roaming terrachronos incognito

What does it mean to be a podunk housewife

as well as a most powerful being?
To hold confusion and clarity in the palms of my hands?
To root deeply and wonder among stars?
It is here I find myself, this timespace.
Terrachronos incognito has become my hunting grounds.
I gain sight, strength, understanding.
My perceptions expand to hold All,
more with each breath, each life, each death.

* * *

I am psychopomp, ushering in death, ushering in life.

I escort our souls from the prison to the garden.
Oh steadfast traveler! When find yourself at the crossroads,
add another stone to the cairn of my honor.
This waystop comforts your weariness.

* * *

I am a light in the darkness.

I am a breeze in the stillness.
My wet rain devours your parched throat.
I am the first and the last,
the culmination of the nothing and the absence in the All.
How can I be what I am not?
I am.

you are invited to remake the world
in your own image
this feeling of activity, inside and outside
the mindbody vibrates, notices, emanates
this one day, the one moment of time
i am suspended in
my third dimensional being feels more
i train myself to experience
to perceive the experiences already happening
sensation, impulse, desire, thought
cognate, recognize
i close my eyes and see clearly for the first time
expanding my senses to feel the All
to lie in the arms of my most beloved
to comfort, strengthen, heal
recovering flow, identifying the will:
what is my natural state of being?
this moment in time, my presence becomes honest with itself
so much undoing, unlearning
so much guilt and other crappage baggage to let go
so much forgiveness to embrace
especially of myself
especially to myself
if i can heal myself, in some way i heal All
the challenge always to leave the path of the familiar
the untrodden path beckons us to our fates
full of danger, joy, unknown
a reality of our own making
together with the All
we heal, we forgive, we become human once again:
homo sapiens sans sapiens
we become indigenous to this place
our home
we rest in our movement, part of the natural flow of life
synergy beyond our wildest imaginings...
dare we accept this invitation?
2 95
union, tantric union, one’s True Will, a nexus of magickal power, and Myra’s
personal favorite, the butterfly flaps its wings. If ever Myra had doubts, this time
was not one of them. She asked what she could do, and she received her answer: be
the butterfly, use your power, become one with All.
Myra settled herself down on her couch and thought about all this. She won-
dered, for the millionth time if she was crazy, and answered herself for the
millionth time that of course she wasn’t. Myra could feel magick surrounding her; it
was the flow that enabled her life to move forward. Myra was not educated much in
the ways of sorcery, nor did she honestly have any idea how to enact magick. Myra
moved with magick through the flow of life, amplified it, and it protected her,
always. Magick became the fount of strength and courage and beauty within her.
Myra closed her eyes and relaxed. She went inside her body with her mind’s eye,
deep within the cells to her DNA. She asked the oracle for assistance. She was led
upon a path to a crystal, and she passed through it. Myra traveled to the edges of
the universe and found vast stores of love, truth, beauty, and hope—healing energy
all. She gathered them to her, and traveled back to and through the crystal, back
through her body, and emanated the healing out into the world around her. Slowly,
the energy filled the room, burst out, and filled her yard. It filled her neighborhood,
her city, and her river valley. Myra became one with All That Is. She filled herself
with healing, filled all she could touch with healing. She had no idea what was
happening, or why. But she knew what to do.
* * *
Hermes and crew smiled and relaxed at last. They had passed the twenty-four
hour mark, with no mass killings—a first. The Deranged Mind had
noticed...something, but it was unable to find the words to figure it out. What
cannot be conceived cannot be perceived. (It was rather focused on the oil leak,
anyway, anticipating an anoxic ocean in a mere few years.) The transceivers, the
ones that didn’t burn out, were exhilarated, although still rather confused. It would
take some time, but they would figure out what was going on. And the next time,
the time when all time would be ripe, the time when humanity stepped up to
answer The Question, All would break loose, healing the Deranged Mind once and
for all.
Hermes sighed with relief. At last!
 healing energy through them, and hoped for the best. If you were not a transceiver,
you may wonder what this was like. It was akin to seeing the aweful face of God:
contente de tabula rasa
scary, blissful, overwhelming, terrifying. The transceivers who had not blown out in love letters from past and future 4
the lead-up were pushed to maximum. It was a scary time. To be aware that magick temptation 6
my realities 7
exists and to be comfortable with this reality is not the same as needing to pump reach within you and fight with tools 8
massive amounts of healing energy through one’s body and managing through the journey begins 9
sheer luck to focus it in the right place. The transceivers had no idea what they were psychosomatic chatter 12
doing. The long human traditions of magick being passed through the generations my wabi-sabi life 13
had been interrupted with the trick of obscurement, but it was a necessary risk. how could i ever forget? 16
It was a tense time for Hermes and his crew. This was the last chance. In festival of life in the cracks 17
removing magick from the reality of the masses (as well as removing the concept wishing well 19
celebration of passion 20
of magick even from the memory the Deranged Mind), humans for the most part loves 21
lost all ability to connect their life with that of the planet on which they lived. The learning the will 24
Deranged Mind kicked into high gear, under the perception that it had vanquished zomba not zombies 2012 25
its enemy—that which was trying to heal it. The culture of death grew exponen- armpits can’t help but be sexy 28
tially. The planet was toxic and dying more by the day. The humans were toxic as alchemical infusion, courtesy of the active imagination 29
well, but they were disconnected to the point they did not notice or feel enough to sylvan being 30
care. The magick trick of obscurement was the radiation given the sick host in where i find myself and how i got here 31
the reconstruction era 31
hopes of killing the out-of-control cancer cells before it killed the living body. the gospel of beauty and the art of appreciation 32
The transceivers were amazing, dealing with this way-out-of-ordinary experience baring 34
with grace, although a good many of them were highly freaked out. Myra Eddy, in beauty is nothing other than the promise of happiness 35
particular, was consulting the tarot, trying to figure out what was happening. She blending 38
was becoming paranoid, which wasn’t like her, but she knew enough to listen to her remembering sacred blood 39
feelings. She asked the tarot, “What is going on?” and it spit out the 10 of Swords, sofia 42
Ruin. Crap. Myra consulted her book, which told her that her negative thinking was to you, the most beloved 43
in inner and outer space 49
going to affect her reality. Of course. Any kind of seed will grow in the uncon- take heed, pyramid builders! time is ripe! 50
scious, whether it is something desired or not. Myra knew that whatever she unschooling 51
focused on is what would happen, because whatever she focused on was always the children’s crusade for truth and beauty 56
what happened. She focused on the bliss and healing she felt instead of the tense a waypoint for weary travelers 59
feelings of ....terror. flow 60
“Am I in danger?” she asked the tarot. It gave her the Lust card, known in most doing it ourselves: ritualizing our holy days 61
decks as Strength. It was her own personal card, the one continually given her to may day celebrations 63
we are having a now emergency of the highest order 64
bolster her courage at the beginning of the time of her (then unrealized) magickal levitating over the prison walls: it can be done 65
initiation. Of course she was in danger, and of course she was protected. Some- well, pyramid workers, what shall we do? 73
times the tarot is not reassuring. diy health for all 74
“What can I do?” she asked. The tarot spit out a card that she had never seen dandelions: miracles in your front yard 77
before, not a regular tarot card, but one with a symbol on it. She was stunned. dandelion tincture 78
“What the fuck?” she asked herself over and over as she paced around the room. a healing gift of love 79
“What the fuck?” She had no idea what the symbol was even called, and it was too emotional gardening 81
trappings of language and mysticism 82
unusual to have a name she would know. After her overwhelming sense of wtf in the arms of my most beloved 84
began to subside, she researched online and, with luck, found it was a unicursal get ready! the floodgates are open! 85
hexagram, used by Aleister Crowley, whose deck she was divining from. lying in feral grass with saralin 87
A unicursal hexagram is made of one unbroken line, and is a symbol of raw, breakdown breakthrough 2010 tarot forecast,
unadulterated power. The unicursal hexagram holds many meanings: alchemical passionately infused with a kiss of pronoia 88
a rational magick trick 92
94 roaming terrachronos incognito 94
 love letters from past and future
The energy, the spirit, infuses me. Almost everyone I know is having mystical
experiences, even and especially the skeptics. It’s like a pulsing pushing up feeling
coming into us, inhabiting us, reminding us we are alive. Now, my friends, is the
time for anamnesis, the loss of forgetting. The culture of destruction forgets that
we are living beings, with health and vitality as our birthrights. But some of us are
remembering. We are starting to dream.
Our dreams contain common threads. We are neighbors. We grow food to
nourish our bodies and cut wood to warm ourselves. We cook food and eat it
together. We listen and talk. We care. We love. We share the abundance present in
our lives, insuring we each have enough. We share the sorrow also, knowing that a
burden shared among many makes it easier to bear. We have each other, sharing
deep abiding human relationships. These are the things that matter.
<black swans>
We create our individual and collective realities each and every day with our
thoughts and actions. This is powerful. We (that would be you and me) have it in
our power to imagine and enact a different reality—one that makes sense in the
world as we see it. Global economy and ruin make sense only to the culture of
destruction and to those who sit on top of the pyramid thinking they are in charge
of it all. With our eyes open, we see no point in continuing down this path.
Paradigms are the foundations, or cornerstones, of cultures. They are the
underlying basis of any culture, the basic truths of which are so well understood
that they are never even discussed. Paradigms are so fundamental to our upbring-
ing and education/indoctrination that we are not aware that the foundation of the
paradigm into which we are born is actually something separate from ourselves.
(Are fish aware of the water in which they swim?) There is the misfortune of
building a culture on the cornerstone the builders rejected, and the empire of
Rome/America, Inc. seems to be a prime example of this. There is no program
that can make it better; the foundation is rotten.
It takes a lot of effort to notice the underlying paradigms of our lives. How
many even stop to ponder? In some ways, it is like coming out of a trance, or
waking up. It can be somewhat startling to realize that what you’ve always taken for
granted is full of baloney. It takes an awful lot of courage to think the next few
questions out. And then 10 years later, you may find yourself writing lunatic love
letters from the future and the past; encouraging people to think about what really
matters; to feel the strength and beauty of the whole universe coming from inside
us; to see paradise beneath our feet, where it has always been, waiting for us to
(re)enact a shared story of life on this planet.
4 93
they’re devouring the life beneath their feet!” remarked S. Hermes laughed. Yeah,
that oil leak was something. It sucks when you fly so close to the sun that your
feathers become unglued. Nothing much left to do at that point but...splat.
Hopefully, the plan would work this time, as time was running out.
The crew decided on a brief test run, both to alert the transceivers of the fact
that The Time Had Come and to gauge their reaction to being activated, and also
to see if they could really get away with it this time. The week leading up to
Activation was a challenging one. The crew focused the healing energy on the
transceivers, and blew a few of them out simply with the lead-up energy. If the
energy wasn’t grounded, it devoured. Such as it is with Shiva’s eye: destruction and
creation in the same sweep.
* * *
The spiral appeared in the night sky, and Myra saw the first report of it on
Facebook. Another one! Myra had never been much into UFOs, thinking it was all
silliness. But her ability to feel beyond words had grown to the point her percep-
tions overcame her lingering rational tendencies. She had to admit that magick had
kicked her ass many times, to the point where she could no longer deny its reality.
These days Myra did not believe or disbelieve in much. She simply remained open
to experience, and attempted to make sense of this language of perception—
synaesthesia—as best she could. When she saw the spiral, she didn’t immediately
think of the possibilities of a UFO. It struck her core as something very important,
a sign for all to see, a songline of memory of an ancient path in the dreaming.
Myra had spent the weekend thinking and writing, as was customary when she
found herself alone. She had been feeling so much that past week, spending a lot
of time meditating and doing reiki on herself. Myra had been constantly grounding
energy—had been compelled to—as it was almost bursting through her. Her head
felt buzzy, her body alive. She had eaten copious amounts of food; apparently she
was in need of energy, though it was coursing electrically through her.
Myra had recently been perceiving life through the lens of her mind-body, and
what a trip that was! No longer were the mind and body two separate things, but
she was she, alchemically united once again, body and mind, through a mere
adjustment of language and perception. Myra imagined talking to her DNA, asking
it to reveal itself as the oracle she knew it to be. She had been what she called
“blending” into the universe as a whole—yet another alchemical surprise union.
This feeling of becoming one with All was not a continuous experience, but in
brief moments she became birds, wind, sky, and mountains, part of the flow of
life, enacting her Will, not striving through life. It had been quite a week, to say the
least.
After displaying the ciel circle, the sPIral in the sky over the southern hemi-
sphere, Hermes and crew activated the transceivers. They poured huge amounts of
 a rational magick trick
Hermes gathered his crew about him. It was a small crew, really, just a couple of
left-hand minor gods, banded together with the kind of trust that is generally
garnered among thieves, magicians, and other accomplished liars. “The result of
this effort? Ten thousand witches burned at the stake in *** alone. Every time we
get the gnosis gathered to the point of effectiveness, the Deranged Mind detects it
and knocks it out. How are we ever going to overcome this?” asked M.
Hermes closed his eyes and thought. This was indeed a challenge. Several times
there had been enough authentic humans alive on earth to transmit the healing
energy to the Deranged Mind, but it took time to coordinate the effort. And M was
right; each time they had raised the energy to critical mass, the systems of control
put into place by the Deranged Mind put the kibosh on the whole deal: torture,
burnings, rape, death. How many times could Hermes trigger the mass death of the
plasmate? It was dejecting, to say the least. The last cleansing was so thorough, it
would take hundreds of earth years just to gather enough authentic humans once
again, not to mention the time it would take to train them, to coordinate, and to
wait for the perfect opportunity.
“I have an idea. We need a magick trick to top all magick tricks,” said Hermes.
“The Deranged Mind is so powerful, I am having my doubts we will ever be able to
overcome it,” said S. Hermes grinned, “You think so? It is powerful, but it is merely
a creation. We can create something more powerful, easily.” Hermes was grinning,
but he also remembered the thousands of years of trying, and failing, to overcome
civilization. Hermes announced: “I call this trick ‘rational magick’”.
Through the next few centuries, the idea of ‘the rational mind’ grew to the point
of becoming the dominant paradigm of life on Earth, at least the dominant
paradigm of the active parts of the Deranged Mind—the parts that mattered, the
parts that acted as the middle man in the culture of death. Hermes cast his glance
to divide science and mysticism, which until that time had been on the same branch
of the tree of direct experience. It was difficult at first, with many scientists being
burned at the stake for (horrors!) disagreeing with the Church, current strongman
of the Deranged Mind. But gradually, science was accepted as the only reliable
method of perception. If it can’t be ‘proven’ objectively, it does not exist. Hermes’
plan had worked. The crew regrouped.
The obscurement of magick was tricky. On one hand, magick was felt to be a
childish notion, certainly not ‘real’ in any sense of the word. It was ‘safe’ to practice
magick, as long as one could stay out of the loony bin—that was the challenge of
the day. But, because magick wasn’t considered ‘real’ anymore, any authentic human
was likely to go crazy when the veil of obscurement was lifted. It was a hazy place,
this boundary between what is real, what is not, and what is possible. It is one of
Hermes’ favorite places to dwell.
“I think your plan worked a little too well, Hermes. These people can’t feel or see
anything! Magick is so thick they’re swimming in it, and yet, they don’t even notice.
I mean, it took that oil leak in the ocean for the masses to begin to acknowledge
92
<apocalypse literally means to uncover>
This culture of destruction, or “civilization” as they pride themselves in calling it,
is a 10-15,000 year-old culture, not even spanning as great a time as the Venus
figure cultures that precede us. Civilization’s time has come, and gone. Civilization
is not us, not the foundation of us, if we choose for it not to be. There are many
cultures in which humanity has lived, and we need not put up with one that makes
no sense. There are many answers, many keys, many paths—and there are so many
of us to ask the questions which uncover them. Time is ripe.
If we have courage, we can be healers. Like the sun we shall rise.
—Starhawk, The Fifth Sacred Thing
The courage is necessary, and we won’t find it in the temples of Mammon (Wal-
Mart, etc.). It is something that matters—something we create and find within
ourselves, and draw from the collective strength of our community, near and far.
It takes courage, and despite the sales of pain killers, we are strong. Sometimes we
forget that. Anamnesis again. We are remembering another expression of the
humanity encoded in our DNA throughout our millions of years of existence.
This is our birthright, and we claim it.
Our fear can be powerful. We see what’s ahead if we continue to follow the path
of destruction: messed up climate, dwindling resources, and perpetual war. Many
people are afraid of this future to the point of becoming paralyzed, apathetic,
addicted to distraction, burned out. We can move beyond this place of stagnant
fear by envisioning what we would like to happen, what makes sense, and taking the
actions that demonstrate our active choices as we decide what future we would like
to create. It is important not to rely on your tv, president, teachers, boss, or money
for any support in this endeavor. Those things aren’t even real, and are idiot
puppets of the culture of destruction.
Once we realize what we are for and not just what we are against, we can begin to
focus on creating. The bridge from here to there may seem intimidating to build
diy from scratch. Some advice I followed: “Don’t lie, and don’t do what you hate.”
Being honest with ourselves is vital.
It’s an incredibly exciting time to be alive. What a challenge! Forging a path that
dodges the bullet of civilization is the challenge of our lives and the challenge of
humanity of the present. I feel incredibly privileged to be a part of it all—
humanity, in revolution, giving birth to ourselves, yet again. We are so blessed to
have this opportunity. We are so fortunate to take it.
5
 fractalized cell in our bodies. We have boundless potential. We face insurmount-
able opportunities.
We have attracted to ourselves everyone who is a part of our lives. We have
created and participated in every situation in our lives. Indeed, we create our own
reality. The wealth we hold in our hands is ours to do with as we choose. It is our
freedom and our responsibility. What a blessing to find ourselves endlessly wealthy
in the things that matter.

[poem]

I mirror the universe—

a constant state of flux
to maintain some sort of
chaotic balanced order
so complex it cannot be perceived;
and then, I explode, collapse—
grow and expand—
turn inward and get to know myself:
an endless spiral of growth and decay
being reborn again and again.

[end]

There is infinite abundance born from the dust of a decaying star, the love and
strength and beauty flowing through us remind us of this. Everything unfolds at
the proper time when we relax and trust in life. There is no fear or danger when
we let go. Having given birth to our own souls, it becomes ever easier to support
others doing so. We crawl out of our collective exoskeleton that no longer fits, and
we follow our hearts as they push forth in search of beauty. The untrodden path
beckons us to behold a new life waiting to be lived.

Learning is finding out what you already know.

Action is showing you know.
Teaching is letting others know
that they know it as well as you.

