call them. It is not the religions in their natural environment I object to. Even though my degree is in Tibetan Buddhism, I think it is hard, maybe impossible to understand the role religion is playing in another culture, so I don’t have an opinion on whether these religions are good or bad in faraway places. (Although I can say, the history of Tibetan Buddhism is basically a blood bath.) But I do object to the form I see these movements taking in America. I have been involved with a number of them, and while I understand how they excite people with the promise of new horizons, I have never seen them play out well for anyone in the long run. Even meditation (I used to practice Transcendental Meditation) is, in my opinion, better left alone.
My involvement in these realms did lead to many of what you might call spiritual, blissful and transcendent experiences. But I imagine a person could have many of these same experiences from doing drugs. Drugs would probably be preferable to the extent that the person would realize there was a recreational, escapist quality to these states of mind, rather than believing they were rising up to a higher spiritual plane.
One problem with all Spiritual things, from meditation to Christianity is that they tend to create a ricochet between two polarities- good and bad, bliss and suffering, etc. The more a person attempts to bind themselves to one side of this polarity, the stronger the other side grows. But since you are attempting to identify yourself only with the positive side, the negative side gets projected or suppressed until take on a life of its own. Like a poltergeist. One way this can play out is the “spiritual” person becomes a magnet to the dark people who now balance them out. That is how things played for me.
Anyway, here are a few more problems I have with Americanized Eastern Spirituality.
The subjugation of the ego: We have an ego for a reason. It is our self-interested mind. If anyone wants to help you transcend your ego, run as fast as you can. You may as well get a lobotomy.
The denigration of thought: These religions will subtly- or overtly- push the idea that thoughts are a negative thing to be transcended. An impurity of some sort. The guru will humbly giggle about how we all have thoughts- they are nothing to be ashamed of- and yet- let’s just try to gently push them to the side a little, shall we? Thoughts are clouds which block the sky of Pure Awareness. For a long time, I tried to restrict my thinking due to this pernicious influence. When at last I managed to release this notion and feel good about thinking to my heart’s content, my life filled up with color.
Navel gazing: As a rule, I think people are better off striving for external goals than internal ones. Survival demands it. Families and communities rely on it. Navel gazing seems especially harmful to men. Males have a lot of energy that needs to radiate outwards. If they try to fold that energy within themselves, through meditation for example, they become pent-up and angry. You see this a lot in long term meditators. Poke their peace bubble and they explode. Women, on the other hand, are built to hold energy inside like a pool. But meditation is bad for them as well because it focuses on the mind and stillness, whereas women really need the freedom to feel and express their full range of emotions.
Disconnection: Ultimately, a meditator’s life becomes all about themselves. They live in a little bubble and focus on controlling the weather within that bubble. Their goal is essentially their own personal happiness. And though they succeed at feeling high and connected to the universe, it is still a different feeling from the more thick and liquid connections we are meant to have with other humans. A deeper form of happiness arises, I think, when a person no longer cares about their own happiness, their own psychological state, but is focused on goals which transcend their subjective reality. Paradoxically, caring less about your own state of mind is probably the truest way to uplift it.
Gurus and spiritual leaders: All I can say is do not touch these people with a 10 foot pole unless you want to get fucked hard. The strange thing is, you WILL have spiritual experiences around these people. I don’t know why that happens. Maybe it is self-hypnosis. Maybe they have absorbed so much blood and energy from their previous victims that it gives them a form of radiant power. But walk away. You don’t need these experiences. Regular life is more supernatural than any of these spiritual things. We are just so used to it that we forget. At the very least, hire a detective prior to any contact with a spiritual person. He will find bodies. Guaranteed.
Anyway this is just my opinion, and I know there are exceptions to everything. Someone out there was born to meditate, just like some of us were born to swim with sharks or bury ourselves alive. But when people push the idea that everyone should have a meditation practice, I want to hurl. Just get a second job delivering pizzas. Or learn to build houses. Our minds are already working the way they should. We don’t need to tamper with them.
To swing, to fight
A world at night
To shake, to weep
A world asleep.
They sleep, I see
No one touches me
They think I don’t know
The place where all the children go.
Paw Paw the ringing boy
When spring comes he will bring you so much joy.
Paw Paw the ringing boy
When summer comes then the world will fade away.
These things A world of strings But look, you’ll see The world is me.
Alien, okay I don’t care what they say I am bought and sold Although he is very old.
Paw Paw the ringing boy When spring comes he will bring you so much joy. Paw Paw the ringing boy When summer comes then the world will fade away.
Your needs A string of beads I dance, I twirl A milk white pearl.