Many thanks to Robert Brezsny for his book Pronoia and to Gerd Ziegler for his book
Tarot, Mirror of the Soul. These two books have had a tremendous impact in my
continuous breakdown breakthrough of the last six months. Also many thanks go
to my community, for reminding me of my strength and courage when I forget.
6 91
 The moment you come to trust chaos, you see god clearly.
Chaos is divine order, versus human order. Change is divine order,
versus human order. When the chaos becomes safety to you,
then you know you’re seeing god clearly. —Caroline Myss
Retreating from fear or pain denies a central part of ourselves. Abundance
comes from giving without question. We trust in our perception that the more
deeply we are engaged in feeling the spectrum of human emotion, the more
comprehensive our insights will be. We can trust in our intuitive nature, our inner
voice, and our ability to heal ourselves. We trust in our responsibility to ourselves,
the responsibility we have to our community, and the responsibility of our commu-
nity to us. Introspection allows us to find our way to the fertile oases within, the
source of which becomes a fount of our strength, courage, and creativity. The
more we accept ourselves and share with others, the clearer our individual and
collective vision will be. To transform, we relax and give ourselves up to the dance.
To walk in the hands of the gods, we give up our worries and embrace the entirety
of human existence, to remember the garden beneath our feet. Anamnesis, the loss
of forgetting, is our recollected blessing.
Contained within our daily lives is everything we need to remake, rebirth,
recreate, realize—REALize—our future as humanity. It’s a challenge, no doubt, but
surely one that our giant brains, vivid imaginations, and unending creativity are up
for. It’s the greatest challenge of our lives, of the life of humanity as far as we
know: turning on a dime, throwing our useless baggage into the gears of the system
of destruction and death, and walking away into creation–giving birth to ourselves.
The origins of any kind of wealth lie in human consciousness. When we bring
these hidden treasures into the world, they manifest in our daily lives. The blessings
overflow into our physical, spiritual, and emotional modes of being. We share the
blessings, making them ever so valuable and abundant. Giving ourselves up to live
this life we all know is possible takes courage—a tremendous amount. We discover
this courage deep within ourselves, deep into where we radiate a satisfied sense of
self-sufficiency. We draw up our courage and feel it spilling forth as we look
around and see the strength in our numbers. Our fears have nothing to do with
reality.
Wake up and see what is really happening!
Wake up! We are already free!
Shine the spotlight directly into our blind spot. We become the black swans, the
outliers, the butterflies of chaos, the unexpected events that change reality as
currently perceived. Let the power of your inspiration liberate us from the bonds
of our conditioning. Let the apparently impossible manifest itself in marvelous
ways in our daily lives. In the course of human existence, we trust in our own
energy and move with it. We give birth to ourselves, as do stars, which reflect every
90
my realities
Once one's seen the garden, one's willing
to assassinate anyone to regain it. —Peter Lamborn Wilson
I think this is true.
Reality is that which continues to exist after
you stop believing in it. —Philip K. Dick
I think this is true also.
I've assassinated many an imaginary deity on this path to the garden: god, the
dollar, the boss, the law, the teacher, santa claus. They all fell by the wayside. I feel
od, the living world, human relationships, belonging.
There's the garden, right outside my kitchen window. It's right here on my
doorstep, in the potholes in every parking lot, and in the souls of wage slaves and
welfare moms and homeless people. It's right here in front of our eyes, if we take
the time and attention to rent the veil overshadowing another existence.
Every muscle in my body works. Every feeling in my heart is there waiting to
become. My eyes flow with beauty and abundance. Time ceases to exist. Textures
come alive, and nothing seems as delightful as what's before me.
The five stars visible in my city night—I rename them, recover them, remember
my DNA, staring at these five stars among billions. My drunk neighbors under
their porch light—I remember them dancing around the campfire fiercely alive in
the glow. They lived with purpose. They were alive. They were not killing time.
Anamnesis. The loss of forgetting. I remember. I am filled with the holy spirit,
with anima, the life force. My eyes are wide open. I feel joy. This is no hippie
dippie bullshit. This is life right here, right now. It's a full-fledged karma adventure
play land.
7
 reach within you and fight with tools
Belief is a tool, perhaps the most effective one in our soul battle, in the landscape
of consciousness, where paradigm shifts occur. How do we make this conscious-
ness real without losing ourselves? How do we enact a story we’ve never been told?
How do we reclaim our birthrights of mental and physical health, freedom from
bureaucratic oppression, a membership in the reciprocal divine trust, and countless
others we’ve forgotten? How do we begin to envision this story, knowing that our
wildest dreams of freedom are merely the seeds of this next beautiful paradigm?
I get the feeling the word paradise and visions of the garden of Eden are
concepts we can’t yet fully take in, even if we think we’re ready for it. But still.
Belief is a tool, and quite an effective one at that. We say “abracadabrazomba”,
flap our butterfly wings, and find ourselves taking the form of chaos magicians,
with change springing up in our footsteps, akin to the fruitful oases springing up in
the wake of the Green Man, Khadir. We endow ourselves with magic spells, super
powers—whatever it takes to make us powerful, full of energy and spirit. We
radiate the golden cords, illuminating the way in front of us, the untrodden path.
Somehow, we make it together. We figure it out—all of us. If there is a human
story a few thousand years from now, this will be a part of it. There are no slaves
in the landscape of consciousness. War is confusion, trickster friends and allies; we
must remember our heritage. Hermes, divine thief, is poised to steal this current
absurd reality of civilization. For a chaos magician, presto change-o reality is easy.
Our consciousness manifests as reality. They make believe they are still in charge.
We make believe we are in charge—of our own selves, to be sure!
The ties that bind us to the old ways are slipping away. We have only to create
new ways of living, to participate in a new kind of economy. We create rituals and
myths around things that are sacred, not merely advertised as such. The relation-
ship between city and citizen is practically nonexistent, but the relationships in our
communities are born of love and are getting stronger with each day. These things
are real. If you’ve ever lived through a natural disaster or (gods forbid!) encoun-
tered FEMA, you have learned that our government cannot take care of us and
does not look out for our welfare. You remember that we have only each other.
We are our strength, courage, and love. If you’ve never lived through a natural
disaster, there’s no reason to wait. Community, yep. All that.
Nature practices fecundity. It is organized to create abundance; we are nourished
by it, in vivid contrast to the stark neglect we experience from those to whom we
pay taxes. Pavement and poison are effed up, tentacles of the destruction machine
Empire. We extend our own tentacles, aiming for the blind spots of civilization,
filling them up with love, beauty, life—manifesting the reality of this as-of-yet
unveiled paradise.
The landscape of consciousness, this divine boundary between worlds, is where
trickster warriors play. It is where “do what thou wilt” becomes the whole of the
law. I shall meet you there. Who knows what we may create with our many allies,
with our minds fully engaged in the task before us? Adventure to those who seek it!
8 89
background of our daily lives. These are the things that matter, and they don’t cost
money. You do not have to enslave yourself to get them, nor shop at Wal-Mart.
It’s exciting, isn’t it? We realize we have in ourselves the power to shape the
humanity of the future. We realize we don’t need to trust someone else to take care
of it for us. It doesn’t need to wait until the next president takes office, or even
until tomorrow. As Thom Yorke says, “No more talk about the good old days. It’s
time for something great.” It’s exciting to see the paradigm shift taking place
before our eyes, in the fabric of our daily lives, and to look around at all the other
robots, waking up out of their trances, realizing our minds, bodies, and souls are
drawn into the process of figuring out the answers for ourselves. It’s not that we
follow one answer or another, it’s that we think!
During this time, we will instinctively be drawn towards that which encourages
blossoming and abundance, and away from that which is of no help. Our ideas and
inspirations come from our direct personal experiences. We are becoming what we
are becoming. This dangerous and unknown future is being lit from within in our
process of healing and renewal. We hear the call within ourselves that wakes us.
We arise and begin a future of doing something different than age-old destructive
civilization. As brief love affairs become distant memories, so too do the memo-
ries of full-time employment, health care benefits, and retirement packages. Into
our lives waltz joys of deep human relationships, care for each other, and sharing
wealth and scarcity, the joy and the sorrow. It is raw. It undeniably can hurt. But
the joy of life shared in community is unmatched.
If you’re really listening, if you’re awake to the poignant beauty
of the world, your heart breaks regularly. In fact, your heart
is made to break; its purpose is to burst open again and again
so that it can hold ever-more wonders. —Andrew Harvey
We have indeed passed through an arid stretch of our journey, but now, through
the process of rebirth, we find ourselves in more fruitful surroundings. Times of
desperation and inner tension, when recognized, can be some of the most fertile
beginnings of our lives. We trust that the destruction of stagnant ideas and ways of
life can only set us free, allowing us to assume the innocence of a child, and wander
through the garden unhindered. If we allow ourselves to walk in the hands of the
gods, we will.
 breakdown breakthrough 2010 tarot forecast,
passionately infused with a kiss of pronoia
At the heart of the pronoiac way of life is an apparent
conundrum: you can have anything you want if you’ll just ask it in an
unselfish way. The trick to making this work is to locate where your
deepest ambition coincides with the greatest gift you have to give.
Figure out exactly how the universe, by providing you with abun-
dance, can improve the lot of everyone whose life you touch. Seek
the fulfillment of your fondest desires in such a way that you become
a fount of blessings. —Rob Brezsny, Pronoia
the journey begins
Sofia Runciter duly went through the transaction process as dictated by an email
accidentally directed to her spam folder. Soon thereafter, 40% of unfortunate
death money, unclaimed by next of kin, was deposited into her account. Since she
was a spirit of energy, there wasn’t a whole lot of use for money in her society, but
Sofia mentally clutched the outdated tourism brochure she had found wedged
behind a drawer in her desk shortly before she became fabulously wealthy and
resigned.
THE EXCITEMENT!

I feel like a magician in the economy of the community—taking inner wealth, Discover for yourself...
making it visible, and sharing it with others. There is so much! There is so much to
be thankful for! There are so many blessings! No matter how terrifying our
unknown future presents itself, we must not forget that the holy spirit (the
plasmate, for all you PKD fans), has not abandoned us. It is inside us. Jesus, son THE NEW, THE RAW... PLANET EARTH!
of man that he was, said the kingdom of god is to be found not in heaven, but
within us. We have it in ourselves to realize the garden of eden beneath our feet, to
Body Tourism: The Tactile Sensation!
spit out the original sin. We thought we were getting a taste of the knowledge of
good and evil, but that is for the gods alone. Have we learned our lesson yet? We Yes, spirits of energy, take the galactic trip of a lifetime TODAY!
can sneak into the garden, through the back door, where angels with fiery swords
do not deter us. The symbols, signs, and stories—they’ve all been given to us.
Making any sense of them is the hard part.
We are in fact living through the apocalypse right now. It’s a slow crash. You Experience what it means to:
wouldn’t even notice if you weren’t paying attention, as usually these happenings
are invisible. The ice caps melting—well, now, that’s a bit more in our faces, eh? Eat food! Sleep and dream!
Even with the silly repetitive blather about global warming, our blind spot is
becoming obvious. The media-glorified spectacle of our culture may be able to
Make love! Dance!
distract some, but ever increasing numbers of us are waking up out of the trance And more!
of the cave of treasures, becoming cognizant of the bars of the black iron prison,
wondering where are the keys to our gilded cages. There’s good news and bad news: Book your trip today!
there are no keys, and it is up to us to forge our own.
The apocalypse (from Greek, to uncover) is as much about rebirth as it is about 100% satisfaction guaranteed, or your money back!
collapse. It’s damn hard to convince the nightly news of that, though. They enjoy
telling us about murders, bombings, punishments; fear sells way more crap than
telling us about people in blighted areas tilling under our yards, sharing seeds and
produce, and forging community in abundance. For certainly, the primary way we
experience apocalypse is through the intimacy of our daily lives. Ideas like abun- Tactile Travel, Incorporated, was a collaborative effort between Jean Smalljohn
dance, chaos, beauty, community, love, passion, care—these are real things that and Lila Beanblossom. It was Jean who had first detected the odd vibrations from
exist, as long as we believe in them and enact the stories behind them in the a rocky-watery-fiery-airy planet in a distant galaxy. It took Jean some time to learn
the energetic language of the beings who themselves were only beginning to
88 9
 communicate with each other. Jean realized they were spirits of energy in another
form, a physical form. After much observation and baby steps, Jean was able to
enter the physical body of one, and his mind was blown away. Oh, sure, Jean was
somewhat more intelligent and receptive than the average spirit of energy, but still.
The human experience was incredible!
Through his “time” on Earth (time being a peculiar notion relevant to this place),
Jean was educated in all areas of human life: creating fire to cook the flesh he
recently claimed as his own, communicating with plants to cure particular ills or to
provide necessary nutrients, making love, crying from joy and ache, swimming,
dreaming (possibly the closest experience to being a spirit of energy these corpo-
real beings imagined)... the list goes on of Jean’s beautiful and memorable experi-
ences.
In fact, it wasn’t until his human body stopped transporting him around that he
remembered he had not been born a human being and that he was, in fact, a spirit
of energy. He had his wits about him to uproot his cosmic being from the base of
the human body’s spine (such a good landing spot—like it was built for spirits like
him!), and emerge once again into the world of the non-tactile, the cosmic world.
Jean had spent what the humans called a lifetime experiencing the tactile world, and
he desired more of same. But first, he, kin of Hermes, raced home to tell others
of the news of his experiences.
The first spirit of energy who took time to listen to his tale was Lila
Beanblossom. She was not only more intelligent and receptive than the average
spirit of energy, but more shrewd and business-minded as well. It was her idea to
market the tactile sensation as a tourist destination. She hired Jean to be the trainer
and guide, and before long, they had their first class of tourists headed for Earth.
It was a hit! Word of mouth brought Lila more customers than she and Jean could
handle. As shrewd and business-minded as Lila was, she was also ethical. She took
time to make sure each tourist was trained thoroughly, as she did not want a bad
trip on her hands. That would not be good for business. But finally, just as Lila
had enough trainers to keep up with the surge of demand for tactile tourism, she
encountered another problem: finite resources.
“What do you mean, there are no more hosts?” Lila demanded. “That’s exactly
what I mean, Lila. There are no more human bodies to enter. They’ve all been
inhabited by spirits of energy.” Lila mentally paced around her office. There had
to be a solution to this unforeseen and ridiculously limiting problem. The numbers
of human beings was indeed continuing to grow, but oh so very slowly! Tactile
Tourism, Inc., had a waiting list that was growing exponentially by the moment.
Lila’s salvation came in the form of her lowly file clerk, Edison, who proposed
sending a bio-program to increase fertility rates. They studied the anticipated
planet-wide impact and could foresee no stumbling blocks. But lots of profits!
“Do it.” Lila commanded. Unfortunately, an ice age intervened on Earth, and
there was nothing Lila and her crew could do but wait it out. However, even a
physically challenging existence was still good for business. “Cold” was an interest-
ing experience, often a difficult one, as was “hungry”, but seeing sunlight refracted
through snow and ice, tasting dripping hot meat when one’s belly was empty,
10 87
 And now, for some poetical bullshit...
Hermes has stolen the present reality, this fake fake. He swiped it while we were
all distracted watching our various screens and buying stuff. Somehow, it all
changed, and we can’t change it back. No doubt, it’s scary, different, challenging.
But the most awesome thing is, now we have the power (power with, not power
over) to assert our own reality into the mix. We create some white noise to add to
the big picture, tap into our collective unconscious, and our brains assimilate the
data in a new way. We’re tripped out, and we continue the attempt to make sense
of it all. We manifest this meaning in our daily lives. We make it real.
If we consciously break down ourselves, break down this system, we are left with
pieces to build up something new. It is the same us, yet somehow healed and
strong. It is the same living planet, yet somehow healed and strong. To transform
breakdowns into breakthroughs is the whole function of a master.
86
making love to pass time through inhospitable weather—all that offset whatever
physical hardships may have presented themselves. In fact, the tourists seemed to
believe that there was no “good” or “bad” experience. All experiences on the
physical plane were embraced as beautiful as they existed in the moment of being.
When the ice retreated, the population began to grow rapidly. Humans re-
sponded to this change in their naturally maintained fertility by congregating in
cities, organizing themselves into hierarchies, dividing their time into specialized
activities, and forcing the ground to grow their food. It was about this time that the
first reports of “bad trips” began to filter back. The returning spirits were faded,
barely able to cast a light. It took a long time to heal from the experience, and
many never fully healed. As one young spirit described:
“I was prepared for the gamble of the body I would land. I knew you could land
anywhere, in any climate, in any experience, in any circumstance. And I was
prepared for that eventuality because I knew I was capable of feeling the beauty
surrounding me, regardless of the actual physical discomfort that was also possible.
The two always balance each other—the opposites integrate to enable the whole
experience, and that is the blessing. But I was not prepared to be born a slave. It is
the most horrible experience imaginable. By the time I somehow regained the
memory of having been a spirit of energy, I could barely feel any beauty whatso-
ever.
“All day, day after day, I enacted someone else’s reality. I made life into death. It
hurt so much, I stopped feeling. I was surrounded by humans who stopped feeling.
I was “cared for” by humans who had stopped feeling. We were alive, for sure—
the tactile sensations were horribly omnipresent. When the body finally released
me, I could barely escape. The body was even buried under the ground to impede
my ascent back to the All Place. I felt nothing but relief to be away from that
reality, and overjoyed that it was not my reality.
“I want my money back, absolutely.”
From there, it was a quick descent into lawsuits and reneged guarantees. Lila sent
a crack crew to tackle the problem, but they returned with bad news. The humans
produced as a result of the bio-program were mere copies of authentic humans; in
other words, they were fakes. Tactile tourists continued to return describing the
reality of taking up residence in a fake human as “unbearably heavy” and “hell on
earth”. The worst news was that not only were the fake humans reproducing much
faster than the authentic humans, they invented a bio-program of their own called
War that decimated the remaining undamaged populations.
“Well, damn,” acknowledged Lila. “It’s a challenge to build a universe that
doesn’t fall apart in 10,000 years.” She filed for bankruptcy and left in disgrace for
parts unknown.
As for Jean Smalljohn, he wept.
11
 psychosomatic chatter get ready! the floodgates are open!
I have stumbled upon the secret of Job, The words on paper are one thing, but living the life is another.
the ability to see beauty The words make you feel, make you know what is missing.
and feel the abundance of blessings
in this hell-on-earth.
But it is the life, the living out of the words, that makes them
The garden is beneath our feet, manifest into reality. —Hermes
under the pavement,
under the landfills. I get the feeling that my life is a mystery. I mean, I’m not a mysterious person in
Our culture has worked the least. But suddenly, I have signs and symbols under my nose in search of
—slaved— meaning—a new paradigm coming to life before my eyes, and I see that I play a
to turn life into death part in it. The meaning is so deep, it seems to go backward and forward through-
under the magic spell of civiLIESation: out time. I don’t mean to say that I am special in any way. I’m just paying atten-
the spell that entrances, hypnotizes. tion. Or I might be crazy, but I don’t think so. That’s the point of the conscious
This is a culture of destruction, and we are immersed in it. breakdown. To transform breakdowns into breakthroughs is the function of a
And yet—and yet... master. Civilization is breaking down. There is no need to oppose the spectacle.
The veil of illusion has been rent. We are free to disregard it, as we’ve all seen the
Within each of us is the seed of life, man behind the curtain. We know the Emperor has no new clothes but is merely
impregnated with a kernel of hope, full of shit to the point where he has fooled his own mind. We find ourselves with
of love. awareness.
We are kinetic information As the circle revolves, as the revolution circles, we find ourselves with insur-
and despite our brainwashing, mountable opportunities. The outstretched hand is there for us to take hold. We
we possess the key to remembering. are able to see with new vision, and as humans, we have the ability to use our
What is it that germinates the seed? massive brains and crazy imaginations to create something that makes sense. We
That retrieves the key? can create lives that flow, that are filled with meaning. We can see the conse-
What breaks the spell of entrancement? quences of our actions, and, no longer being implicated in a culture of destruction,
For each it is different, to be sure. we can walk away and live fully in a culture of creation. We give birth to ourselves,
Our hardships make us what we are. our culture, our lives, our traditions, our meanings. We live in the present moment,
They make us crazy, or strong. engaged, without barriers, open.
We who survive the jolt of the Deranged Mind, The floodgates are open. This action allows something to happen often, or
we are unstoppable. allows many people to do something that was not previously allowed. Ezra Pound
said a slave is someone waiting for another man to free him. Wake up! The chains
In this toxic environment, are held in place by our lack of imagination. There are no slaves in the landscape
we feel beauty love hope. of consciousness. We shift the battle from the threat of force of pain to the vision
We share these ideas, spread them: of freedom of pleasure.
We are already free. The signs and symbols are there; we merely need to make sense of them. I
We can use our imagination and Will to create realize this means I am giving myself tacit permission to take reality as I currently
something better than Empire, experience it and change it into something that makes sense. This is magick, the art
something better than a culture of death. of changing consciousness at will. This is magick of the highest order. The war on
We experience our perception of reality. the imagination is the only one that counts. Our blessing and our curse is that we
For if you see beauty everywhere you look, have the power, each of us, all of us, to change destiny, to stray from this rut. We
you will always reside in paradise. are not this fucked up system of things, whatever you want to call it. We are living,
breathing, feeling animals, and yet we are also cosmic beings, enlightened with a
spark of cognizance of Something Else.
12 85

in the arms of my most beloved
I am awake in the temple.
My mind is the Logos.
My body, the offering.
I am ready.
84
my wabi-sabi life
Wabi-sabi is a Japanese term that does not translate well to English, but using a
thousand words, perhaps we shall begin to understand. Wabi originally referred to
the loneliness of living in nature, but now reflects a meaning more of rustic
simplicity, freshness, or quietness. Wabi also refers to the quirks and imperfections
that arise during the creation process. Sabi refers to the beauty which comes into
being as something ages. According to wikipedia, “if an object or expression can
bring about, within us, a sense of serene melancholy and a spiritual longing, then
that object could be said to be wabi-sabi.” Also, wabi-sabi “nurtures all that is
authentic by acknowledging three simple realities: nothing lasts, nothing is finished,
and nothing is perfect.”
Wabi-sabi can also be translated to mean “perfect poorness”, when something is
so vibrantly je ne sais quoi–—when it invokes that exquisite feeling of such suchness—
that is the power of wabi-sabi welling up within us. This feeling requires no effort
on our behalf, nor on the behalf of the object or situation beheld. It is a feeling of
immensity that exudes, like the mysterious power of flowing water, the caress of a
gentle breeze, or empty space. It is natural and spontaneous, and often can
produce “satori”, a zen kick to the head, akin to a sudden awakening or enlighten-
ment.
When my eyes were opened to the splendor of wabi-sabi, a whole new reality
snapped into focus. For want of a word, I could not see its special reality. It makes
me wonder, how many words have I not been taught? How many realities are to be
revealed? The more layers that are stripped, the more layers appear. Will I ever
reach the core of my own apple? (A few bits of harmless cyanide, encased in sweet
flesh...) Of course, unveiling those realities are the seeds of many other caffeine-
derived maniacal essays, to be expounded upon later.
Now that we’ve gotten our Japanese terms somewhat defined, though they will
forever reside in the vacuum of culturally-deprived ill translation, we can explore
what wabi-sabi means to us. I live in what is politely referred to as the inner city,
acknowledged to be a blighted area, and what is informally known as a ghetto. The
term ghetto can be offensively taken as a derogatory term by the dominant culture
that created this reality, neutrally understood in terms of the definition of an
enforced separate place to live (in this case enforced by socio-economic conditions,
as well as ethnicity), or it can be embraced as the words queer and nigger have
been, completely diffusing the dominating power of words. I live in a ghetto. If
you’re from a real ghetto, my neighborhood probably seems like a nice quaint place
to live. But if you’re white and middle class and from Springfield, you’ll be sure to
lock your car doors while commuting to and from work, and be nervous when
stopped at a red light and a black man crosses the street in front of you.
The infrastructure in my neighborhood has not seen “improvement” for decades,
and in fact, nature has reclaimed most of the sidewalks, and the potholes will soon
be deep enough for trees to take root. Many small run-down houses are falling in
because the housing market is so depressed no one will buy them, not even for a
13
 few thousand dollars, despite the deep fertile topsoil that naturally occurs in this
area. Rental rates have skyrocketed to nearly 50% of homes, far above what is
considered the risk rate for “transitory” dilapidated neighborhoods. More houses
on my block are empty than are lived in. I could go on about the schools that
produce students who are functionally illiterate and hate learning, the police that
are quite good at harassment but are never around when their brute force would be
appreciated, the deaf ears of city government who happily take tax money from us
but do not return it in basic city services, but you get the idea, I’m sure.
I live in this ghetto, and I see the beauty that surrounds me. It is wabi-sabi in its
essential and ethereal state. I see people who flourish in the economy of commu-
nity while the economy of the imaginary dollar and bipolar stock market attempts
to keep them firmly in the purgatory of poverty. I see verdant empty lots, full of
hardy pioneering weeds, fixing the soil and adding nutrients and humus, allowing
trees to take root to reforest the ghetto, and healing herbs sprouting beneath our
feet. I see children playing in the streets, disregarding the hierarchy of vehicular
traffic. I witness practically everyone biking and walking, using their own fuel
instead of supporting blatant slaughter of those who happen to live above “our” oil
fields. There is a remnant of an American elm forest, those that survived the blight
and also a recent tornado followed by a winter of ice storms. It shelters us from
simmering August heat, as well as soaks in the massive downpours of climate
change. Life abounds, not only human, but also many forest animals you would not
think could make it in a ghetto: rabbits, foxes, raccoons, possums, owls, and deer.
Mostly, though, it is the people here who embody wabi-sabi to their cores: the old
withered women who ride the bus to work, as they have for 50 years previously; the
redneck who hunts deer and shares with all his neighbors; the overworked single
mom who ran from her home to help a stranger shot in the street, put his leg in a
tourniquet and comforted him, telling him, “hang on baby, you gonna be okay”
over and over, while waiting endlessly for an ambulance. There are the grans who
are faithful to the farmers market, getting good greens to cook up for their
grandkids; the manly men who put their arms around teenaged boys who cry
because their friends and relatives get shot. It is the homes that were built, one
stray piece of lumber at a time, and the yards that cannot possibly be called lawns,
sprouting highly valued od things, junk for all purposes and manners of being. It is
the conversations on the bus, a rolling coffeehouse sans coffee, catching up on all
kinds of gossip and good times, harkening encouragement or chastisement to those
who need it.
There are young people who also see the inherent wabi-sabi of this ghetto
neighborhood. They are not interested in pursuing the unattainable American
dream; they are uninterested in working, consuming, and dying for the sake of
America, Inc. They see paradise sprouting up between the cracks in the pavement,
the alleys overtaken by passion fruit and elderberries and lambs quarters. They see
down to earth people who remember how to care. They seek an affordable life,
free from the toil required by Leviathan, empowered by the care and creation of
ideas that make sense and their hands aching to enact them. They see not a place
14
perceptions are dependent on our reality tunnels, therefore, not “real” in any sense
of the word. Any perceptions we have are merely a model, and no perception can
be considered real, valid.
The perceptions of the heart (I would include intuition and other woo woo stuff
here), we are taught to ignore these perceptions, or at least downplay them. It’s not
just emotions, but a lot more—a WHOLE lot more. I don’t see the divide between
rational and nonrational, between earthy and cosmic. Once you declare the “other”
as separate, you create a fortress for your beliefs, and you remain stuck there,
imprisoned, defending them. Scientific/skeptical belief is as orthodox as the
Catholic Church, as far as telling you what is acceptable reality. Considering the
long LONG history of mysticism and its role in cultures throughout time (and if
you believe Terrence McKenna, its role in human evolution), I can’t imagine that
paranormal stuff ISN’T real.
Of course, the old school definition of skeptic was not the current version of
proving everything invalid, but was instead holding all truths as possibly true.
Accept what is as the natural law. It is what it is. It is what is.
Focus on what you want to happen.
Because whatever you’re focused on is what will happen.
Intuition is a sense we as a culture seem to have forgotten. Intuition, chaos
magick, crazy vibrations—that seems to be how our world works; this seems to be
an interpretation of chaos. But we’ve totally forgotten the language. And how do
you learn a language once you become aware that it exists? Baby steps—become
the blank slate. Use the words you know and try to expand your knowledge into
the more complex overall system. Expand your realm of existence into the All
Place. Expand your presence, your reach, the magnitude of your reciprocal trust.
Figure out the micro of yourself and heal. Place yourself into the macro, become
a part of All the one universe and heal. Vibrate the name of god. It’s the language
of our universe. It is what we are made of...dust, water, sunlight, and air. We are
made in its image. We are replicas on a fractal scale.
A breakthrough is a nonlinear event.
83
 of despair and poverty, but a place of richness and beauty in community. Gardens
trappings of language and mysticism sprouting up in front lawns are only the beginning.
Wabi-sabi resides in the relationships of the people who live here. It is perfect
The dormant seed is a kernel of life, pure, with immense potential. To grow and poorness, something acquired with age and beauty, something that does not occur
change, a seed must cease its dependence on the reality of being a seed. It bursts in plywood and vinyl subdivisions, no matter how shiny and well advertised. Wabi-
forth into the future unknown, into the air and light, into the depths and dark, to sabi is indicative of the small pleasures of life, those that require no money, just an
live in an entirely new reality it could never have imagined (if seeds have imagina- eye for beauty. When your eye is focused not on the toxic mental and physical
tions...). It manifests its potential as an active participant in creation. It is open to environment of America, Inc.—not mired in the media bog that requires you to
life and experience; it is fluid, yin. internalize this toxicity—but is focused on the wonder of wabi-sabi, a whole new
It lets life wash over it, through it, and responds according to its will, the law— reality snaps into being. There is abundance, fecundity, beauty, purity, a richness
the love and momentum that is the language of the universe. There is the trust, the beyond compare, a suchness that can barely be put into words. Wabi-sabi is my life,
magnetism, that holds the system together. The trust stretches from you to the my manifesto. Wabi-sabi surrounds me, pervades from the inside out. It is as close
universe, the All, that it will act according to its natural will (creation) and it will to perfection and imperfection as I ever hope to be.
continue to provide for you. The trust stretches from the All to you, that you will
act according to your natural will, and you will continue to provide for it. The
reciprocity is the flow, the exchange, the synergy.
We are ancient creatures, the DNA of our bodies attesting to our long history as
living information. When we open ourselves up to experience, we receive informa-
tion without judgment, we become information without judgment, we transmit
information without judgment. There is a river of life moving into and out of my
bodymind. It is my path, at least in this moment, to be aware, to be a witness, to be
a mouthpiece. I am the benevolent horde at the city gates.
It’s hard not to fall into “mystical trappings” talking about these things. The
language to describe the obvious/hidden is not readily available. I have a feeling as
we become active participants in creation, we will grasp it, and our understanding
will be exponential. I think mystical experiences are quite common. They are,
however, not widely discussed for fear of being labeled non-rational by the
scientific community (who hold their own strange orthodox beliefs, to be quite
honest) and those who hold the keys to the loony bin. What if the supernatural is
merely a part of the natural that we’ve been conditioned not to see? What if
having a mystical experience, an experience of communing with the divine, is
normal?

Magick seems to be a ritual, a bridge to an awareness of being an

active participant in reality. There exist infinite bridges (yoga,
meditation, drugs, etc.). Making them appear—that is
an opportunity to manifest your thoughts and desires into reality.

It seems the supernatural world isn’t beyond or separate from the rational world,
but a part of it, just one we do not, as a “modern rational” culture allow ourselves
to acknowledge or experience. But scientific trappings are as much as a dogmatic
belief system as anything else. Reality tunnels are reality tunnels, no matter how
rationally we label them. It seems that what we perceive with our hearts is as valid
as what we perceive with our minds. Our minds are faulty; we know this. Our
82 15
 A few days later, we shared another reiki session, and it was a much calmer
experience for both of us. It made an impression on me how much reiki is a
shared experience. Giving and receiving reiki are flip sides of the same coin. It
was as much a blessing for me to give the gift of my time to serve as a channel for
healing reiki energy and to feel it myself, as it was for Micah to receive it. I am ever
so thankful I have access to a tool that can be used to heal my community. I am
ever so thankful to the universe for providing it, and to the good people who teach
it and put it into our hands, so we may in turn share this gift with the rest of the
world.

emotional gardening
So much pain in the everywhere, everywhere.
Nothing to feel but more than too much.
We numb.

Weeding ourselves—painful, necessary.

Raw, yielding, we let go.

The sun shines.

The rain falls.
We allow, welcome.
We grow.

16 81
 became aware that Micah’s heart was beating ever so slowly. In fact, he had fallen
asleep, a near miracle for his manic self.
The solar plexus position, seat of the emotions, was quite challenging. At one
point, tears came to my eyes as well as Micah’s. I don’t know what exactly was
going on, but it was super intense for both of us. I noticed how the energy would
shift and change as it went through me. Micah would respond to this as well,
sighing, shifting his body, or changing his breathing. We felt connected through the
energy flowing through us both. It was at this time that I could feel the earth a
short distance under my feet, singing out its vibration, radiating energy. It was a
source of strength, and I appreciated it.
The experience with the sacral chakra amused me. Micah and I do not have a
sexual relationship, nor feelings toward each other in that way. My eyes were in
sunlight at this position, and I was bathed in an awesome intense orange and red
light (from the sun, obviously!). It was refreshing, considering the weeks of gray
blech we had regularly experienced at that time. Then suddenly, I noticed the
intensely red and orange light had turned to an amazing golden yellow, and Micah
started gasping. I stopped, fearing something was amiss. Micah said he felt like he
emotionally and spiritually had an orgasm, but with no corresponding physical
symptoms. I don’t know if that’s “normal” but it was a release that he needed. I
felt quite comforted myself in the golden glow in my mind’s eye.
I moved down to do reiki on Micah’s feet, which took an incredibly long time, as
he seemed as ungrounded as a person could possibly be. I felt the earth pulsating
beneath my feet and I felt myself opening up to be a wider channel than my body
could possibly physically be. I felt an intensity moving through me that I had never
experienced at that time. At one point, I could see myself in my mind’s eye, taking
a needle and sewing Micah’s feet back together with the massive earth beneath us.
After a very long time, I felt the energy subside and removed my hands.
I did the back positions on Micah, and I was guided to end by placing one hand
on his head and one at the base of his spine. It just felt correct at the time. I
admit, I missed positions and probably did some incorrectly, but my intention was
present. Micah napped on the couch for a while afterward, and when he woke up,
we drank yet more water (we were both incredibly thirsty!) and talked over our
experience. For Micah, during the hand positions, he was often able to go some-
where else, usually somewhere warm and sunny, and experience the smell of
flowers, the feeling of a light breeze over his skin and warmth on his face, hearing
the gentle sound of waves crashing on the beach or sand blowing in the desert. It
was a comfortable place for him. A former drug user, Micah said the feeling after a
reiki session was more relaxing than taking Xanax, even better than OxyContin.
The next day Micah called to say he had slept for twelve hours straight that night,
the most since his mania began in October. He also said he had slipped into a mild
depression—really, the best that could be hoped for considering the mania he had
experienced. Reiki may not “cure” someone who suffers from bipolar, but it is
healing medicine, to be sure. There’s nothing like receiving a gift of passionate love
from the universe to realize you are indeed important and vital to life itself.
80
festival of life in the cracks
Life in the cracks can be looked at in many ways. Weeds growing up through the
cracks in the pavement are a fractal assertion of all life revealing itself through the
cracks of civilization. My neighborhood is indicative of that. This year’s Festival
of Life in the Cracks (March 10) coincided with a meteorologically beautiful day,
one of the first of spring’s blessings of warmth and sunshine. On a typical
working day, most “normal” neighborhoods are empty, their residents off working
to pay for all the stuff in their fine homes. My neighborhood, on the other hand, is
full of life. People are in the streets, walking and biking, wholly ignoring the
hierarchy of vehicular traffic. My neighbors are out and about, getting stuff done
and hanging out. I had the pleasure of washing and wringing my clothes outside in
the bright sunlight and warm breezes, and hanging all on the clothesline to get that
fresh earthy smell that cannot be extracted from a bottle. After my work was done,
friends dropped by, hearty beers in hand, and we sat on the porch, talking, relaxing,
spending time reinforcing the ties that bind our community together.
The blighted areas of Springfield, Illinois, are a microcosm of the ruins of cities
like Detroit. The neglect and abandonment of our neighborhoods by those to
whom we pay taxes is evident. And these feelings are reciprocated. What is the
point of being a citizen in a city that doesn’t claim you? We are well aware that we
have only each other to rely on. A tornado ripping through our city four years ago
with its subsequent FEMA encounters made that obvious. If it were not for the
good will of my friends and neighbors, who knows where I’d be; still waiting for
FEMA assistance, maybe?
And yet, there is life everywhere. Nature is reclaiming the pavement, the falling
down houses, and empty abandoned lots. The people who remain here are here for
the long haul. Poor people are well aware of the economy of the community, even
if most of my neighbors do not know what that term means; it flows freely from
their hearts. When you have not money to purchase the assistance and care you
need, you use the time you have to assist and care for others, and they reciprocate.
It’s security that life in civilization cannot buy, especially now that we are in the
horribly depressed phase of our bipolar economy.
A neighborhood filled with people on a traditional work day begs the question:
how do these people get by? How do they pay their bills? It is increasingly
challenging as the economy tanks, with middle class people lining up to take jobs
that were formerly the sole purview of the poor—minimum wage service jobs.
Many people here survive on government handouts, be it in the form of social
security, disability, or welfare. Many people work nontraditional jobs (like metal
recycling or giving plasma), have start-up companies in the black market (many
people currently in prison were merely trying to make a buck and support their
families), or live exceedingly frugally.
Last year, I made less than $2000 from my job, but I want for nothing. Most
people here live in a similar fashion. We get by the best we can with what we have.
Many live by the mantra of the depression-era grandparents who raised me: use it
17
 up, wear it out, make do, or do without. We are scavengers, opportunists, and we
share the bounty. We are producers, not consumers. We create abundance by our
ability to share what we have. It’s an odd thing, coming from the money economy,
where scarcity is the model. There is only so much pie to share, and each person
for themselves! The competition is fierce, and if you can’t compete, too bad, you
die. In contrast, the economy of community is based on abundance. There is pie
for everyone, and more pie can always be had because we had the forethought to
plant orchards. The more we share, the more we each have and are willing to give.
We don’t each need a lawnmower; one will suffice for many families. Actually, we
don’t need lawnmowers at all if we plant gardens to nourish ourselves and the
entire community of life. Bioconcrete in the form of the American lawn is a
delusion of idiocy; it makes no sense. One of the blessings of creating a new
paradigm in the crumbling ruins of the old is the ability to throw out things that
make no sense and replace them with things that do. Observation and feedback are
excellent tools in paradigm building. Need generates its own power, and this is
where our hope lies: we are what we want to become. Nothing is more adventur-
ous and rewarding than real life.
The challenge is creating systems of living for ourselves, cultures and rituals that
provide for our needs. It is quite difficult, being raised without an understanding
of what a viable human culture could be like—being raised in a culture of not
understanding. Our reality is constructed by our beliefs, reinforced by our rituals.
Many people now believe that working, consuming, and dying is the way to go, and
they reinforce this belief by their daily patterns of working and shopping. Some-
how they’ve become slaves of a system that makes no sense, and is indeed, killing
off the basis of life itself.
Waking up from this entrancement and becoming aware that options exist have
given me opportunity and motivation in my own life. As hobo poet Vachel Lindsay
remarked, “I am further from slavery than most men.” This has been an unex-
pected gift from downshifting (dropping out) from mainstream consumer culture
and exploring what can variously be called simple living, “green”, diy, urban
homesteading, welfare and poverty, community, or even paradise. As Greek
philosopher Heraclitus noted, we must expect the unexpected, or we’ll never find it.
The wealth we hold may not be obvious. Indeed, it takes an eye for beauty to see
the wealth that abounds in my neighborhood. Our wealth lies not in consensus
reality dollars, but in our collective security and abundance. We have each other,
and we will always have each other. As governments fall short on cash and their
enforcers (police, zoning, etc.) disappear, our freedom increases. We use this
freedom to create realities that make sense in light of the world we inhabit. We
invite homeless people to squat the houses that are falling down from neglect. We
scatter seeds of plants that nourish ourselves and the community of life in vacant
lots and alley ways. We rediscover handy skills in the dumpster of history. We raise
animals and build structures that do not fit into zoning’s view of safety, but that do
fit into a paradigm of making sense. We raise our children with the knowledge that
another life is possible, and provide them the tools they need to make a living in the
economy of community.
18
a healing gift of love
I took Reiki I training in early December and was attuned at that time. I had
been blessed with a couple of reiki healing sessions over the summer, helping me to
cope with the massive emotional response an impending separation from my
spouse. I was amazed at the clarity of thought and the feeling of released burdens
after each session. My interest in being trained and attuned was to give myself the
tools I needed so I could continue doing reiki treatments on myself.
In early January, a good friend was visiting from out of state. Micah (not his real
name) was bipolar, and not doing well. He had been in the worst mania of his life
since mid-October. He hadn’t slept well at all in that time, had made poor choices
with their inevitable consequences, and was frightened. He was scared of continu-
ing his mania, fearing he would end up in jail, or dead. He was afraid of the mania
ending because of the corresponding depression it would no doubt bring him.
Micah had been suicidal before with depressions, and since he had never experi-
enced mania this fierce before, he didn’t think he would live through the depression
following it. He was stuck, in a rough place, and he didn’t know how to get out.
We talked this over as friends, and I felt helpless. It is akin to watching someone
you love dearly slowly slide off a cliff and being unable to do anything but spout
encouraging words. In a moment of clarity, and not knowing if it would be
effective, I offered a reiki treatment to him, and Micah accepted. We approached
this with the idea that it was my first ever reiki treatment on someone else, his first
time ever receiving a treatment, and we would both be open to the experience of
what happened.
Micah laid on my couch on a bitter cold winter day, covered in quilts. The raging
fire in the woodstove was our calming aural accompaniment. As a former atheist
and rational skeptic, I am still getting used to the idea of praying, but pray I did,
asking any and all spirit guides for their assistance. I asked that I be guided to help
Micah in any way possible. When I laid my hands on Micah’s crown chakra to
begin his treatment, the vision of eyes flooded my inner sight. When I felt the
energy begin to flow, it came out not only through my hands, but also through my
opened third eye, flowing straight into Micah’s chakras. I felt the energy more
strongly flowing than I ever have before doing treatments on myself. My focus was
intense.
Having not given a treatment to anyone but myself, I have no set manner or
ritual of procedure. I spoke when I was moved to speak, as did Micah. Generally
we talked quietly and drank water after each hand position, comparing what we felt
and saw. When I finished the third eye position on Micah, he cried, and said he had
been terrified while I had my hands on him. After he recovered from that, I put
my hands on his heart chakra, and gathered all my own heart energy (my intense
love!) to add to what the universe was flowing through me. Micah’s heart was
beating so rapidly that I couldn’t distinguish one beat from another. It seemed like
a long time before the energy flow subsided, and I opened my eyes to move on. I
79
 dandelion tincture
1. Gather big beautiful healthy looking dandelions, in full bloom.
2. Wash, then chop into ½- to 1-inch pieces, and pack tightly into
jars.
3. When the jar is full, pour in alcohol. I used alcohol that was
around 75%. You can use something like Everclear, and dilute it
with water.
4. Snap a lid on, and your part of making the dandelion tincture is
finished!
Each day, take a minute to push the dandelion parts back under the
alcohol. In six to twelve weeks, strain out the dandelion pieces and
put the finished tincture into jars. Take daily for good health!
Disintegration and renewal are happening side by side—
calamity and fertility, rot and splendor, grievous losses and surges
of invigorating novelty. Yes, the death of the old order is
proceeding apace, but it’s overlapped by the birth pangs of
an as-yet-unimaginable new civilization. —Rob Brezsny
There is life in the cracks, for which we are ever thankful. These pioneering
plants and people are the seeds of a new paradigm, of what comes next. Life
explodes into fecundity and abundance, emerging from the cracks with a fierceness
beyond compare. It is a birthright our culture seems to have forgotten, but through
the magick we create in our daily activities, we illuminate our culture’s collective
blind spot. We discover the strength of ourselves in the love and care we share
with each other. Who knew life could be such an adventure? Who knew life could
be so sweet?

wishing well
Wishing well of my path,
I rest in my awareness and think:
what more could I want or need,
than to be on this path
right here, right now?

Wishing well, I remember

of long ago.
I give thanks.
So much flow
to find myself within.

I leave you an offering:

my soul, my anima.