Worlds fade, worlds end I dance, I spin No one touches me Except for spirituality.
Paw Paw the ringing boy When spring comes he will bring you so much joy. Paw Paw the ringing boy When summer comes then the world will fade away.
Values live on top of a person’s head. They are sometimes confused with goodness, but no set of values can make a person good. In fact, an excessive focus on values can separate a person from the actual seat of goodness- their heart.
The heart is good, but not Good. It is the fuzzy mammalian instinct we have to empathize with and help others. The heart is caring, but not Righteous. It doesn’t care because it should, but just because it is naturally furry and soft. It might not even be aware that it cares; it just reaches out a warm hand to others automatically. The heart expresses her warmth through actions.
Values, on the other hand, are cold and harsh. You could compare them to stars guiding a person through the desert. They offer no warmth nor coziness, but can provide austere guidance and possibly exhilaration. We turn to stars when we are lost and travelling through barren, inhospital places- such as the ocean. It is the same with values. If our whole life were a walk through a rose garden, they might never cross our mind at all. We think of them most when we have nothing else.
Values are useful so long as you choose the right ones. Like stars, values encircle the globe, existing at all locations. They are infinite, and all have polarities- opposites- which are equally valuable. Honing into the right value can help a person to stay focused on their spiritual purpose- like a soldier tuning into Bravery or a salesman into Enthusiasm. There are Soul Values which guide us throughout our life and relate to our deepest purposes, and other values which we may plug into temporarily to navigate an obstacle. Adopting the wrong values, however- such as a soldier plugging into Empathy- could make it impossible to fulfill our mission.
There are two ways to adopt a value. One is to mentally accept it as an idea that you *should* live by it. In this case, it is generally a value derived from our peer group. This can create strong feelings of anger as the foreign value and our nature continually clash. Eventually, this anger may be projected onto others whom the person sees as lacking the value, relieving the guilt they feel in being unable to live up to the value themselves. Ultimately, of course, the angry person needs to question the value of their value and likely trade it in for another, more suitable, choice.
In other cases, a person tries to actually live by a chosen value. I am not sure how common this is, but all our heroes, for example, are people who at least seemed to embody one value or another.
The beauty of a value is that it can unlock supernatural powers. By choosing to follow a value, you are connecting to a living set of higher powers who will set things in motion around you. If you choose the right value, they will be like winds that carry you to your destiny. Choose the wrong value, and it will be an exhilarating ride that leaves you dashed against the rocks.
There are 3 stages a person passes through on the road to spiritual glory.
The White Stage: At this stage, a person develops discipline and character by following rules & seeking to please an authority figure. This could be a child obeying a parent, a student obeying a teacher, a Christian obeying God, etc.
The Black Stage: At this stage, a person is thrust into the battle of life. Following rules and pleasing authority figures will no longer ensure a victory. People are forced to step outside moral codes and do what nature demands to survive.
The Gold Stage: If a person makes it through the black and the white, they will reach the gold stage and wear the crown of wisdom. To wear this crown, a person must be both powerful & benevolent and know how to balance the ideals of heaven with the realities of earth.
This song is about the second stage, the black stage- the world of knights.
A song about kings, as we approach the month of kings. Sometimes I think the whole winter is the time of kings, it is so solemn and intent on not letting anyone have fun. Plus, it is a time when the amount of money you have comes to the forefront.
Probably due to the fact that Pluto- the dark God of the underworld- has recently entered my House of Money, money has become a subject of interest for me. Not actually making it, of course. More like bringing it up in conversations to make people squirm. Nothing is more deliciously taboo than money, not even sex.
Why is money taboo? Well, when you are poor you can’t let anyone know, or they will realize you are powerless and treat you with less respect. And when you are rich, you can’t let anyone know or they will try to take your money. I find all of that incredibly exciting.
Another thing I love about money is how it allows you to perform simple tests to find out if others care about you (hint: they don’t.) People throw words of love at each other all the time, but how many will back up their words with cold hard cash? Of course, you have to be careful when running these tests, because there are people in the world who are truly generous and still don’t care about you. And some who are generous just long enough to hook their fish. But still, I think it is a good idea to ask your friend for $100 dollars every now and then, and if they say no, never talk to them again.
And now I am remembering all the times friends asked me for money & I said no. I always said no, because I hate to give people money… maybe this is not a good test after all. I am not greedy, you know. In fact, I doubt I have based a single life choice around gaining money (unfortunately.) But I am stingy. Once I get a dollar bill in my hand, I don’t want to let it go. And a true friend would never ask me to.
Money, gifts, and shiny balls… come to Julien now!!!