78 19

celebration of passion
Smooth, round, firm,
but tender and yielding,
like a woman's breast
nestled in the palm of my hand.
Gently I insert my fingers
in search of edible fruit.
Moist and soft, it clings to my fingers
as I take it lightly into my mouth.
It is a taste without compare:
sweet, tangy, musky,
reminiscent of melons, perhaps.
I suck the fruit, pushing it
around my mouth with my tongue,
applying pressure and releasing,
encouraging the juices to flow,
the seed to release.
Down my throat slides the sweet divinity.
I lick my fingers, remembering
the promise of sweet beginnings
and the satisfaction of eating
a passion fruit found in my alley.
20
dandelions: miracles in your front yard
The dandelion is a much maligned meadow plant, a native of Europe. Ameri-
cans fiercely and defiantly dig out and poison this miracle plant, for no obvious
reason other than they think they should. I started thinking for myself, and I have
found out quite a bit about the blessings of dandelions.
All parts of the dandelion are useful, for many things. The blossom of the
dandelion is beautiful to behold. I can’t think of a plant that reminds me more of
the beauty of the sun in early spring. The heads can be collected and made into
wine. Dandelion wine is a great thing to make with friends, as debudding the heads
is a time consuming activity that is enjoyable in a crowd of good conversation.
Dandelion buds and flowers can also be breaded and deep fried for a southern
culinary delight (anything tastes good breaded and deep fried!). My daughter would
also attest to the usefulness of dandelion heads after they flower in their abilities to
manifest wishes. Just remember, don’t tell what you wish, and do believe it will
happen as hard as you can.
Dandelion leaves are one of the most nutritious of all greens. According to a
USDA health bulletin: “Dandelions are nature’s richest green vegetable source of
beta-carotene, from which Vitamin A is created, and the third richest source of
Vitamin A of all foods, after cod-liver oil and beef liver! They also are particularly
rich in fiber, potassium, iron, calcium, magnesium, phosphorus and the B vitamins,
thiamine and riboflavin, and are a good source of protein.” Grown in nutritious
soil, dandelions may also be rich in micronutrients “such as copper, cobalt, zinc,
boron, and molybdenum, as well as Vitamin D.” Like all leafy greens, dandelions
also contain a lot of calcium, protein, Vitamin C, and fiber.
In early spring, before flowering, dandelion leaves are quite tasty and tender.
After flowering and prolonged heat from the sun, the leaves tend to get tough and
more bitter. However, dandelion leaves can still be eaten in cooked foods, which
helps reduce any anxiety regarding the texture and taste. Personally, I like the wild
taste of dandelions, and the bitterness perks up my liver like nothing else. Dande-
lion roots can be roasted and used for a coffee-like drink.
Dandelions are incredibly healthy for our bodies. Does this health come from
the abundance of vitamins and minerals? Or is it just that dandelions are an
awesome natural medicine with no known side effects? Dandelions are particularly
useful for supporting the liver. The function of the liver is to detoxify our bodies,
and as civilized people, we are in desperate need of that. Not only does the liver
process and discard actual toxic chemicals, it also processes the hormones pro-
duced by our bodies in response to our emotions. Dandelions function as a
diuretic, ridding our bodies of toxins through our urine. Dandelions also contain
inulin, and have an effect on blood sugar levels, as well as helping to lower blood
pressure.
Of course, I am not a doctor, and I am not promising dandelions will cure what
ails you. But if you’re looking to function in and maintain a state of health,
dandelions are worth checking into.
77
 can be a challenge, and since I am gym adverse anyway, I try to find ways to
incorporate being active in my daily life. Biking or walking where we need to go,
taking the stairs instead of the elevator, purging our environment of “labor saving”
devices, actively playing with kids—options are unlimited when we reclaim physical
activity as part of our lives. Do what feels good for your mind and body.
Partnering up with someone can be more motivating, and focusing on variety helps
with burn out.
Although the medical establishment advises us to slather ourselves in chemicals
while outdoors to keep us “safe”, I do not adhere to this advice. To get enough
vitamin D for our bodies, we need to expose ourselves to sunlight on our faces,
hands, and arms for 5-30 minutes, twice a week. This is, of course, dependent on
our skin types and latitude (sun availability). Vitamin D is necessary for bone and
skin health, and assists in regulating our immune systems. Vitamin D also has a
tremendous effect on our attitudes and general well being, as evidenced by the sales
of light boxes and the soaring rates of winter sadness (also known as SAD,
Seasonal Affective Disorder).
Our personal attitudes are vital for maintaining good health. There is no reason
to walk around channeling Pollyanna, but to have a naturally positive outlook on
life contributes a lot to good health. Maintaining an attitude wherein we view
ourselves as healthy people radiating vital life energy simply makes us healthier
people. Science has studied this phenomenon and determined it to be “real”,
although science cannot explain why this is.
Community also plays a vital role in maintaining a good general state of health.
Psychologically, spending time with and talking to people we care about and who
care about us can relieve a lot of stress and can naturally result in a positive outlook
on life. Laughing is a great way to heal your body, mind, and spirit, and what better
way to induce laughter than hanging out with goofy friends? People who share the
bonds of community spend time helping out and sharing of themselves and their
resources. This provides an immense measure of security that most Americans
simply do not and cannot possess, regardless of socioeconomic condition.
You may by now have noticed that the foundations of healthy living I have
covered have much in common with the way our paleolithic ancestors lived.
Indeed, many if not most of the adverse health conditions in western lifestyles are
diseases of affluence, or the long-term effects of the toxins excreted by said
lifestyles. Living paleolithic style is not necessarily about going back to a certain
lifestyle, but, being humans, we need to find what works for us and our bodies.
We’ve evolved our big brains and vivid imaginations by being active, eating living
foods, and being surrounded by people we care about and who care about us. It
just makes sense.
76
loves
Love. It makes the world go round. It causes as much pain and suffering as it
does joy and elation. Love is a mythical beast, a concept that is difficult to wrap
one’s arms around to put it lightly. Valentine’s Day is only good for massacres, says
one good friend. Maybe he is right, but the notion of what love is has been on my
mind.
My first post-divorce boyfriend broke off our relationship a couple of months
into our relationship. It was too intense for him, this notion of falling in love—too
much to endure. I was in love myself, so the end of the relationship was hard to
accept, and no amount of talking and trying to resolve issues seemed to have any
impact in repairing the rift. It was during this time I read The Fifth Sacred Thing
by Starhawk. It is a fabulous book, with many practical common-sense examples
of the paradigm I hope to fully inhabit one day. Relationships function differently
as well, with love abounding in every direction, and people freely giving their sexual
love as well as emotional love, but without the ideas of clinging or expectations. I
was raised as a fundamentalist Christian, and was previously a partner in a 15-year
monogamous marriage. Although I intellectually understood how an open
relationship–free love—could work, I didn’t emotionally understand until I could
see it in this new paradigm sort of way.
In talking about it with my ex-boyfriend, to whom I had only just given up any
notions of getting back together, he too began to see love in a different light. He
asks, “Is it the idea that I can give my love freely, just for the goodness and fun of
giving it and sharing it, without the complication of feeling like I am then commit-
ting myself to being there giving it forever? ...I’m somewhat enamored of this idea
of being free to love someone without feeling like there’s some sort of commit-
ment attached. Why does our culture make it so complicated to love?” Why
indeed?
My (suddenly no longer ex) boyfriend and I talked about what these words mean:
love, being in love, sex, and romance. As he says, “I love words, and I love lan-
guage, but sometimes they really do clog things up. As speaking animals we get
very hung up on labels, and get very nervous about just experiencing things we
can’t put a name to. And of course we’re hypnotized by the names; once we can
label it, we have limited what we can experience, filtering out any aspect that
doesn’t fit the label.” For him, being “in love” is a scary overwhelming experience,
with clinging notions of expectations, especially of forever. But for me, being IN
love is quite different.
I fall in love with my friends—with everyone—and to me that means pretty
much the same as loving them. There is the danger that with falling in love,
emotions can take on a life of their own, and that can get oppressive and destruc-
tive (emotions being the visceral reaction of what happens to you). Desire is a
beautiful and horrible thing! With open emotional love, even sexual love, people
are still going to get irritated at each other or need space; it’s human nature. And
people can give space and work out issues without breaking ties (because there are
21
 no ties). I tend to fall in love easily, and never fall out. What can I say? It’s how I
function and relate to my world.
For me, being IN love is an active state of loving someone. I am in love with my
friends, and they with me, and as a result, we spend a lot of time nurturing each
other, loving each other. There is time, effort, and energy involved in building this
kind of intense relationship—intense in a comforting way! There is no sexual
desire involved, but that does not lessen the intensity of our love. As my dear
friend Abby explains:
“Love itself is so delightful, is the motivation and necessary foundation for every
single thing, and it is spirit also. I truly believe that love and spirit are the same, and
the capacity to love mirrors our ability to have faith. Love and faith really aren’t
different, either. Love nourishes our faith, which builds our spirit, which makes us
human and stewards of the entire earth and her creatures. I was trying to show you
that movie about the Kogi people in Columbia because they are very adamant that
our purpose as human beings is to care, that’s what our capacities are designed for.
I love that, and I want that to be my religion. It’s a little like our spirits are little
pieces of love, all tied to the greater font of love that springs from the ? in the
universe, and it (love) is the greatest tool we have, and we all have it.
“So I think you know these things to be true, too. I think the two of us together
are capable of loving each other in a really nourishing way, and in that way we are
food and strength and hope for each other. Our bond has the potential to help us
create whatever reality we want to see, because love is ultimately the greatest
foundation, the only foundation that allows anything to be possible. I’m filled with
excitement for the future, here, and for us to grow together, to continue to help
heal each other and bring each other into the new beautiful world.” It may seem
odd living in a paradigm where loving and being in love mean the same thing, but
it’s also a beautiful notion, one that comforts.
And now, onto sex and romance! Sex of course is something we are all familiar
with, at least the billboard-advertised, glossy magazine depicted dominant view of
sex, as a conquering desire in any relationship. For me, though, sex is an expression
of a special kind of love. I have yet to figure out the word that differentiates the in
love I feel for my friends from the in love I feel for my boyfriend. Perhaps the
Greek word Eros will have to step in for a moment, meaning physical love and
sexual desire. Eros is the Greek god of love, whom the Romans identified as
Cupid. He continues to live on in our lives through the celebration of Valentine’s
Day (unless you believe that Valentine’s Day is best celebrated for massacres).
I believe Robert Anton Wilson was onto something when he pointed out in the
third book of the Illuminatus trilogy that the Illuminati were afraid of love and sex,
because it broke down the walls between people and allowed them to merge and
feel a blissful oneness and connection that plugged them into a universal conscious-
ness that destroyed any control the Illuminati could hope to have. Love and sex
make that connection—being inside one another physically, emotionally, and
spiritually. He also notes that abundant orgasms can generate enough energy to
achieve transcendental illumination.
22
Most meat raised in America nowhere nohow resembles medicine. Animals are
raised in inhumane conditions on mega-industrial animal farms. They are fed and
injected with all kinds of hormones and antibiotics, fed waste products and other
disgusting things, and after slaughter, the meat is dipped in ammonia or other germ
killers, irradiated, and often injected with dyes. Then we have the honor of
purchasing it and frying it up! Eating a substance that was raised on fresh air and
sunshine and healthy food is a much different experience than eating a substance
raised on concrete and confinement and crap. Eating a tortured-from-birth animal
transfers all that negatively stressed energy to our bodies. If you eat meat like I do,
you may be surprised at the quality of taste and texture of humanely raised and fed
animals, fresh from the farm. That meat is medicine. Its life becomes ours.
Fermented foods are especially good for us to eat. Lacto-fermented sauerkraut,
pickles, green beans—lots of vegetables can be fermented. The process of
fermentation provides a natural and healthy dose of good gut bacteria. Our bodies
have evolved with a symbiotic relationship with bacteria, and the best way to ensure
we are not overcome with unhealthy bacteria is to stock up on the beneficial ones.
Traditionally, people in cultures that eat fermented foods every day or with every
meal tend to have long and healthy life spans.
No matter what kind of diet we eat, eating as fresh, local, and basic is the way to
go. Eating a variety of seasonal foods puts our bodies in a good place nutritionally
and our minds and spirits in a place of awareness. Think of our food as our
medicine; we’re sustaining ourselves with healthy medicine each time we eat. We
can infuse our bodies with that understanding each time we eat, by telling ourselves:
“Hey, body...self. I love you, and I’m nourishing you with a substance that is alive
and well, as much a part of this living world as I am.” Be thankful for the opportu-
nity to do so. I’m not advocating strictness, as I’m not interesting in spreading
puritanism, no matter what the subject matter. However, if we continually find
ourselves being unable to affirm that our food is medicine, we must be aware that
we are, in reality, poisoning our bodies on a several-times-a-day basis.
Caffeine is a serious part of American culture these days. Legal stimulants are all
the rage in factories, offices, highways, and college campuses. The average Ameri-
can consumes between 200 and 300 mg of caffeine a day, the equivalent of several
cups of coffee. As a former factory worker and college student, I can attest that
many Americans consume far more than that. Caffeine has a detrimental effect on
the nervous system and can disrupt sleep. It is a factor in contributing to condi-
tions like fibroids, and can also affect insulin production and use. Cigarettes are
another legal stimulant that has well-known and documented adverse long-term
effects on health. As with any drug use (legal or not), moderation is key. Ritualiz-
ing caffeine or cigarette use (or anything else) can enable these psychoactive drugs
to be a part of our lives but without the long-term adverse effects.
Doctors typically advise their patients to exercise regularly, generally 20-30
minutes of vigorous exercise, 3-4 times each week. Finding time to get to a gym
75

diy health for all
Cachexia is a term which means being in a general bad state of health, seemingly
referring to the American medical system and the health of Americans in general.
Rather than taking a reactive approach to health care (such as taking pills to mask
symptoms), do-it-yourself (diy) health involves taking a proactive approach—
claiming and maintaining health as a normal condition of daily living.
When you do not have health care, a focus on health is vital. Consciously
treating our bodies with care is the basis of health. There are several key founda-
tions on which to build a healthy body: getting enough sleep and rest, keeping our
stress levels low, eating nutritious foods, moderating caffeine and other drug use,
being active, exposing ourselves to the sun, maintaining a naturally positive attitude,
and immersing ourselves in community. Let’s look at each of these pillars of health
in turn.
Before the introduction of electric lighting, people slept an average of nine hours
per night. I assume that average would be somewhat less in the summer and
somewhat more in the winter. Americans today sleep an average of less than seven
hours per night. The “I’ll sleep when I’m dead” philosophy is pervasive in our fast-
paced, caffeine-fueled culture, but it is detrimental to long-term healthiness. Our
bodies make repairs while we sleep, and dreaming is essential to memory and
cognitive abilities.
Keeping our bodies in a high state of stress has long-term repercussions on our
health. For many, commuting, working a fast-paced job, and coordinating work-
school-activity schedules add up to a continually stress-filled daily lifestyle. We can
forget that our lives, however stressful, are not our LIVES—the state of life that
fills our bodies. Many people do not take time to remove stress from their bodies
each day, but instead reside in a body that is always tense and hurt, and reactive.
There are many ways to reduce stress in a physical way, such as doing yoga or tai
chi, or meditating and relaxing. Writing or hanging out with friends can reduce
stress in a mental way. Communing with nature and becoming an observer can
reduce stress spiritually.
Food is medicine. In our high fructose, preservative-filled, and overpackaged
manners of consuming food, we forget that food is alive and gives us life. The
more fresh, local, non-poisoned (i.e., organic) food that we eat, the healthier our
bodies tend to be. However, be aware that fresh produce does not contain nearly
the amount of nutrients it did 60 years ago, because American farming practices
have depleted soils so that only petroleum-based fertilizers and pesticides are what
produces vegetables, and trace minerals are not part of that chemical cocktail.
Growing our own fresh produce, or purchasing it from small healthy farms is a way
to ensure actual and adequate nutrition. Foraging a variety of wild foods also
provides a supply of vitamins and trace minerals. Making food from scratch with
basic ingredients assures there will be no preservatives, color additives, or mystery
chemical ingredients.
74
Rob Breszny also wrote of this concept in his book Pronoia. He had worked
hard to become a good lover, to sexually satisfy the women in his life. But he had
not focused so much on satisfying himself. This changed when he met a woman
named Celia. She asked him, “So is there any chance you want to see what it’s like
to have orgasms like mine? Implosive prayer wheel-spinning jubilations instead of
those crash-and-burn style evacuations you’ve gotten so dependent on?” Of
course his answer was yes, as was mine! He relates this new experience:
“Spiral waves of nectar rippled out from the epicenter of my bliss. My heart was
first to receive the blessing, then my throat and thighs. Gradually the entire inside
of my body was awash with the bliss that had previously been confined to one
small part of me. And as Celia continued to swirl me around inside her, I claimed
the birthright I’d always denied myself: long, billowing orgasms, one following
another. They were whirlpools of sweetness congealing in an ocean of delight.
And unlike the expulsive, spasmodic burst I’d always regarded as the One True
Orgasm, this new improved model kept expanding my capacity for more pleasure.
...The gratifications swarming through me were increasing, as if my ability to feel
pleasure in three dimensions were expanding into four, and then into five and
beyond.”
You’ll have to read the book to see how exactly how they managed to achieve
this (oh, tease!). After many hours of experiencing orgasms, one after another, it is
hard not to achieve the illuminated transcendental state that RAW writes about; to
see the golden cords that connect us all to each other; to become the sun, gods,
creating life itself. Metaorgasmic bliss is certainly a fun journey to explore with
someone you are in love with.
And romance. I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to wrap my head around this notion.
I think it mostly exists to sell crap, especially in February (slave labor corn syrup
chocolates anyone?), but perhaps there is a side of romance that I have yet to
experience. As it is, I no longer feel like I need any of these words to confine me.
I am open to experiencing what feelings I do, in whatever manner they present
themselves, without shoving the experiences into the categories claimed by words
in the dictionary. I love, I am in love, and there is love enough in my life for all.
23
 learning the will
We have to train ourselves to believe in what we are perceiving.
—Vicki Noble well, pyramid workers, what shall we do?
It is up to us to relearn the language of the universe, not limited by words. planting seeds of paradise
Using all of our senses, peeking through the rip in the veil of Maya, we may begin weeds, herbs, sustenance
to understand the ecstasy that is our birthright (pistis!) as living beings, as part of relationships, community
everything. Pistis refers to the relationship of reciprocal trust we have with the wealthy in time and company
universe, the trust in the normal chaotic rhythms to which the universe moves. We abundant in just enough
trust that life will continue, and in some way, we (body/mind/soul) will always be a remembering ourselves as indigenous
part of it. We all trust, all who reside in this universe. Trust is love, care, abundance, belonging to this place
beauty. It is the name of god. It is our power with. It is what it is, and it is what is. part of all that is sacred
Reclaiming the lost union, the oneness of all being—words just cannot begin to alive, sentient
describe. Stick your finger in the tear in the veil, the boundary between worlds, and spitting out the fruit of the tree
slip through with your awareness intact. of the knowledge of good and evil
We live in a magickal world we can barely comprehend. Our culture has and returning to the tree of life
brainwashed our preconceived notions of reality to the point we no longer have to sustain us
words to describe the natural law—the Will, as Crowley called it. Once we learn the
language of perception, we gain access to new manners of thinking, new realities. this is today
Pistis is the way it works, the oil in the machine (a joke people will not begin to where it all begins.
understand 10,000 years from now). It is the natural order. It can be called love,
though it is not the emotion of “love” as this obsolete culture defines it. It is the
feeling of oneness, divine union.
This is a feeling we can radiate as well as receive. (We are receivers AND
transmitters!) This is a method we use to create a new reality for ourselves. Keep on
to the way of the trickster. Continue to draw your own trap doors and exits. Drop
into the new world and create—manifest—be flagrant—on fire—full of energy
radiating and receiving—flying on a spirit of light.
There is so much beauty to behold. We hold love before us, our conveyance into
what comes next. Time to blast off into inner and outer space once again.
Heal ourselves. Heal others.

pow!
dirt in my third eye
uncounted blessings emerge
the sun fills my heart
24 73
 Whatever reality you claim, whatever existence you manifest into being—choose.
Make an active choice to be an active participant in the living world. Open yourself
to growth and change. Become familiar and comfortable with the indistinctiveness
of boundaries. As Cody Meyocks notes:
The revolutionary as well as the magician sees their future as an
undetermined blooming of destinies to be guided by the heart.
Synaesthesia is the language of the heart, a way of perceiving that which cannot be
expressed in words. These experiences are powerful, and valid. Share and commu-
nicate them. These things matter. They are matter. Waking up from the nightmare
is the scariest part.
72
zomba not zombies 2012
Although the next election is linear time away, I, as an agent of chaos, hope to
proactively provoke you all into doing something different. I act in hopes that we
(the big We) manifest a different result than the normal cycle of election b.s.—
business as usual. No matter how well believed a politician’s promises, time always
proves Curtis Eller’s prediction: “that sonofabitch gonna wind up in the White
House every time.” Instead of participating in an election between two corporate
puppets (or, if you’re terribly open-minded, add in a third-party candidate who’s
been shut out of the media circus with no hope of winning), I encourage you to
run away from the zombie horde and Vote Zomba 2012.
“Zomba” means the people, as many tribal names reflect that similar sense of
self and purpose. Zomba originated on an overnight shift in a data entry factory,
but its memes have spread far and wide. At what point does a joke TAZ (temporary
autonomous zone) manifest itself into reality? This now PAZ (permanent autono-
mous zone) exists in the hearts and minds of the people who recognize themselves
as zombans, those who know they stand on liberated territory in the landscape of
consciousness, and will defend it.
Zomba is not really a what or a who but a how and a why not. There are no
“rules” in zomba, no pledges of allegiance, no bill of rights, nor taxation without
representation, media spectacle, or celebrity entertainment. But there are many
cultural traditions that zombans share. These traditions are a foundation of a new
paradigm, something to replace the Empire that is crumbling around our ankles.
Down with plastering over the cracks with yet more mortar! Up with celebrating
life bursting up between the cracks with vigor beyond compare!
One focus of zomba, perhaps the main one, is community. In translating new
paradigm terms in view of the old, community can be explained and compared in
terms of an economy. The economy of capitalism, civilization, TWAWKI, etc., is
based on competition and scarcity. In capitalism et al., one toils for rectangles of
green paper with imaginary value that one trades for vital tangible goods like food,
clothing, and shelter. If one does not acquire the opportunity for toil, one may
starve or freeze to death. This paper with perceived value (dollars) is the oil which
greases the gears of this economy, the money economy. Money is considered more
important than people or relationships, and always results in what John Ruskin
called illth.
In community, wealth is based on time and relationships. People share what
material goods they have, with a focus on being producers instead of consumers.
People share of themselves and their time, helping out those in their community in
whatever ways they can. This is the security of the community, that burdens as well
as joys are shared by all. Everyone is your family; everyone’s got your back. The
economy of the community is based on cooperation and abundance. There is
enough for all—more than enough—especially of the time and love we have to
give to each other. As zomban Hakim Baker remarked, “It’s all about fun and
hanging out, and everything else proceeds from that.”
25
 Another common trait among zombans is their intelligence. At a recent get-
together someone asked, “Who here was in the gifted class?” Every person raised
their hand. People who escaped the school system with their intelligence intact are
the same people who search for something more than the entranced pursuit of the
lowest common denominator of the American dream. We are not fooled into
thinking that working, consuming, and dying is a gay old time. After all, who wants
to spend their life dragging stones up the pyramid? We want more, and we’re
willing to blaze our own trails to find it. Oddly enough, we find each other. One
zomban describes zomba as “a self-organizing system—a chaotic strange attractor,
attracting strangeness.”
Zombans tend to have weird fascinations and interests, ranging from the occult
to outsider art to ...anything and everything else that does not smack of sameness
lameness. For example, penrose tiling [http://www.saudiaramcoworld.com/issue/
200905/the.tiles.of.infinity.htm] came up as a topic of conversation, and no one
had to ask what it was. Not that every zomban needs to educate herself on
penrose tiling, but each zomban contributes to the community the breadth and
depth of their acquired knowledge and shared thoughts, expanding our educations
and enlarging our perspectives as we each describe our shared reality as we perceive
it. We are always learning, always thinking, and always communicating.
Zombans are typically quite odd. In fact, the concept of “od” has been adopted
into the zomban culture at large. It sheds the illusion of God or god, and em-
braces the perfection of the imperfect, and sings slightly out of tune in the wabi-
sabi musical of life. Found objects are od, as are waist-high dandelions, homemade
anything, good karma, and erratic missives from the gods, often displaying them-
selves as strings of meaningful coincidences (synchronicities being a measurement
of the sum of one’s ability to pay attention plus one’s connection to that beyond
the self). An odd person is not always a zomban, but rest assured, zombans are
always odd, and certainly od. Zombans resemble mammals, with body hair and
human odors. We relish our natural bodies, the way they look and smell, and pooh
pooh those who advertise the necessity of toxic hygiene. Our beauty radiates.
Zombans are often interested in the occult, spirituality, and mysticism, but not in
an ordinary way. Much research goes into wild theories that smack of uncommon
sense. As Philip K. Dick remarked, there is something about going crazy (the
etymology of delirious means leaving the furrow, the rut) that inspires one to do a lot
of research, attempting to pull all the clues together to yield a more complete
picture. It doesn’t always result in sanity, but it’s always interesting and inspiring.
We recognize that the divine often intrudes where you least expect it. We acknowl-
edge a priori evidence—we observe our experiences and perceive them from
outside our own reality tunnels. We are psychonauts, exploring the human mind
and the reality beyond that which has been scientifically proven to exist. We are
oneironauts, waking ourselves up from the trance of ordinary life to a world we
never knew existed. We can do anything we want. WHAT do we want to do?
Zombans tend not to enslave themselves more than is necessary to provide for
their basic needs. Partly this is due to the economy of the community providing
for needs, and partly that zombans have too much integrity to sell the hours of
26
[the gods wonder...] What can be done to encourage a blossom too ... unyielding
... to open? Lend courage and a whisper, an assurance that a perfume so sweet and
enticing has yet to be experienced. And wait; we remember the Hanged Man. We
cannot give up—that future is unthinkable. We know that all eternity may pass
before fruition. But we wait, we wait to hear an answer. Patience, tiring, exasperat-
ing at times, but worth it.
7.
Love is not merely a spurious human emotion. Love is the ease of the universe.
It enables life to exist. We have some notions of love, but we have largely forgotten
the language. Fortunately, humans are quite skilled at inventing the language they
need (hermetical blessings). Acceptance of natural law enables the love to flow. We
have many allies, in fact, the All. (...all but the deranged mind.) We allow ourselves
to feel compassion and care—love—in the arms of our most beloved. Our
existence continues as we gather strength, gather all the love coming from every-
where all at once. It is this moment in time we say yes to the invitation extended us.
We are reborn, restored. Our birthrights as human beings are returned to us. We
no longer fear, but radiate this love and trust, a meme of primal existence. Through
surrender, we gain power unimaginable—power with all existence. It’s a concept
overwhelming and intense; it is not hard to understand the preference of the
distracting screen. The interminable flicker as, as, as….
CiviLIESation is itself a kind of magick trick, eternally manufacturing the unreal,
but under the guise of studious rationality. What makes this miasma acceptable as
The Truth, other than our modern culture’s conditioning and brainwashing? A
whole ‘nother reality resides in our culture’s blind spot. It should be obvious, but it’s
not. If we train ourselves to perceive experiences beyond what we are never told
does not exist, we may find ourselves flabbergasted by untold realities, untold
moments worthy of our consideration.
We are, in fact, magicians. Or at least it appears that way, pointing out the
obvious, pointing out the Will, the natural law. It appears to be magick to reveal
what is behind the veil, but in reality, we merely reveal the magick trick of obscure-
ment that civilization always has up its sleeve. We wake up in the matrix and we
turn each other on. We attract other agents of chaos, concocting viral memes in our
subconscious laboratories—alchemy of the highest order! We weave a new reality,
the weft and warp of the here and now. We live each moment in awareness of the
blessings of immortality. The Great Work is the spirit of the poet pouring forth,
manifesting into reality another Truth worthy of consideration. As the original
philosopher, the primal magician, Hermes, stated in my dream world:
The words on paper are one thing, but living the life is another.
The words make you feel, make you know what is missing. But it is
the life, the living out of the words, that manifests them into reality.
71
 dogmatic nature of rational science makes it as much a fundamentalist authoritative
evangelical religion as any other. Previously, mysticism and science were two
branches on the tree of direct experience, distinguishing these traditions from
religion which relied on the passing down of traditions, morals and beliefs rather
than perceiving one’s direct experiences.
How many scientists are also mystics? We find that many are one and the
same—James Watson, Bucky Fuller, Pythagoras, Carl Sagan, Carl Jung, countless
alchemists... We realize the value of the honesty through which we observe our
perceptions, even and especially if they contradict that of the Deranged Mind. This
is the string we unwind as we follow our hearts out of the labyrinth and into What
Comes Next.
5.
Pistis is the reciprocal trust with the universe, from part to whole to part. We
trust the universe to act according to its nature, its Will. The universe trusts us to
act according to our natural way, our Will. This is our flow. This is creation. This is
synergy beyond imagination. There is what is. This is obvious, but hidden.
To live one’s life in the hands of the gods takes untold courage, and yet, it is a
feeling of incomparable security and comfort once we become experienced in the
fluidity of this reciprocal trust. As Jesus remarked (in Matthew 6:25, right after
saying one cannot love both god and money), the divine cares for the sparrows and
the lilies of the fields—how could the divine care less for humanity? This is the
basis of pistis—of living in the hands of the gods.
I live my life free of toil. I rely on the universe to provide for my needs, and it
does—time and time again! Do I possess the world’s greatest karma? Or have I
merely figured out how to set myself adrift in the natural flow of the universe?
Whatever I need finds its way into my path. And I uphold my part of this recipro-
cal trust. I give, I comfort, I care, I trust—without reservation. Time after time, I
am reminded of the abundance of the economy of the community—the natural
flow of the universe. I am a valued and important participant.
I look around and see untold blessings and the abundance of beauty. You would
never guess I live in a ghetto in utter poverty. This is the reality of my existence in
the money economy, which necessarily thrives on scarcity. But this is not the reality
in which I place my trust. I am well-provided for, comfortable beyond compare. I
am further from slavery than most. I am well aware of the abundance of blessings
I receive. I know I am wealthy beyond compare in the things that matter.
6.
It is an unfortunate role to play, that of cosmic poker of those firmly asleep in
the dream world of the deranged; they shriek with pleasure in the Cave of Trea-
sures and shriek with pain in the Black Iron Prison, not realizing they are one and
the same. Poke those who are asleep, try to rouse them to their senses, and we see
they prefer entrancement. The invitation is always there, waiting for an answer of
yes. An answer of no or not yet lends only another invitation extended.
70
their lives for mere material crappage. (More wealth! Less illth!) As a result, diy
culture and simple living are tenets of zomban life. Dumpsters and alleyways are
our friends, yielding up food and, usually, just about anything else one could ask for.
Most every want and any need can be met through the friend network, as well as
reclaiming goods from the waste stream. Why toil when manna is on the ground
(or in the dumpster) for the taking?
Often needs are met through doing it ourselves (diy). We reclaim skills and
knowledge from the dumpster of history. We have taught ourselves to forage,
grow, and preserve food, including reclaiming the magick of fermentation. We
know how to forage for and grow herbs that heal, and we recognize that health
requires the nourishment of the bodymindsoul. We like growing things and take
delight in the living world. We build structures. We play music and make art. We
enjoy unmediated experience, face to face, and we live this life largely without
money, without enslaving ourselves. We explore and create solutions that are low-
cost, low-tech, and easily improved upon. We are building a new paradigm from
the ground up, from a stone the builders have not rejected. We’re doing it our-
selves, as there is no one to inherit this culture from directly. We take what we can
from the history that remains available to us, and (presto-chango abracadabra
zomba!) we envision and enact—we make real—something that makes sense. It’s a
handy implement in our cultural toolkit, and we pass this thought process on to
those who inherit our memes.
I asked the first native born zomban what she thought of zomba, and her zen
answer was “I don’t think anything.” Like a fish unaware of the water in which it
swims, this child is immersed in the memes of the zomban paradigm. She knows
not what it means to enslave oneself to work or school. She is an unashamed
dumpster diver and od things collector. She thinks people spending their days
together, hanging out, having fun, and helping each other, is normal. It is normal.
It is way more normal than shopping at Wal-Mart or voting with the zombie hordes
come election time.
What reality we prefer is a choice we make each day with each thought we
manifest into action. Are we actively participating in the reality of creation of the
All, of which we are a part? Are we living in zomba? (or) Are we actively partici-
pating in the reality of destruction that is the manifestation of the black iron
prison? Are we even aware of what we’re doing? If we don’t like the answers we
get, how do we transform our thoughts into the actions that make them real? (...as
opposed to continuing to manifest into reality the entrancing agenda of Leviathan.)
The ways out of the black iron prison are many. These creative imaginings are
adventures full of daring, courage, bravery, skill, laughter and love. This is our
greatest challenge and our greatest opportunity. There is one moment in time, and
it is now. It is all moments in time. Time awaits our decision. It is our birthright to
actively choose. We are not robots. We are not zombies. We choose life, creation.
The zomba not zombies 2012 campaign does not need your money, nor will it
further indebt your as-yet-unborn descendants. Zomba is a culture of life, of
fecundity and felicity. Zomba is a landscape superimposed upon that of Rome, of
America, of Mammon. It is the hand outstretched to those who no longer find
27
 themselves fitting into the current paradigm and who search for something else,
something that makes some sort of sense. Zomba is ever-changing, ever-growing.
We are building up a new life for ourselves, and we invite you to join our campaign,
or better yet, begin enacting a reality that makes sense to you. We heartily acknowl-
edge that truth comes in many forms. Why wait for 2012? Vote today; vote now
and vote often.
When a paradigm shift occurs, the whole world is remade. We are vitally
immersed in this landscape. We are active participants in reality. We walk the edges
of the old and the new ways, bridging what has been with what is emerging. We
embrace the mysteries of death, trusting there is always a rebirth emerging out of
what has been. This is edgewalking: pushing beyond the known into unexplored
territory where new life and growth occur. We make our own maps in zomba, our
own language and traditions. We journey; we seek our grail. We start anew,
pioneers!
Zomba not zombies 2012!
armpits can’t help but be sexy
Ripeness—
animal smells.
I feel at home.
28
When we find ourselves fully experiencing each moment, we may at last begin to
experience the falseness of time. Moments become hours, hours become days, days
become years. We find ourselves living lifetimes between the sun rising and setting.
This is how we invoke immortality and become aware of the moment—the long
moment of forever. We dismantle the clocks and break free of the illusion of time.
It is a maze that can be figured out, but it is seemingly as long and as complicated
as pi. There are many things that have been manifested that are mere illusion.
Release belief. Be open to experience. Be honest with yourself and with others. If
you believe the gods have declared you the most beloved, believe they’ve left you
divine clues, believe you can reason and research your way out of madness into
bliss, you can. All paths prove valid to those who walk them. Belief manifests into
reality. Our honesty—if we (can) maintain that integrity—ensures it. Belief is what
makes the unreal real and the real unreal. Forget it all. Wake up into reality and see
for yourself with your eyes wide open.
There are many realities, as many as there are people to experience and express
them. We each perceive our experiences through the lenses of our individual reality
tunnels, which are created by the culture in which we are raised, reinforced by what
we are told is acceptable or obscene. What is acceptable in our reality is embraced
as an experience worthy of perceiving. Anything outside of our reality tunnel is
dismissed as hogwash, unbelievable and unnecessary. As Hakim Bey notes, “The
world’s image of itself not only defines its possibilities, but also its limits.” Reality is
eternally mutable, changeable. Wars are fought over opposing realities, but this is
the actual hogwash. There is no need to cling to any reality as being the one true
and correct existence, for oneself or for others.
According to the Copenhagen Interpretation, also known as “model agnosti-
cism”, any grid we use to organize our experience of the world is merely a model
of the world and should not be confused with the world itself. Once we understand
that all realities are valid and correct—for those who hold them—we lay down our
weapons of the One Right Way of Living and open ourselves to accept the
diversity of human experience.
THE MEANING we give to Human being gives rise to
a reality made of bricks of Human belief. We see what
we believe because our beliefs about ourselves literally create,
instantiate—make what we see APPEAR. EVERY APPEARANCE
becomes more than apparent, deceives somewhat, reveals somewhat.
Only in seeing through them all may we at last come to know
WHAT IS REAL. —Felix King
In our present culture, a skeptic is one who rigorously disproves any opinion or
experience that does not find itself in the approved dogma of rational science.
Originally a skeptic was one who withheld belief or disbelief in order to allow for
all possibilities of experience and existence. We could point out that the current
69
 descriptive language has been suppressed, unlearned, hidden. We have to learn a
two-thousand-year-old language just to begin! But that is why experience—being
open and welcoming to it—is vital. The words will come. It is important to be
honest with ourselves, to pay attention to our direct experience, and to know we
actively create our realities, whether we are paying attention or not. If we are
asleep, unaware, but still going through the motions, we are in fact enacting
someone else’s reality, namely that of the Deranged Mind.
As we find ourselves on the brink of planet-wide ecological and ontological
collapse (with the ice caps melting and an uncontrollable spewing oil leak in the
ocean—regardless of the data of scientists as translated through their corporate
paychecks—do we need any additional evidence to convince us that something is
horribly wrong? What does YOUR gut tell you?), it is imperative that we wake up,
wake each other up. We must question our long-held antiquated assumptions. We
must develop cybernetic know-how, the ability to look at an entire complex system,
and see how our everyday actions—the basis of our formations of reality—affect
the whole. Do we find ourselves creating life, abundance, and fecundity on a regular
basis? Or do we find ourselves, scythes and credit cards in hand, on the payroll of
the Deranged Mind, a strongman for the culture of consumption and destruction?
We are told as individuals we are inconsequential, that our actions are meaning-
less. Please remind yourself that the man behind the curtain is filling you with
bullshit. I say to you: you are a most powerful being. You are the most beloved for
a reason. Indeed, you hold in your imagination and will a beautiful and inspiring
future, and joining in conspiracy with your two hands, you have the power (power
with, not power over) to enact any future you deem worthy of your time and
energy. Will is the feather touch which can move mountains.
Now is the most exciting time to be alive in human history as it has been written.
We hold the power to create, to begin anew, to evolve beyond what we can even
begin to imagine. It is an awesome adventure—a challenge worthy of the unused
parts of our larger-than-life brains and our renowned vivid imaginations. How
wonderful to be shaken from our terminable ennui and find ourselves in the most
exciting adventure ever!
Physician, heal thyself! Shaman, heal thyself! Healer, heal thyself! Heal each
other. Heal all. This is the way of the plasmate.
4.
Time does not exist. It is a spell, a false reality. There is no answer that satisfies or
explains. There are no phlogistons either. Living each moment in awareness, we
realize there is only this moment. We invoke immortality. It is that easy, with our
awareness mingled with all. It takes courage. It takes seeing the potential to endure.
We rely on our cunning to lead us out of traps we ourselves set. We are remember-
ing. It is what it is. It is what is.
There is one moment in time, and it is now. It is all moments in time. Through
the intricate details of experience are woven all that is. To experience the micro-
cosm of one’s moment is to experience the macrocosm of the All, the entirety. It is
obvious, but hidden.
68
alchemical infusion
courtesy of the active imagination
Sacred agents of chaos? Otherkin? Lunatics? Dreamers? Writers of fantasy?
Bringers and bingers of change? Dormant angel wishes? Those alive in the
present moment? Who are we that find ourselves waking up at the end of time,
where revolution reminds us, remembers us? We who carry the toolkits of chaos
and change on our backs—we have no idea the effects of what we’re doing,
reaching across galaxies with our fingertips extended. Crossing the isthmus—the
barzakh—to where the active imagination creates reality, manifests it, creating
matter from consciousness. Being manifested consciousness ourselves, we beget
more of same. All in all, all is necessary.
The moment is the wonder. It is what is, what is static and in flux. It’s always
changing and not changing; it’s something beautiful reflected in ourselves and
everyone we meet. We are all universal chaos. We are what is, all of us.
There are many truths, as many as possible. Also, there are no truths. It’s all
impossible. Concepts are conceived in the mind, and are as false a reality as
everything else. When you finish peeling back the layers, nothing remains, except
everything that is. Between all and none is everything. Between the polar opposites
exists all that exists. There is the point at which all things merge, and if there is
something that smacks of divinity, it resides there, at the center of all things.
Are you ready?! The world ignites! The fire burns in each of us. We’re reflec-
tions of each other, each atom circling restlessly, enacting its reality. Divine
experience resides in us all. We’re stylized beings from some absurd mind manifest-
ing its reality. We are passionately and lustily infused with beauty and spirit,
worshiped as the gods we are, each in the realm of our own midst. We rise from
primordial soup, drenched with our importance, and become forgetful of what that
actually means. We each enact being. We set the stage for all to play. The universe
is creating us while we create ourselves.
We agents of change, locked in a passionate embrace of lux et voluptas—we
desire all and want for nothing. Life is a bounty, a feast. It was made for us, as we
are made for it. We feast upon each other, an orgy of pleasure, climaxing in the
biggest bang imaginable: the beginning and the end, and everything in between.
I myself am the recipient of an infusion of divine RRRRAAAARRRRR!!!!! I am
a cornerstone. I have strength beyond comprehension. It flows from deep inside,
continually refreshed and replenished. Abundance. I am a source of abundance. I
have my hands deep in the earth, while my head is in the clouds. My awareness
resides in the flow of life, and my soul is flagrant. I am, not I react. The strength
coursing through my veins is the same as in mountains.
All of us are alive, actively creating our reality, whether we’re thinking about it or
not.
29
 existed. We may find ourselves making love to the paradoxes that fill our lives, and
what an oh so orgasmic time that is!
As Felix King reminds us:

The POET’s function (as tamer and handler of the Logos) is

the cultivation of higher Energy states in Human being that enable
sylvan being the EXPERIENCE, rather than “thinking about” of REALITY.

One’s own self becomes the arena of struggle. We eternally allow our hearts to fill
Raindrops, innumberable pools of beauty. I saw the sun, in a million facets of
to the point of breaking to enable ourselves to hold more and more of the
itself, of myself. I drank sweet earth and sent it forth like honey. I was rooted, to
endlessly repressed emotions and experiences. It is our method of toppling
the center of the earth. The pull was desirous, intractable, heavenly. I lived forever.
empires. As poets, we share the illumination of the divine with each other as equals.
I am still living. I am still conscious. I am still.
3.
The landscape of consciousness is what actually exists. It is our imagination, the
PKD realized this world is deranged, to the point it destroys any attempts to heal
core of human consciousness. The possibilities are endless. We are limited only by
it. But the physician (the plasmate) is moved by love, and risks all to plant the seeds
our notions of reality. They (the ubiquitous they) cannot chain our imaginations.
of knowledge: that this psychosomatic illness is easily treated, once one becomes
We have always been, are, and will always be, free. There is no other truth that is
aware of what it is that is really wrong. The homoplasmate enables healing, at least
necessary at the moment. The moment. The momentum.
among those who seek it, desire it, allow it. It is the anti-virus, the meta-virus. It is
The term “synergy” only begins to describe the possibilities. Our words are
the outstretched hand of the universe, eternally waiting for a response to its
limiting. There is feeling, an active choice, reaching out to grasp the hand out-
invitation. It is beauty. It is love. It is the physician. It is what enables us to put the
stretched to us. This is how we cross bridges unseen. We are consciousness
pieces (of the Deranged Mind) back together. From the disparate pieces emerges
manifest.
the One, the All, the Light. The heavenly chorus sings Hallelujah; the golden cords
There is no path, no further along. There is just this. Believe in nothing, and all
illuminated stretch from each of us, to each of us. We become connected—online,
is possible.
mechanomorphically speaking.
Is it any wonder we find ourselves broken, ill? We have been born and raised into
the culture of the Deranged Mind, into families that have for 10,000 years been
born and raised into this culture of competition and destruction. We forget what it
means to be whole, to be healed. All the wisdom of the universe resides in each of
us. The memory is dormant, as a seed. With nourishment and encouragement, the
seed germinates and grows. It is the plasmate. We are homoplasmate. We generate
seeds that spread. We are the weed memes, and we propagate healing. How can one
heal a Deranged Mind? By creating a new mind, by giving birth to what comes next
in all varieties of the human experience.

To start a new civilization is not to introduce some new refinement in

higher culture, but to change the imagination of the masses.
THE DREAM LIFE OF THE MASSES discarded as superstition
(the stone which the builders rejected) BECOMES in the 21st
century THE KEY TO OPEN A NEW DOOR. —Felix King

There are no answers but all possible answers . . . the meta-answer. And so we go,
zen koaning, chasing our missing tails. Language is limiting, especially now. The
30 67
 head that are constantly supportive, encouraging, and keen to offer advice that help
you make the most of every experience.
Developing a relationship with one’s augoeides seems a very natural human
experience, despite legal mental health opinion to the contrary. What other natural
human experiences do we disregard because they have been relegated to the
purview of the incorrect? It is only when we discard the dichotomous view of
understanding, when we open ourselves to the breadth and depth of human
experience, when we allow ourselves to learn from our direct experience, that our where i find myself and how i got here
eyes fully open to the entirety of life, the birthright of humanity.
mammal
Our models of “reality” are very small and tidy, hair, smells
the universe of experience is huge and untidy, and instincts, behavior, organization
no model can ever include all the huge untidyness thoughts, beliefs, morals, hierarchy
control, threats, law, punishment, slavery
perceived by uncensored consciousness. —Robert Anton Wilson doubts, confusion, thinking, perceptions, anamnesis, clarity
blending, wonderment, flow, All, trust, the garden, mammal
2.
Alchemy is used to reconcile opposites to create something greater and more
valuable than that with which we started. Integrate the opposites into your core of
understanding. Be open to experience. You will, at first, not believe, not trust, your
senses. But after your ass is thoroughly kicked, you will begin to relish the ordinary,
to experience the breadth and depth of all that is. We’ve forgotten a lot. We’re
beginning to remember. Anamnesis is the loss of forgetting.
Just as “good and evil” are perceived as being one or the other only, between the
two lies every permutation of the human experience. So it is with our bodies and
minds. Our bodies cannot perceive experience without psyche (mind/soul), just as
our minds cannot perceive experience without soma (body). There is no need to
choose one end of the spectrum or the other. Between psyche and soma exist every
the reconstruction era
perception available to the human experience.
Our modern western culture focuses on the splitting apart into pieces. It dissects I unbuild my fortress,
the whole in an attempt to gain greater understanding of the parts. It seems our discarding the unneeded:
society is so focused on the pieces, we forget the whole even exists. What does it pain, sorrow, frustration, disappointment, beliefs, clinging, expectations.
mean to use alchemy to integrate opposites in one’s personal life? Take the subjec-
tive opposites of beauty and ugliness. Our culture takes beauty to mean I build my temple,
photoshopped models, and ugliness to be that which does not (strive to) fit into claiming that which I had forgotten could be remembered:
these limiting categories. If we combine the notions of beautiful and ugly to love, trust, joy, abundance, unity, will, beauty, flow.
experience all perceptions within the context of the entire continuum of possibili-
ties, we may find ourselves utterly surprised. We open ourselves to the Other, to the I am sacred.
possibility that ugly things can, in fact, be beautiful, and that our culture’s percep- I am all that is.
tion of beauty may not be the all of the matter. We may find that the authentic, no
matter its shape and form, is indeed the most beautiful concept in existence. We
open ourselves to the wabi-sabi experience, that the imperfection is the flow that
allows beauty to burst forth into being. When we open ourselves up to experience
the totality of possibilities, rather than relegating our perceptions into the good/
bad dichotomy, we may find ourselves immersed in more than we ever knew
66 31
 the gospel of beauty and the art of appreciation
Springfield’s hobo poet Vachel Lindsay worshiped in the church of the open sky
and lived the gospel of beauty. My outdoor self greatly enjoys her time in the
divine church of the open sky, and I often find myself (weather permitting) with
my hands deep in the dirt on the Sabbath. Many times I am extended an invitation
to join dressed-up passersby on the way to their houses of worship. I cannot
imagine a church inside four walls to ever be as inviting as communing directly with
what I consider the divine, the higher power, life itself. I can’t really describe my
religious beliefs, because I don’t believe in absolutes. I don’t hold much in the way
of opinion for others to believe or disbelieve. But I do have feelings for what my
perception of the divine invokes within me. My hands soak up the earth while my
third eye soaks up sunshine. I nurture as I am being nurtured. In what possible
way could I more directly commune with the divine than what I experience in the
church of the open sky?
There it is. I don’t believe in anything, but I’m always glad
to wake up in the morning. It doesn’t depress me. I’m never
depressed. My basic nervous system is filled with this optimism.
It’s mad, I know, because it’s optimism about nothing. I think
of life as meaningless and yet it excites me. I always think
something marvelous is about to happen. —Francis Bacon
That is one way of living the gospel of beauty; doubtless there are many others.
Again, it is hard to describe the gospel of beauty, because it seems to contain just
about everything—all members of the set of reality—the milky way, little babies’
eyes, a butterfly’s proboscis, tears, cracked teacups, crooked teeth, wrinkled skin,
sexy curves of fat people, duct-taped shoes, a bum who talks to your kid about
Santie Claus, teenagers that cry in public, weeds that sprout up in potholes and in
vacant parking lots—all manners of seemingly beautiful and ugly that can be
appreciated for the uniqueness they provide to enrich our lives in the presence of
never-ending awe of the immensity of what is (the wabi-sabi manifesto!).
There is an art of appreciation that comes along with the ability to recognize
beauty when your eye rests upon it. If I see weeds reclaiming a parking lot, I don’t
tut-tut the downfall of civilization, our bankrupt economy, and the lack of eternal
infinite progress. Instead, I welcome the beauty weeds provide, knowing they are
helping break down the pavement, to create soil full of nutrients, and return the
vibrancy of life to that deserted place. If I am dumped by my boyfriend, I
relinquish my longing, and remember that I am a strong person, complete in and of
myself while at the same time feel firmly supported by those in my community of
friends. Going through hard times is what gives us our strength, and at some point,
we may find we are a fountain overflowing. Many times, our struggles become a
turning point in our lives when we realize the blessings in disguise.
32
levitating over the prison walls:
it can be done.
1.
We must trust ourselves. We’ve been filled with a lot of bullshit that isn’t even
real (time, money, religion, government, morals, etc.) while at the same time denied
acknowledgment of vitally important and real phenomena (our experiences, for
example). It drives us crazy, being born into and raised by the Deranged Mind (a
term coined by Philip K. Dick). We must be honest with ourselves about what we
experience—all manners of experience. We must communicate and share these
experiences, so we can collectively remember what is “real.” We need to experience
rather than be told. It’s human nature, our Will. Right and wrong merely contain all
possibilities. It is among the possibilities we find the key ring to the gates of the
Black Iron Prison.
It takes a lot of energy to deny our direct experience of reality. We tend to
saturate our lives with the other—the kipple of the Deranged Mind—to the point
of universal numbness. In our desire to feel, we seek stimuli, more and more... And
at the same time we deny the reality of the bulk of our perceptions. It frenzies us
to the breaking point…and still…STILL! Do we, or don’t we? Always, always, we
wait to answer.
Trying to make sense within the existence of the Deranged Mind—it’s enough to
drive one mad! The Golden Age is upon us, but the veil is thick. Poke your finger
through the veil, incarnates of Hermes, and let beauty emerge for all to see. Let
those with ears, listen! Let those with eyes, see! Wake up! We are already free!
One sure way to experience is to be open to it. We have to train our minds to
perceive what has been hidden. We must train ourselves to perceive the breadth and
depth of experience. It takes skill to discern what is, what is possible, among a
world of possibilities. We have to explore beyond what we were never told did not
exist. All that is merely forgotten, but it is. Sometimes it takes a divine thief to
reveal the hidden treasures, a mischievous messenger to announce the obvious:
“The Emperor wears no clothes!” We suffer through our anamnesis (the loss of
forgetting) because we do not realize the truth of the message. We are already free.
Our chains appear in reaction to the Deranged Mind. Our liberation begins in our
minds, in our Will—the natural law.
Relying on a priori evidence—our own experiences—we perceive all without
judgment. This is what it means to be human; this is the human experience. In our
present culture, we’ve been told that hearing voices means we are delusional—
schizophrenic. And yet, a quick dig through a history book reveals much to the
contrary. Countless humans throughout the ages have heard voices, from Socrates
to Buckminster Fuller, and have heeded the words of their augoeides, their
agathodaemon. If we are not open to these experiences as possibilities of reality,
they will not exist; we unnecessarily limit ourselves. Rob Brezsny’s Catalog of Cagey
Optimism includes the term schizofriendia, which means hearing voices in your
65

we are having a now emergency
of the highest order
Ordinary time demands our attention to keep the clocks going. Those for whom
time has stopped, we are blessed with immortality. We join the universe in its
waiting, waiting, waiting . . . for what? We wait for the Deranged Mind and the
disparate members of the human experience to awaken and cognize, to incarnate
spiritually and psychically, to identify the One within us All, and to identify the All
within each One.
The Ministry of the Now Emergency invites you to take the day off to catch up
on your sleep. It invites you to take tomorrow off too, and lay under the trees,
beneath the warm shiney sun, to feel each caress of Earth breath. And the next
day too, you should take that day off and catch up with your friends. Find out what
they’ve been thinking and doing; see what they’ve determined by taking their time
OFF and living in the moment.
The Ministry of the Now Emergency proposes a Jubilee beginning in this
moment, and proposes to extend the invitation past and present to all moments in
time...the forever of Now. The Jubilee is a time of forgiveness, of ourselves and
others. It is a time when we reset Empires and fortunes. It is when we look to
each other and think: Who are we? What are we doing here? What are we doing
to and with each other? And I’m just checking in: are we making sense? Are we
Americans making enough sense that any child can clearly see and understand what
we are doing and saying? Or must we spend countless resources brainwashing and
indoctrinating them to believe contrary to what we say we believe to be the Truth?
(All men are created equal, ahem, except those below me on the pyramid...)
The Ministry of the Now Emergency manifests itself as fluff. Attached to a
seed, it sets itself adrift among come what may. It extends an invitation to the
universe to participate in (its) creation. It relies on pistis, the reciprocal trust, to put
down roots and break through limits unknown into new life. We dissolve our
caterpillar selves, liquify our essence and transform into . . . we have no idea what,
until we awaken one day and look into the mirror of the Other. Who are we, but
reflections of each other? Of the All?
We are so much we can barely comprehend. We glow, radiate, absorb, receive,
transmit. We are living information, an encyclopedia yet to crack its spine.
64
Whatever we do in life starts with us. To be replenished, we
need to keep emptying our selves to receive more. In that way,
we become vessels, holding up one hand to receive the blessings and
then opening up the other hand so that we become channels, letting
those blessings flow into the lives of others. —Bear Heart
It does not seem to matter if a situation can be labeled good or bad; the art of
appreciation is an attitude taken to cope, adapt, and thrive in the realm of chaos,
which orders our everyday lives. One of the most beautiful things I’ve ever read
about is a Jewish woman who found herself in a pit, holding her grandson as
soldiers took aim. She looked the baby in the eyes and cooed and smiled. I don’t
know if this story is true or not, but I cannot imagine a more beautiful moment in
the existence of humanity as her gesture of love.
Growing up in America, the art of appreciation is generally not part of our
shared culture, with many exceptions, of course. I grew up in often-violent poverty
in an atmosphere of ignorance, alcoholism, and fundamentalism. I think the
deprivation of normalcy (whatever that is!) has enabled me to wholly appreciate the
good in my life now. I live a life full of blessings. Whatever I need seems to find
me without worry on my part. And I appreciate it all, especially the people and the
interactions we have. I find my outlook on life mirroring Francis Bacon’s: life is
sweet, and I savor each mouthful. Whatever happens, things will be all right. No
matter what happens in my life, I will find the truth of beauty in the reflection of
each particle of this holographic universe. The gods will always smile on me, and I
will see the fruits of each blessing. I will continue to reside in paradise.
The power of love—if that love is sincere and true—is the
only force that can melt the human heart. Love repairs and heals;
it comes from forgiveness being channeled into the lives of
other people, making them feel their worth and stimulating
their potential. Love is expandable. It can encompass
this whole universe. It can heal. —Bear Heart
33

baring
It’s not that I have perky breasts;
it’s that I have belly rolls and love handles and famine-proof hips.
It’s not that my hair is shiny or resembles the shade advertised on the box.
Mine is coarse, straight, and many varieties of brown, blonde, and gray—
highlights and lowlights provided by each sunrise and sunset.
I do not have abs of steel I purchased with a gym membership,
but muscles earned by moving my body in my day’s moment.
I enjoy being strong and capable,
though I’ve been told it’s not a desired feminine trait.
I am not smooth and hairless, some faux pre-pubescent fantasy.
I have hair all over, occasionally sprouting in unusual places.
I do not smell of roses, unless I am holding one from my garden.
I smell of the animal I am—musky, alluring to other animals.
I am my natural way, reminiscent of birds, wind, and mountains.
I am not air-brushed nor photoshopped.
I stand before you, raw and for real, life-sized,
basking in the beauty that emerges without effort.
I am a mirror of the universe, of you—as you are of me.
I stand as a beacon, requesting the authentic to show itself,
to be present in the arena of one’s own struggle.
For if we are to remember what it is to be human—
not a slave, a cog, or a tv apparition—
let us spin the bottle and begin our emotional stripping
in the here and now.
My belly roll, my flaws—all of them—are my certificate of authenticity,
my natural wabi-sabi style.
I can’t help but be myself.
How can I be what I am not?
34
may day celebrations
May Day is celebrated by different peoples for many reasons. May Day is the
traditional Labor Day, or International Workers’ Day, often celebrated with
demonstrations, rallies, and street marches by unions, anarchists, and socialist
groups. In the United States, May Day is celebrated as a remembrance of the
Haymarket Massacre in Chicago in 1886, in which a bomb went off (supposedly...)
and police opened fire on a group of striking workers, killing many workers and
police officers (from friendly fire). Several key labor leaders were hanged, becom-
ing martyrs of the labor movement. President Cleveland moved the national Labor
Day celebration to the first Monday in September shortly thereafter, fearing if
Labor Day were celebrated on May Day, there would be further riots and violence.
However, Americans are not fooled, and often celebrate the traditional Labor Day
with the rest of the world. This was especially true during the Great Depression
when thousands of leftist workers marched in New York’s Union Square, and in
other places throughout the country.
May Day is also a traditional Celtic pagan holiday known as Beltane, as it is a
cross-quarter day (halfway between solstice and equinox), imbued with magick.
Beltane bonfires (lit on May Eve) traditionally “mark a time of purification and
transition, heralding in the season in the hope of a good harvest later in the year,
and were accompanied with ritual acts to protect the people from any harm from
Otherworldly spirits.” Similar to the cross-quarter day of Samhain (Hallowe’en),
the boundaries between worlds are fluid, and Otherworldly spirits are quite close at
hand.
Beltane is traditionally a time to celebrate life, love, and fertility. According to
one Wiccan, “Beltane marks the emergence of the young God into Manhood.
Stirred by the energies at work in nature, He desires the Goddess. They fall in love,
lie among the grasses and blossoms, and unite. The Goddess becomes pregnant of
the God. The Wiccans celebrate the symbol of Her fertility in ritual.” The May
pole is a phallic symbol of the God, while the flowers and greenery surrounding
the May pole symbolize the Goddess. This is a celebration imitating nature in its
current state of full erotic desire, with flowers blossoming and animals of all sorts
procreating and rearing young. May Day traditionally signals the beginning of
summer, with the solstice in June marking mid-summer.
As Christianity became more popular, May Day migrated to the realm of a
secular holiday, with traditions derived from their pagan roots. The May pole
invites celebrants to dance around it, wrapping the May pole in brightly colored
ribbons as they walk around in circles. A May Queen, reported to be the most
beautiful and fair young lady of the region, is crowned and paraded through town.
And ladies! Bathing the face with dew from the grass on May Day morning is
reported to ensure a good complexion for the coming year. May baskets, filled with
flowers or sweets, were traditionally made by children and left on the doorsteps of
neighbors.
No matter how you celebrate this traditional folk holiday, be aware that the
holiday is also celebrating you!
63
 I enjoy researching both what used to be and what currently is celebrated, and
taking from those sources what makes sense and is relevant to my life and situation.
beauty is nothing other than
I have been called a pagan; though I am not particularly active in that scene, I do
consider myself a diy pagan. How could I not?! There is also a lot of information
the promise of happiness...
online about pagan rituals, as well as magic invocations. Again, take what makes
sense and leave the rest. Definition of Beautiful
Participating in a ritual that is meaningful is the whole point. After the winter by Amber
solstice ritual, I felt infused with energy. Spiritually, it was a “peak experience”.
The energy created by the group of people believing wholly in our ritual was Tired of the given definition of beautiful?
intense, pulsating; it filled the room. As Jung said, when the gods act like gods, how It’s all image and no soul.
can we deny them their existence? Whether the gods are “real” or not, I don’t They say it’s pale skin and painted faces and bones.
know or care, but I do know a hefty pile of energy when I feel it, and it certainly I don’t know many girls
bonded us together. Neither shopping at Wal-Mart nor commuting to work can who haven’t gone through some stage in their lives
ever provide that kind of feeling and experience. It is beyond the realm of when food becomes unimportant;
normalcy, and I feel blessed to have experienced it. I desire to incorporate they’ve been nourished on lies.
meaningful rituals in all areas of my life, even and especially on a daily basis.
History, symbols, rituals, invocations, prayers, blessings, requests, meditations, Nowadays it’s hard to have a body you’re allowed to love.
your own super creative forces, plus an active imagination and strong belief in a When it comes down to it, I push and society shoves
reality that makes sense to YOU are some of the keys to creating and participating diet pills down my throat.
in diy rituals. It’s time our holidays became holy days once more, mystic revelers! Nowadays a girl’s birth certificate of self-confidence
resembles a suicide note.
It’s time to claim our word back—
debunk the fiction that has somehow become fact.
Take beauty from an adjective to an act!

Your beauty’s in your spirit,

your eyes full of light,
your willingness to defend yourself,
and put up a fight!
Your beauty’s what you’re doing
and what you have done.
Your beauty is power
and you’re a loaded gun!

Beauty is a tricky word, as we’ve been brainwashed into believing that it means
something like the poet Amber alludes to: skinny pale photoshopped models in
provocative poses. It’s been so drilled into our heads that this bizarre conformity is
the only guise beauty takes that most people walk around feeling particularly
unbeautiful. That’s unfortunate, because as those amazing CrimethInc. kids declare:
“Beauty must be defined as what we are, or else the concept itself is our enemy. To
see beauty is simply to learn the private language of meaning which is another’s
life—and recognize and relish what is.”
Sure, advertising glossy beautiful people helps sell products; that’s the point!
Products help you be more you! They help you attain perfection! We all know
that’s false, but many continually chase this illusion, which ultimately leads to lasting
62 35
 feelings of insecurity and inferiority, of being eternally not good enough. The
CrimethInc. kids ask: “Why languish in the shadow of a standard we cannot
personify, an ideal we cannot live?” Why, indeed?
Once you reject the notion that the beauty that conforms to glossy ads is the only
beauty that exists, you may find yourself surrounded—you live in a world filled to
the brim with beauty. Although I work minimally and sporadically at a medical
school, my full time job is viewing life and my surroundings through a lens of
beauty. I’m continually amazed at what I see and feel. Discarding the notions of
beauty as advertised and learning the private language of meaning that is another’s
life—how do we go about this? For me, beauty manifests as a weird twinge of
recognition, like something is breaking through the illusions that permeate our
current reality, and smacking my consciousness upside the head. I fall in love with
beauty on a continual basis. How can I not? It is my life, my religion, my gospel,
the lens through which I view and interpret the world.
Springfield’s hobo poet Vachel Lindsay preached the Gospel of Beauty while on
a tramp, trading rhymes for bread. He said: “I come to you penniless and afoot, to
bring a message. I am starting a new religious idea. The idea does not say ‘no’ to
any creed that you have heard. ...After this, let the denomination to which you now
belong be called in your heart ‘the church of beauty’ or ‘the church of the open
sky.’”
Vachel further expands on this notion of beauty, bringing it home:
“The things most worth while are one’s own hearth and neighborhood. We
should make our own home and neighborhood the most democratic, the most
beautiful and the holiest in the world. The children now growing up should become
devout gardeners or architects or park architects or teachers of dancing in the
Greek spirit or musicians or novelists or poets or story-tellers or craftsmen or
wood-carvers or dramatists or actors or singers. They should find their talent and
nurse it industriously. They should believe in every possible application to
art-theory of the thoughts of the Declaration of Independence and Lincoln’s
Gettysburg Address. They should, if led by the spirit, wander over the whole nation
in search of the secret of democratic beauty with their hearts at the same time
filled to overflowing with the righteousness of God. Then they should come back
to their own hearth and neighborhood and gather a little circle of their own sort of
workers about them and strive to make the neighborhood and home more beautiful
and democratic and holy with their special art. ...They should labor in their little
circle expecting neither reward nor honors. ...In their darkest hours they should be
made strong by the vision of a completely beautiful neighborhood and the passion
for a completely democratic art. Their reason for living should be that joy in beauty
which no wounds can take away, and that joy in the love of God which no crucifix-
ion can end.”
The neighborhood in which I live can hardly be called beautiful by any “normal”
person. There is utter poverty, falling down houses, litter everywhere (including my
personal favorites, used condoms and dirty diapers), junked cars and other miscella-
neous debris, overgrown weedy vacant lots, potholes and missing sidewalks...the list
goes on. However, beauty abounds if you are open to it striking the chords of your
36
doing it ourselves: ritualizing our holy days
After attending a winter solstice get-together that was entirely infused with ritual
and meaning, I decided to recreate this experience on the vernal (spring) equinox.
Although the winter solstice gathering was enjoyed by a large group of extended
friends, I spent the spring equinox with my lover, and so we planned our intimate
rituals accordingly. Large group or small, creating your own rituals gives new
meaning to any holiday, especially ones whose meanings have been largely forgot-
ten.
My dear editor reminded me:
“The Spring Equinox, “The Birth of the Sun”, marks the passing of the torch—
the time when the rhythms of the planet are guided more and more by the Sun, for
it is on this day that the Sun is born. (ALL: Hooray!) From now until the Midsum-
mer night, the Sun will become the most prominent influence in our daily lives and
will inform how we spend the next few months. The Spring Equinox is a time to
celebrate birth, and is thus a time to honor what lives. So too is the Spring Equinox
a time to celebrate equality, as it is on this date that the lengths of both day and
night are equal. It is a time of blending and merging, of alchemical unions, and
playful couplings. The Spring Equinox is when two become one.”
If you’re in any part of the country that has seen spring-like weather recently,
you’re well aware of the birth of the sun and the effect it has on us. I and my
friends are moving out of hibernation mode, planning gardens and summer
activities, and planting seeds. Especially as we move out of last weekend’s new
moon, we fill ourselves up with light and energy, being nourished and capable of
nourishing. No wonder this celebration was so important to our ancestors!
In spring, the days begin to lengthen after the equinox, and joy fills us, as it does
every living thing! It’s the time when the push at last gives birth to new life and
growth. In some cultures, the spring equinox is the start of the new year. In
others, it is celebrated as mother’s day. Historically, many cultures celebrated
fertility rituals at this time, ensuring good harvests and hunting. There are count-
less celebrations and rituals to be remembered and reclaimed!
When it comes to creating our own rituals, there are many ways to start. One is
to read about the origins of the tradition we wish to reclaim. I have a thick 2-
volume set of books called Customs and Manners of Mankind, published in the
early 20th century. It has a wealth of knowledge of customs around the world, and
I was surprised to see so many reports (with pictures!) of “pagan” holidays
celebrated in “Christian” Europe. What happened in the last century that so many
nature-based traditions died out? Could it be suburban monoculture, hmmm?
In the last week of preparing for our personal ritual, I have read a lot about
Persephone, goddess of spring, and the Green Man, aka the King of the Wood.
They will be included in our ritual, as will the partaking of pomegranate seeds and
honey, being symbols of each respectively. These symbols are powered by our
belief. An active imagination plays a big role in creating rituals that are infused with
personal meaning.
61
 heart. There is always more than one reality going on, and to rent the veil of
Maya—to break through the illusion—we must learn to view our surroundings
from outside our programming, our reality tunnels.
I don’t see the nastiness of an overgrown vacant lot; I see pioneer plants
nourishing the soil until some fortunate person decides to plant an orchard. Junk
laying around is actually one of the resources, the security nets, of poor people, as
there is always someone who needs exactly the junk you have. Trash, well, it’s hard
to see the beauty in a used condom or dirty diaper; I admit, it can take a lot of
strength and an active imagination to appreciate some things. But I get the feeling
that people who thoughtlessly discard trash are the people who have built their
walls of protection so high they can no longer feel. These are the people who
could most use a peek through the lens of beauty—the people I most hope to get a
chance to talk with. But really, the people who live here and the interactions they
provide are by far the most beautiful aspect of my neighborhood.
As Aleister Crowley said, every intentional act is a magical act. Our thoughts
manifest as action, and each action changes our reality. We are presto-chango
magicians in our own daily lives. Each heartfelt, for real conversation I take part in
is an act of beauty, whether it’s talking with my mates about the nature of reality, or
telling a teenager on the bus that I found her refusal to fight her schoolmate
intensely courageous. I find particularly beautiful those things in life that are just for
real, without pretense. The concept of wabi-sabi comes to mind, wabi-sabi being a
hard-to-translate Japanese term meaning, basically, the beauty and the flaw. It’s just
for real, and it’s hard to deny that beauty in a culture overflowing with fakeness. In
fact, it may be that American culture is fraught with fakeness that especially
illuminates the beauty of the authentic.

What is really beautiful must always be true. —Stendhal

When we view life through the lens of beauty, we may be surprised to see and
feel beauty emanating from ourselves. It does not matter in the least what we
appear to look like on the outside, whether our physical appearance conforms to
society’s current view of “beauty” or not. What’s important is the way we live our
lives and view the world around us. We see what we reflect from within ourselves.
We “take beauty from an adjective to an act!” We remember and reclaim the
patterns of what is, and interpret the unfolding of life before our eyes in a way that
makes sense. We can view our reality in any way we wish. We can enact our reality
in any way we wish. As the shaman Bear Heart said: “Planting an idea in your
conscious awareness is like planting a seed. The subconscious responds by
attracting all the things necessary to bring that idea, whether positive or negative,
into fulfillment.” It’s important to be aware of what we sow in our reality. It’s
important to be aware of what we reap in our reality. Our minds have the power to
do anything. It’s an incredible freedom as well as an incredible responsibility.

60 37
 The Buddha did not enter some new territory: he saw things
the way they were. What was extinguished was only the false view
of self. What had always been illusory was understood as such.
Nothing was changed but the perspective of the observer.
When asked, “What are you?” by an awestruck would-be follower,
the Buddha responded only, “I am awake.”
Beauty resides in every object, every act. It is a reflection of the language of the
universe itself: beauty and love—the same thing really. We have the opportunity to
remember this truth, to enact it in our daily lives if we wish. It is possible to
remember our power as human beings, our birthright to create our reality as
something that makes sense and makes us feel whole. If we are all merely reflec-
tions of the universe, reflections of ourselves, I like to think of myself as a light in
the darkness, a crack through which beauty shines through the veil of Maya.
Anamnesis is the loss of forgetting. We have much to remember.
blending
freckles enough to rival the stars—
more stretch marks than cloud ripples.
i find myself complete, whole, at rest.
i am in love with myself as much
as the rest of creation.
i embrace the All, the wonder.
i amaze.
there is.
and i am.
38
a waypoint for weary travelers
Believe in nothing, so you can accept everything. This is the nature of the
skeptic. Modern day skeptics seem to have their minds so firmly shut, there’s no
point. You might as well explore reality with a brick wall. In fact, it might be more
fun that way. It’s probably easier to pass your body through a brick wall than to
pass an idea that cannot be proven (ha) through the mind of a skeptic.
The nature of reality is tenuous, just out of grasp. We have consensus reality that
dominates our minds and eyes, but none of that is real. None of that is real. None
of it. It’s all pretend. The walls that surround us, the advertisements that toxify
our minds, the money we trade our lives for—t’s all consensus reality. The only
thing that is real is this: chi, the energy that holds us star dust together, the golden
cords that bind us all. Gravity, really, is just a manifestation of that. We are the sun
thinking about itself. We are god manifesting its consciousness, expanding its mind.
There is nothing more challenging and adventurous than real life. Video games?
Shopping? Pshaw.
Right now we might look around and find ourselves in a desert. Certainly
modern industrial civilization is working hard to fulfill that goal, taking life and
leaving death and desert in its wake—a kind of reverse alchemy. But modern
industrial civilization is a manufactured illusion. It is a delicate web of interwoven
choices made out of a certain consciousness. If you think you have no other
choice, you are already defeated, and indeed, you will recognize no other choice.
But this is not Truth. In the landscape of consciousness, options are unlimited.
We cannot fight the destruction machine with destruction, or else we become
what we enact. The ends do not justify the means; the means shape the ends. We
become what we do. We cannot sit idly by, as the destruction machine is akin to a
nasty virus, consuming everything, including its host. We are talking about a
different way of fighting, not with guns and force, but with vision and imagination.
Our collective challenge is to extend our imaginations beyond solutions that have
already been tried. The most potent force of the universe may lie in our own
minds. Indeed, magic is the art of changing consciousness at will.
“Consciousness moves to a rhythm. It follows a beat. When disparate
consciousnesses meet, they become more alike. This is the question we must face
and the art we must develop: remaining who we truly are. If we can hold on to
what we are, then even our enemies must change. Only a miracle can save us. And
who will make miracles for us if not ourselves?” (Starhawk, The Fifth Sacred
Thing)
It is Khadir who brings water to travelers lost in the desert, and flowers and
herbs spring up in his path. We open ourselves up to possibilities unknown. The
outstretched hand is there. If you reach for it, it’ll grab you back. We are fortunate
to live in such a time, where so much potential change is up for the offering. We
are blessed if we realize we have a choice.
You don’t see with your eyes. You perceive with your mind.
59
 minds up for it to be. That’s when the emphasis on community life became so
strong. And, well, oftentimes talking leads to action.”
John grinned in memory of the actions of his own young self. He was barely
older than Jeremiah at the time of the fall, in the midst of the slow crash, when
daily life changed so dramatically for so many people. He remembered going out
with his grandma, pickaxes in hand, to tear up the street in front of their house.
They planted corn, beans, and pumpkins that year, and had a bumper crop. He
recalled putting on war paint with his brother and blockading a main supply route.
They had stopped the army’s convoy and were quite relieved when the soldiers,
even younger than themselves, thankfully gave up and gratefully switched alle-
giance. He remembered scaling impossible walls on a raid with his girlfriend, barely
escaping arrest and imprisonment, and then making the most passionate love ever
in the moonlight.
“The White House burning down, though, that was amazing to hear,” continued
Beatrix. “Of course, it had long been empty, the president—I forget which one it
was now—and his family having been moved underground to a secret location, for
safety. But still. It was a group of children that burned it down, if I am remember-
ing correctly. They burned it down and scattered seeds among the rubble.” Beatrix
looked at the clipping.
“It says: ‘The Children’s Crusade for Truth and Beauty torched the White House
yesterday, the ultimate symbol of the United States of America, formerly believed
to be the most powerful nation on earth. Today, this symbol is a pile of rubble and
ash. The CCfTaB scattered seeds they collected in the past year, intending to turn
this symbol of decay and atrophy into a living monument of What Comes Next.
After the fall comes the recovery, and from the ashes, rises the Phoenix.’” Beatrix
shook her head, “I wonder what it looks like now.”
John smiled. “I’m sure the building itself is no longer recognizable. It’s probably
an oasis on the Potomac, a place for weary travelers to camp and pluck the fruits of
our current way of life for nourishment.”
Jeremiah looked again at the framed yellowed clipping. He understood. “I’ll be
right back,” he said. “I think I have something you might be interested in trading
for, Peddler John.”
58
remembering sacred blood
Menstruation is a natural and healthy part of being female, a cyclical reminder
that we are an integral piece of the planet that gave birth to us. Yet our culture
denigrates this sacred body process to the area of dis-ease. There are pills to cut
the pain and gain emotional control, odor fresheners for the “down there” smells,
and all kinds of blood catchment devices (pads, tampons, cups). If we’re tired of
enduring our periods, modern medicine can even give us a shot to make our
periods go away completely. What used to be a celebrated ritual of woman and
community is now something we don’t talk much about, except to “fix” it so it
interferes with daily life as little as possible.
Before electric light artificially lengthened our day, women in communities used
to menstruate together, typically, ovulating and menstruating at the full moon and
the new moon. As author Vicki Noble states in her fabulous book, Shakti Woman,
detailing the shamanic journey of the female: “When the moon passes through its
phases of waxing and waning, dying, and being reborn as a new crescent, this can
be felt—physically, emotionally, and psychically.” We can only imagine the power
of something like this—a tradition bonding women in a community together,
generation through generation.
Some of the oldest known artwork depicts women and their connection with
menstruation, and we’re talking 25,000 years ago. The very earliest human artifacts
are menstrual calendar bones, or sculptures of women holding said bones, notched
with lunar cycles, believed to be tools used by midwife shamans. The various
Venus sculptures, spanning a period of 20,000 years and distributed nearly world-
wide, have long been thought to be fertility sculptures. They are small reminders
of woman’s role of birther and nurturer, and our monthly bleeding is a fractal
reverberation of the cycles of life that surround us. No wonder our bodies were
celebrated! No wonder our powers were appreciated!
As Noble puts it:
“In a more personal way, imagine that when you bled you were able to use the
psychic powers that open and become available to you at this magical time of the
month. Ancient women were able to access power and vision during their periods
that led to tribal decision making and the laying down of tribal law. What must
their sacred sense of themselves have been under these conditions? A man coming
into your psychic field would have felt honored to be in your presence because you
are a woman. He would have related to you with respect and attunement, allowing
himself to come into alignment with your magical tides, communing with you from
your sense of internal timing and your biological imperative. If he made love with
you, it would not be conquest but would happen in response to what your bodies
needed. And in that process he would have been made open and transparent,
experiencing a transformation for which he thanked you. How would this change
your life experience? Your self-image? Your sense of who you are?”
I happened to read this paragraph hours before I started my period. “Psychic
powers, huh?” I thought. “We’ll see what happens!” The next morning I woke up
39
 with a sense that my relationship with my significant other was ending. I had no
clear signs of this happening, just a very vague sense that it was over. This feeling
grew stronger all week, all during my period. Of course, I chalked it up to the
long-scapegoated raging hormones and my emotions taking on a life of their own.
But then I got an “I’m dumping you” email. It really blew my mind that I knew!
You can believe I will be paying attention to what I feel while on my period from
now on, and I won’t be excusing my perceptions on the basis of fluctuating
hormones. Menstrual periods are powerful connections.
Meanwhile, thinking of one’s period as a beautiful sacred ritual and the reality of
experiencing awful cramps and having to go to work or school or be patient with
children while bleeding is another. How do we get ourselves from this patriarchal
crackpot reality, to a place where we are sacred beings, enacting a reminder of the
trust that we are a vital and ongoing part of creation? As Noble says:
“Imagine that deep down in every woman’s process, there is an unconscious pull
to remember the ecstasy of this ancient, sacred encounter with the forces of earth
and sky coming through her body. And at the same time, she has been thoroughly
socialized to be afraid to manifest such a longing. Is PMS so surprising under the
circumstances? ...By repressing the energies of the menstrual period, we find
ourselves trapped in the lack of expression such repression manifests in our lives.”
I have always had horrible cramps, to the point where I would throw up from the
intensity of the pain, even after taking pain pills. After reading a menstrual rant, I
decided to challenge myself to not use pain pills for cramps, and see what hap-
pened. I was surprised to learn, after 25 years of relying on pain pills to relieve
pain, that my mind is even more powerful than pain pills. As long as I am in a quiet
place where I can meditate, I can rid myself of pain by concentrating on it, and
grounding it. Several women I know do this, and we each do it and describe it
differently. But it works. I may have to lay down and neutralize the feelings of
pain several times in the first day or two of a period, but I always feel better,
especially after the natural endorphin rush kicks in.
Years back, I decided to go to the white coat doctor to figure out why my periods
were so awful. I figured if I didn’t bleed so much volume or have such terrible
cramps, then I’d be able to enjoy my periods more. I was given a referral to an
endocrinologist, who tested my hormones and thyroid and blood sugar levels—the
usual suspects. Nine months after I initially saw a doctor, I was told, “Your tests
came back normal. You’re fine!”
I told my friend Abby of the experience, and she laughed and told me one of the
best things for periods is drinking raspberry leaf tea, and since I have a huge
raspberry patch in my front yard, it was very easy to do this. I drank raspberry leaf
tea every day for a month, and began having “normal” periods. I still cramp and I
still flow, but not to the extreme amounts as before. I drink raspberry leaf tea
occasionally now, and I still have yet to experience a period so painful that I have
thrown up. Raspberry leaves strengthen and tone uterine lining (lessening cramps),
help to regulate estrogen and other hormones (lessening typical PMS symptoms),
and are also reported to assist in “general uterine health”.
40
“Fifteen, sir.”
“Ah, that would explain it. You were born after the fall, then?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, you see,” said Peddler John, settling himself down to weave his tale, “the
White House was both a real place and a symbol. It was where the President and
his family lived—”
“President? What’s that?” asked Jeremiah.
Peddler John’s raucous laughter drew Beatrix from the house. “Look here,” said
John, handing the clipping to her.
“Oh, is this the White House burning down? I remember that day like it was
yesterday. I was making love in the apple orchard, with the bees buzzing every-
where loving on the blossoms, in the intense spring warmth and sunshine, when the
community bell began to ring. We were delighted to hear about it,” said Beatrix.
Jeremiah was ignorant of what it meant to live in civilization before the fall. He
knew nothing of fully stocked big boxes of commerce or combustion engines. The
ideas of working and consuming were completely foreign to him, as foreign as the
idea of operating in the community economy was to those living before the fall.
“There were more unemployed people than employed people at that point,”
began John, “and yet being employed was still considered normal and desired.
Mind you, this was not working for the sake of one’s self or one’s community, but
working solely to produce wealth for someone else, and getting only a small portion
of that wealth in return, to trade for one’s basic necessities.”
“Instead of just working to provide for one’s basic necessities?” asked Jeremiah.
“Yes,” replied Beatrix, shaking her head. “I know, it doesn’t make much sense to
you. It didn’t to me either, although it was expected of us all. At the time, we lived
in Stan City, before the Bubble was erected. Our neighborhoods were thoroughly
neglected by those who took our tax money and claimed to rule us. We stopped
paying taxes, having no money anyway, but then we started being harassed by their
henchmen, the enforcers. They built a wall around our neighborhoods, and
introduced checkpoints into and out of the ghetto. It was then we made plans for
escape, and came out here to the Barrens.
“Some wanted to stay and fight it out in Stan City, and others preferred to
concentrate their energies and time on creating something new in open free space.
Although there was nothing much here besides depleted soil and abandoned falling
down housing when we arrived, we thrived in the non-oppressive atmosphere, and
with trust in the divine, we nurtured everything you see, Jeremiah.”
“Of course, there were many warriors who did fight it out,” continued Peddler
John. “They blew up dams and overpasses, stole freighted goods and redistributed
them to their communities—they did anything and everything they could to add to
the disruption the failed economy was already producing. So many people were out
of work anyway, which gave them plenty of time to think and talk things over. It
didn’t take a whole lot of thinking to realize life could be different if we made our
57

the children’s crusade for truth and beauty
John the peddler urged his horse onward into the night. He was thankful for the
nearly full moon lighting his way. From the loaded fruit trees lining the almost
overgrown remains of roadway, he could tell he was nearing Zomba. He presumed
there would be people awake at the settlement when he arrived, given that this was
a time of harvest. As he crested the last bluff into the river valley, he saw the lights
of many fires and heard the banging of drums. It must be a feast! He wished he
could hurry his tired old horse on, but descending the steep bluff, it was necessary
to go as slowly as possible, lest he and his horse and wagon end up a crumpled
heap at the bottom. It was good to practice his patience, and when he finally
arrived, he would enjoy it all the more.
* * *
“What’cha got, Peddler John?” He was still working on his breakfast coffee
when the children began crowding around him. It was always a good idea to show
his wares to the children, especially these children. They were industrious, and
often acquired treasures that even he could not. He went to his wagon, thronged
by short people, and pulled out his baskets and boxes. There were all manners of
toys and delights—dollies with china heads and real hair, wooden blocks, small-
sized tools, and even a few good-quality plastic items that had somehow managed
to hold together. The children looked over his wares carefully, most trying to hold
in their excitement so as to be better bargainers, and then ran off to get their items
with which to trade. Only an older boy remained, with quiet intense eyes focused
on John.
“See anything you’d like, Jeremiah?”
“It’s all quite nice, sir, but I think I am getting too old for children’s toys.”
Peddler John began to pull out his boxes of adult toys, things that were not
exactly practical, but fun to play with, like accordions and flutes, wood carving
tools, combs and watches, skeins of yarns and fancy threads, and so on. Jeremiah
looked with polite interest, but nothing was yet produced to encourage him to run
and get a treasure to trade.
“What about this?” John asked, and produced a framed picture of a yellowed
newspaper clipping.
“What is it?” asked Jeremiah.
“It’s the White House burning!” said John with glee. It had been a fierce battle to
acquire this item, as its previous owner refused to trade it for any amount of
treasures. It became John’s only after a long night of drinking and playing cards,
and John so highly valued the item, he rarely brought it out to offer in trade. He
kept it in reserve to show off to his best customers, and those in Zomba certainly
qualified as that.
“What’s the White House?”
John looked at Jeremiah in surprise. “How old are you, son?”
56
Considering that much of the American food supply is inundated with hor-
mones, pesticides, and other non-natural toxins, is it any wonder our bodies feel out
of whack, especially in a time of heightened psychic power? Raspberry leaves are
rich in vitamins A, C, and E, and in minerals such as potassium, phosphorus, and
calcium, giving your body nutrition. Adequate nutrition, rest, relaxation, drinking
plenty of water, avoiding stimulants (tv, caffeine, etc.)—all these pillars of health
come to mind when thinking of menstrual health.
Raspberries themselves are quite easy to grow. They are normally planted as
canes, and spread by suckers. I started with four plants, and my yard has slowly
been taken over by them. But considering they give delicious raspberries in spring
and fall, plus vital menstrual medicine without any care on my part, I value their
place in my own life and habitat. They are welcome and appreciated. I am healed.
According to Noble, “The healing available to contemporary women through our
blood cycle is an instinctual release of what is within us. Our willingness to face
the dark is the key to our own development. What we’re afraid of is actually the
treasure at the center of our being, the female source energy from which we have
so long been severed. The dragon that always gets killed by the hero, the monster
that lives under the ocean, the ogress that hides in the deepest recesses of the
female psyche is the liberator and savior for the Shakti woman.”
Our bodies are really incredible! We get to experience the breadth and width of
life on this physical plane through the lens of cosmic intelligence. As the author of
Shakti woman reminds us: “The most basic, fundamental tool of magic is the body.
Everything felt, seen, or experienced on other planes can be translated through the
body into the concrete, physical realm.” We are blessed to be women, gifted with a
monthly reminder of our importance in the cycles of birth and death, of life and
regeneration. We reclaim our birthright as powerful beings in celebrating our
menstruation as a rite of growth and transformation, together.
41
 Many homeschoolers who use a curriculum use the unschooling method as
supplemental learning with their kids.
Many adults are unschoolers when they follow their passions to learn about what
interests them. For instance, last winter I read a ton of gardening books in order to
educate myself on the “real” knowledge of gardening (previously being mostly an
intuitive gardener myself). I studied all the time and took copious notes. Then I
noticed my daughter taking notes from a science book, because it was important,
and she didn’t want to forget! Just like me! Parents are the most important
teachers for their children, and my daughter has not just me and her dad to teach
her, but a whole community of people who care a lot about her and have her well
being at heart. This is what it means for a village to raise a child. Kid Khalila is
receiving an education like no other kid, with most of it coming from the depths of
a new paradigm where abundance and fecundity are key. We are so blessed!

42 55
 So, really, how can we not learn using our daily lives as our curriculum? It’s
impossible not to learn, unless your curiosity has been deadened by being forced to
learn what you’re not interested in learning. This seems to be how America has
created its current generation of passionately uninterested learners. No doubt, our
school systems are failing, but I don’t think that’s an altogether bad thing. It’s well
past broken, and that is very apparent. Many parents, like me, are pulling their kids
out of school and feeding their insatiable curiosity rather than letting them rot at
their desks. Granted, not every parent has the means or opportunities to home-
school their children, and that is unfortunate. If I had the money the school
system would receive for my child were she enrolled—my goodness! Oh, the
places we would go!
Occasionally people will ask me: but how do you learn math, or science (or any
other subject they hold dear)? Well, they come up, as useful as they are in everyday
life. I have to admit, although I was good at math in school, it was never something
I was interested in. And honestly, math rarely does come up in everyday life. One
place it always comes up is cooking with a recipe. Kid Khalila is not intimidated by
doubling, tripling, or quadrupling a recipe. In fact, she can make pancakes from
scratch, from start to finish! We also dabble in math when we play Yahtzee! or Toss
Up.
As a public schooled kid, science bored me, but I think it was mostly my teachers.
As an adult, science fascinates me, and I’m astounded at my ignorance at the
natural world around me. I’ve taught myself the names and uses of many plants
and herbs, but insects, birds, constellations, trees—I don’t know what many of
these are. Fortunately, KK’s dad had a science teacher for a grandfather, and he
knows a lot! Kid Khalila and I are both learning.
But that’s pretty much the crux of it. We learn as opportunities present them-
selves. Sure, KK probably knows more about permaculture and sustainable
practices than she does about business acumen, but I don’t think that’s a bad thing!
Being able to not only survive but thrive in a changing world, being able to adapt,
to live in community—this is useful knowledge worth having. Really, unschooling
is learning the ability to learn. If you know how to learn, you can learn anything you
might need to know.
Is unschooling legal? As always, it depends! In the United States, each state has
laws concerning homeschooling in general, and sometimes unschooling in particu-
lar. In Illinois, where I live, homeschooling is considered legal because of a court
case saying it is. There are no specific laws governing homeschooling, so even
though Illinois is fairly conservative on many social issues, on homeschooling
Illinois is waaaaay out there, having basically no requirements whatsoever. Other
states have different requirements, and unschoolers do their best to obey the rules
while keeping their kids’ best interest in the forefront.
Unschooling doesn’t work for all kids or parents, especially if there is a strong
need for structure desired by either. It works well when structure is not desired, or
as in the case of my child, homework is detested, and anything presented as
“teaching” provokes hands firmly clasped over ears! However, in learning through
every day life, my child is an insatiable learner with a curious and inquisitive mind.
54
to you, the most beloved
In America, we have words to describe the experience of hearing voices: wacko,
delusional, crazy, schizoid, etc. To hear a voice speaking to you, whether out loud
or in one’s mind, is not allowed. Hearing voices, especially those of God, is viewed
as insanity within the rational paradigm that provides the framework for everyday
life. To talk about such insanity is to open one’s self up for a trip to the loony bin
and forced medications. As Horselover Fat made note of his crack-up theophany
in Philip K. Dick’s novel Valis, “When you are crazy you learn to keep quiet.”
However, hearing a voice might be more common than you may think. Just
because no one talks about it doesn’t make it a false reality. As psychologist
philosopher Paul Watzlawick remarked: “That which is objectively repressed
(unspeakable) soon becomes subjectively repressed (unthinkable). ...Nobody likes to
feel like a coward and liar constantly. It is easier to cease to notice where the
official tunnel-reality differs from existential fact.”
The Greek word augoeides refers to “the radiant spiritual-divine human soul-ego”
(auge refers to bright light, radiance, and eidos refers to form, shape). In the world
of this ancient language, to hear a voice speaking to one was embraced. Indeed,
Socrates said, “You have often heard me talk of a divine oracle or guide that comes
to me. It is a kind of voice, that I first heard as a child. It always tells me what not
to do, but never commands me to do anything. It is this voice that has, quite rightly
I feel, deterred me from becoming a politician.”
It is probably not surprising that Aleister Crowley was in touch with what he
called a “Holy Guardian Angel” (HGA) by the name of Aiwass. According to
Crowley, the HGA is the “Silent Self ”, the representative of one’s truest divine
nature. Even though the HGA is, in a sense, the “higher self ”, it is often experi-
enced as a separate being, independent from the individual. For Crowley, this
conversation is the single most important goal of any adept:
It should never be forgotten for a single moment that the central
and essential work of the Magician is the attainment of the
Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel.
Once he has achieved this he must of course be left entirely in
the hands of that Angel, who can be invariably and inevitably relied
upon to lead him to the further great step—crossing of the Abyss
and the attainment of the grade of Master of the Temple.
Whether you are an aspiring magician or not, a conversation with one’s augoeides
or HGA can be enlightening. My neighbor Jane confided in me that during her
breakdown breakthrough: “I heard a voice talking to me inside my head. It was
my own voice, but it was speaking in a way that clearly was not me. I didn’t know
what to think, except that it was possible I was going crazy, though I felt and
continue to feel rather grounded and sane. The voice was reassuring, confident,
43
 and full of love. It stressed the need to heal, and it pointed out insights that were
firmly within my blind spot. It gave me hope through rough times.
“I did not judge this experience as good or bad, but merely remained open to the
experience as it was happening. I wrote down what the voice, who called herself
Sofia (Greek for wisdom) said, and reflected upon it. It was only much later I
found out the terms ‘augoeides’, ‘atman’, ‘daemon’, and ‘holy guardian angel’, and
began to realize this experience was—shockingly—entirely within the realm of the
‘normal’ human experience. What is it about our culture that relegates this
experience to the nuthouse?”
As Hakim Bey explained in his essay The Obelisk:
“Our working hypothesis is that the world’s image of itself not only defines its
possibilities but also its limits. ...Not only is ‘pancapitalism’ a global system, it has
also become its own medium, so to speak, in that it proposes a universal stasis of
imagery. The free circulation of the image is blocked when one image of the world
structures the world’s self-image. True difference is leached away toward disappear-
ance and replaced by an obsessive re-cycling and sifting-through of ‘permitted’
imagery within the single system of discourse ....Assuming that our hypothesis
holds so far, we might well ask from ‘whence’ there could appear any image of true
difference in such a situation. The obvious answer is that it would have to come
from ‘outside’ the stasis. ... Everything that enters the discourse, all that which is
‘seen’, is subverted by the very fact that there is only one discourse, one exchange.”
In other words, the current paradigm under which we live permits one view of
normal life: you work, you eat, you shop, you recreate (which perversely means
doing nothing), all through the abstract media of money and hierarchy. Anything
outside this world view is not permitted, and to engage in the pursuit of knowledge
and experience outside this paradigm usually means one is courting arrest or
charges of insanity. To quote Horselover Fat yet again, “Those who agree with you
are insane. Those who do not agree with you are in power.” However, if history
tells us anything, we are free to discover our own paths in this world, and often this
means rediscovering one’s untrodden path through traditional methods, one of
which is conversation with one’s augoeides, one’s HGA.
Traditionally, a culture’s shaman is the neurotechnician of a tribe. A shaman is
the bridge between the physical world and the spiritual world, the psychopomp of
mystical journeys. Often a shaman will induce a trance, either through the use of
psychoactive drugs (traditionally this means anything from ayahuasca, marijuana,
DMT, and the many fungal avenues of pharmakognosis such peyote, amanita
muscaria, ergot, etc.) or physical methods such as throat singing, fasting, dancing,
self-flagellation, etc. In some traditional cultures, the whole tribe goes on a vision
quest together, everyone from babies to the elderly. As the shaman Bear Heart
asserts, “Peyote is used for healing. Our people say we don’t hallucinate with
peyote; rather we see visions that teach us.”
However, in today’s culture that is so radically departed from any kind of
tradition or gnosis, it is important to realize the necessity of becoming one’s own
shaman, if this kind of path is desired. As Dale Pendell, author of
Pharmakognosis states: “Be certain you are ready before you begin. Plenty enough
44
Wednesday brought us another nice weather day, with more of the same kinds of
outdoor activities as the day before. We played a game called Toss Up while we
were taking a break from our workplay. I had been clearing dead canes out of the
raspberry patch while Kid Khalila had been working her biceps doing yet more
rope swing tricks. Toss Up involves adding, and KK did not want to add 13 plus 5.
I refused to add it for her, and told her that was math that even little kids could
easily do. After realizing how easy it was, she added the numbers with no problems.
She also said, “Mama.... You know I can read. That’s all I really need to know.”
Well, how could I argue with that? If you know how to read, and you have access
to words, you really can learn about everything!
That afternoon we discussed how things can be relative. I used the example of
time. Five minutes can be a very long time if you are, for instance, waiting to be
served a piece of birthday cake. But, five minutes can rush by in what seems like
two seconds when it’s almost bedtime. It’s the same five minutes, but the nature of
your set and setting can affect your perceptions of its passage. This led to talking
about how people can view things differently, depending on the culture in which
they are raised. In fact, everyone on earth has a slightly different viewpoint, leading
to the idea that there is no One Truth, or rather, that all is true. It was a bit heavy
for a 9-year-old, but she got it!
Later in the afternoon, we helped a friend rearrange her booth at a craft mall.
Kid Khalila and her friend were working out what it means to be competitive, how
it can be both beneficial and detrimental to friendship, and what to do when being
competitive hurts someone’s feelings. We also went to a resale shop to look for
clothing, and KK entertained herself by reading books that were for sale. She
finished another novel on Wednesday, and I finished a book I had been reading
aloud to her at bedtime. At bedtime, we also played the alphabet game, and the
subject was “silly things”. We thought of many silly things, and Kid Khalila got the
letter Q, and her answer was Qwerty! Oh, yeah! That’s my kid!
I had to work very early on Thursday, and took KK to my friend’s house to hang
out. She looked for eggs, hung out, and had general, all around fun. Another
friend picked her up and took her to homeschool gymnastics class, again learning
some skills and most importantly, some good quality hanging out and having fun
time. Then she went to homeschool music class. She is actually learning how to
sing and carry a tune, which amazes me, since I can’t! After some more reading,
Kid Khalila and her dad went to a Food Not Bombs meeting and played bingo at a
local fringe church. She meets a variety of people there, as the FNB meeting is
held immediately after an all-topics 12-step meeting. She and her dad normally
bike, walk, scooter, or roller skate (well, her dad normally bikes or walks only) the
one mile round trip, adding yet more physical activity to her Thursday.
As I am writing this, tomorrow is Friday, and we have our entire day free. Who
knows what kinds of crazy adventures we may find ourselves in?! Friday evening,
we are going on a Critical Mass Bike Ride, and it’s an exhilarating feeling to hear my
daughter shout “Whose Streets? Our Streets!” Saturday, she and her dad will no
doubt have something fun and entertaining planned, and they’ll also go to the local
library to fill up on yet more good books.
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 handle this kind of conflict, although my shy unfriended kid self has not much
advice for her there! I was never popular! By Monday evening, KK had read two
200-page novels.
On Tuesday, a gorgeous weather kind of day, KK played outside for quite a
while. She collected bugs and worms, played in the mud (oh, glorious mud!) and
water, and did tricks on her rope swing for hours. Later we were sitting on the
porch, chilling and talking about the meanings of words. I told her I just learned
that the word “man” originally meant “woman” in Sanskrit, while the word “wer”
meant man. A werewolf, then, is a manwolf, but a manwolf is a womanwolf! We
agreed it was weird that a word like man could come to mean its opposite. I talked
about the words apocalypse and revelation, and how those words used to scare the
bejeezus out of me when I was a kid, but now they make me feel free. Why? I
grew up with my grandparents, who were fundamentalists, and we used to have
bible study and prayer each evening before bed. Occasionally, we would read from
the book of Revelations, and the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse would scare
me, but not as much as hearing about the world being consumed by fire.
After an odd look from my daughter, the one that asks who would really take
something like that seriously, I told her about the Cold War. I’m not sure she had
ever heard the words capitalism and communism. I explained that capitalism is the
economic system of the United States, where everyone must work and exchange
the money they receive to pay for food and shelter. Communism was the economic
system of the Soviet Union (wow, that’s an antiquated place name!), where the
government held all the land and money and everyone shared. She thought that
sounded good! Well, sure, except that governments tend to collect power and
become filled with corruption. “What’s cor-rup-tion, Mama?” Corruption, dear
Kid Khalila, is when people at the top take most of the power and the money and
do anything and everything they can to keep themselves in that place. It doesn’t
matter what kind of government or economic system you live under; it’s corrupt.
That’s just the nature of power. That’s just how it works.
My grandparents believed, as Revelations said, that the earth would be consumed
with fire. They believed this would happen via nuclear weapons, because in the
mid-80’s, this seemed a quite realistic scenario. Sure, the good folks would (die and)
go to heaven and the bad folks would (die and) go to hell, and as a little kid, I was
scared shitless of death and the nonexistence of my physical body. Personally, I
liked life on earth, and I wanted to keep living.
After explaining all this, I got back to my original point, that the words apoca-
lypse and revelations are not scary to me anymore. Revelation means to reveal, and
apocalypse means to uncover. I recently put together a collection of folktales
subtitled, Paradise Apocalypse, meaning Paradise Uncovered, because I believe we
have the power to remember the garden that grows beneath our feet.
That afternoon, KK accompanied me to work for a few hours, where she
entertained herself writing codes in her notebook (codes being any “secret” words
or phrases that pop out to her, generally from license plates, but sometimes hidden
other places, including vending machines) and reading yet another novel.
52
uncertainty will come with the work that follows.” Pendell uses the Greek term
“daemon” which many of us raised in Christianity will recognize as the fright-
inducing word demon. However, in Greek culture, a daemon is an intermediary
between the world of humanity and the world of the divine. One’s agathodaemon
was one’s personal spiritual companion. As 15th century alchemist Paraclesus said,
“Demons teach, instruct, and inspire men; there never was a man of outstanding
stature in any art or action who had no familiar spirit to guide him.”
It is Pendell’s opinion that, “...Some [demons] can give you power. That part is
tricky, because power is the particular specialty of demons—they know it intimately
and know all the places within power in which to hide. Sometimes the best
approach is just to say ‘Thank you for your unsolicited opinion. Now shut up.’
However you handle it, interesting things will begin happening in your life. That’s
guaranteed. Maybe you will start staying up all night. Maybe you will start writing
down little things on bits of paper.” The author describes his various
psychonautical experiences, and says of his daemon, “She chose me. I didn’t
choose her.”
In case this topic is straying into the area of “mystical trappings” too much for
anyone’s rational brain, we can visit this experience through eminent psychologist
Carl Jung. Although I have a degree in psychology, I was never taught that Carl
Jung interacted with a spirit called Philemon (among other spirits). Through his
many years of ‘confronting the unconscious’, Jung wrote and illustrated The Red
Book, which has only recently become available to the general public, and devel-
oped his theories of the collective unconscious, archetypes, synchronicity, etc.
Jung considered this work invaluable, saying: “The years… when I pursued the
inner images, were the most important time of my life. Everything else is to be
derived from this. It began at that time, and the later details hardly matter anymore.
My entire life consisted in elaborating what had burst forth from the unconscious
and flooded me like an enigmatic stream and threatened to break me. That was the
stuff and material for more than one life. Everything later was merely the outer
classification, scientific elaboration, and the integration into life. But the numinous
beginning, which contained everything, was then.”
Jung used a technique he called one’s “active imagination” to pursue what he
termed the necessary act of individuation, the process of becoming one’s “true
self ”. This is a meditation technique where “one’s unconscious are translated into
images, narrative, or personified as separate entities”. Jung spent the last many
decades of his life translating and updating medieval alchemical knowledge into
modern psychological terms and theories. It was Jung’s opinion that unifying these
fragmented or disassociated parts of one’s self through the process of personal
alchemy is akin to what Thom Cavalli, author of Alchemical Psychology, viewed as
“changing the miserable lead of unconscious existence into a refined, golden
opportunity of a creative, fulfilling life.”
It is Cavalli’s opinion that “alchemy is the archetype of change, whose energies
perpetuate all that is conscious and unconscious, miniature and macroscopic,
spiritual and physical, to evolve along an accelerated course of evolution by
synthetic [as in synthesis] means, into superior and whole form. ...The personal
45
 practice of alchemy ...demands an acceptance that nature can be synthetically
[again, as in synthesis] altered using physical and mental means. Alchemy is about
making things happen using the powers of mind to change matter and the very
fabric of reality.”
Philo Stone remarks: “The unconscious stores our entire history, both personal
and collective, and also potentially has the ability of anticipating our future. It does
not, however, function on the ego’s linear time-line; in sacred time, there is a
melding of past/present/future so that symbols produced at any given time may or
may not indicate the current state of subconsciousness. Frequently, symbols of
wholeness appear at the beginning of the work, and are strictly prognosticative. In
Magick, the same occurs in the Vision of the Holy Guardian Angel.
“This is a far cry from the resulting maturity on the path which brings Knowl-
edge and Conversation with one’s Angel. Individuation arises out of the conflict
between ego and unconscious. If you can’t imagine a conflict with your Angel, just
remember Jacob who wrestled with his angel. The conflict was an ordeal, but the
conflict made him Jacob. Without it he would be among the nameless masses, not a
paradigm for contemporary man.”
Jung coined the term “synchronicity”, which he viewed as “temporally coincident
occurrences of acausal events.” Synchronicity is a well-known experience, and
occurs in many ways, such as thinking of someone and receiving a phone call from
them, having a little-known phrase pop up in several places in a short period of
time, etc. Jung came up with this term when he was listening to a dream of a
patient about a beetle and subsequently heard a skittering on the window. Of
course, it was the insect in question. It is said Jung enjoyed this line from Lewis
Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass, as the White Queen says to Alice,
It’s a poor sort of memory that only works backwards.
It is said when one is on “one’s correct path” one will experience synchronicities
out the wazoo. Thus, synchronicity can be viewed as a term of measurement, the
sum of the rate of paying attention plus one’s openness to awareness. After
describing examples of synchronicities, Jung wrote, “When coincidences pile up in
this way, one cannot help being impressed by them—for the greater the number of
terms in such a series, or the more unusual its character, the more improbable it
becomes.”
If you are actively seeking your HGA, a conversation with your augoeides, you
may want to follow the advice of Donna Eden, author of Energy Medicine: “By
keeping your mind clear, your heart open, and your energies balanced, you are
doing your part inviting such experiences if they are meant to happen.” But people
do stumble into said adventures, much like my neighbor Jane. After Jane’s im-
promptu conversation with the spirit identified as Sofia, Jane was reassured by this
advice, gleaned from The Pursuit of Valis, edited by Lawrence Sutin:
46
unschooling
What is unschooling? What do we do on a daily basis? How does my daughter
learn if she isn’t taught or isn’t forced to do homework? Is it legal? These are only
a few of the questions we get about unschooling.
There are many different kinds of unschooling, as each family adapts the general
method to their specific family culture and comfort levels. Overall, unschooling
means using everyday life as one’s curriculum, one’s basis for learning. We don’t
spend time on homework (although on occasion, we do “play” school, and believe
me, it’s odd to hear a child beg for math problems or a spelling test), and I don’t
teach in any traditional sense, as in a hierarchical “I am the teacher you must obey!”
manner. When learning opportunities come up, and they do quite frequently, we
learn. Every interaction in life can be approached as a method of learning.
I enjoy learning quite a bit myself, and as an adult, when I get interested in
something, I learn all I can about it, from books, people, practical experience, and
any other resources I can find. This is unschooling. Just because I am out of
school doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy learning! It’s the same kind of process my
daughter uses in educating herself, with my help, of course.
But what do we do on a daily basis? We live life! As a dedicated unjobber, I work
sporadically, making just enough money to support my daughter and myself, and we
spend the rest of our time as members of our community. In nice weather, we
spend a lot of time in our garden and outside. We hang out with friends, help on
each others’ projects, do house repairs, go to the park, read books, play games—
anything and everything we want to do, because we are blessed to have the time and
motivation to do it.
Now with all that goofing off, you might think that learning doesn’t happen.
Actually, the best kind of learning happens, because it’s natural, and it totally relates
to matters at hand. To give you an idea of how unschooling works, I’ll fill you in
on my daughter’s activities of the week.
On Sunday, our traditional potluck day, Kid Khalila is at her dad’s house. This
week, we and our local friends all hung out with some out of town friends who
were stopping through on a spring break trek out west. They came in a veggie oil
car, so KK learned how to cook up veggie oil and filter it. She learned all about
how the car works with veggie oil vs. gasoline. Later, we tramped around in the
woods and walked around in our neighborhood, practicing backyard tourism at its
finest. When we got back to my house, KK saw the altar I had set up for a spring
equinox celebration, and we talked about why and how that is important, plus what
the symbols used mean (such as pomegranate seeds).
On Monday, Kid Khalila goes to the local YMCA for homeschool classes. These
are mostly, for her, fun classes that provide social time with a variety of age groups
of other homeschooled kids. She attends an art class, followed by a swimming
class. After swimming class is free time in the pool, and we generally stick around
and eat lunch with a pile of kids. For some reason, my daughter is one of the
popular kids, and other kids argue over getting to sit by her. She is learning how to
51

take heed, pyramid builders! time is ripe!
We are all gods, all of us. We are stardust, caught in the act of creation. We
manifest ourselves. The golden cords tie us together, enabling us to relate. It is up
to us to make them glow in the here and now, an invitation to all of the universe to
celebrate—an outstretched hand if ever there was one! From stardust we create
ourselves, and return ourselves, but for a moment of physical pleasure: aaahhhhh.
What an act of beauty, that we are aware, that we create our own realities, and that
we share them with each other. We are mere static in the realm of time. It is our
privilege to behold. Whispers emanate from the center of the galaxy, the center of
time, the center of our minds, where we are caught in the act of being. We hear the
echoing waves, interpret ourselves as the divine, and act accordingly as autonomous
stardust. How fortunate we are for this experience.
We are important! Every last one of us is. There is spirit, energy, and it flows
through everyone. Everyone! Every person is part of that flow, is part of us. We
are necessary for the universe to experience. We are essential and vibrant, emanat-
ing the love and beauty and awe of the divine with each breath, each footstep, each
act. We are flagrant—on fire. We’ve been caught red-handed. We are conscious-
ness manifesting itself into being. Our active imagination enables us to conceive of
our own magnitude, in such a quintessential state of suchness. Where would our
world be without its suchness?
We still can’t imagine the full effects of our synergy. The signs, the symbols—
they are already in existence. We just need to pay attention, to observe without
judgment. In full command of our faculties, we are unstoppable. With all your
power, what would you do? What will you do?
We will find the words to set ourselves free. They are on the tip of our collective
tongue, about to leap from the center of our collective brain. It is electric, the
spark, the arc. It is universal. It is known, but veiled, hidden, forgotten. Anamne-
sis is the loss of forgetting. It has already begun. People are waking up, becoming
conscious, thinking, turning off their robot minds and turning on an awareness that
puts a spotlight on our cultural blind spot. The world we inhabit is alive. It is
sacred, and we are part of that sacredness. No matter the plans of ex-presidents
and other highly paid puppets, we are essential, each and every one of us.
There are no slaves in the landscape of consciousness. Wake up! You are already
free!
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What ultimately distinguishes madness from mysticism
is the direction the affected individual’s life takes.
For the insane, the experience leads to further disintegration;
for the mystic, it leads to unification and healing.
For Jane, having one foot firmly rooted in the world of civilization as we know it
was key to her experience of the breakdown transforming into breakthrough. She
unknowingly and before-the-fact took the advice of Robert Anton Wilson, who
recommended being open to experience, but without belief. Jane did not “believe”
that Sofia was talking to her, but she took in the experience and reflected on it.
Jane did not “believe” she was “the most beloved”, as this was Sofia’s answer to her
question of “why me?” But when she came across these lines from Philip K.
Dick’s book Valis, she noted the synchronicity: “‘You of all people,’ the void
communicated. ‘Out of everyone, it is you I love the most.’”
Jane still does not “believe” her experiences to be Truth; in fact, Jane believes less
in Truth than ever before. She says, “This experience has really opened me up to
the mutable nature of reality. I realize now that ‘reality’ is constructed in our
minds, and that really, there can be no one hardcore reality that we all share. Our
reality is made up of each individual’s perception of reality as defined by their
culture and beliefs. Our perceptions are a model of reality, not to be confused with
reality itself. As has often been said, the map is not the territory; the menu is not
the meal. To me, this has led to a feeling of ultimate freedom. I believe in nothing,
as did the skeptics of the past, so as to permit all possibilities. I am no longer a
prisoner in the fortress of my beliefs. I am free to imagine and enact whatever
reality I find that makes sense among the seemingly infinite possibilities of realities.
And honestly, I can think of an abundance of more fulfilling realities than Empire.
Now to start enacting them!”
As Shakti Woman author Vicki Noble states, “For Americans to let in the living
play of spirits, we are going to have to stretch our identities quite a lot more than
those people living in other countries.” She notes that Americans are trained NOT
to perceive what is not observable with a rational eye, and our culture does not
have a tradition for this kind of intuitive learning. It is her opinion that “the
ongoing work for a female shaman is to stabilize both the energy and the emotions
and to continue to grow and transform the personality without losing equilibrium,”
and notes, “If we weren’t so afraid of something so foreign to our previous
experiences, we would think it was ecstasy and we would cultivate it.” She notes
that shedding one’s false skin results in feelings of great liberation, and is indeed
the path of the female shaman.
At some point, as Robert Anton Wilson states, “If this begins to sound like
nonsense, that is inevitable on this level. It happens in both linguistics and math-
ematics because it happens in consciousness itself; language and math are just
models of consciousness. [We almost figure it out/colorfully self-destruct] and we
decide that what we have been reading, or thinking, or perceiving, must be ‘non-
sense’. It is not nonsense. We are merely confronting infinity where we least
47
 expected to encounter it—in our own lonely selves.” Vicki Noble adds: “The
experiences are so direct and often so profound that to translate them into words
and concepts takes an extra mental effort—the step of mediation that has to be
inserted in between the experience and one’s communication of it. The English
language, and the Western mode of communication, work against the expression of
shamanic truths by virtue of what they have left out of the picture.” Or, as Aleister
Crowley noted, mystical writings often sound like “the ravings of a disordered
mind.”
It is important to view a visit from one’s augoeides as a dialogue. Noble invokes
the importance of Jung’s synchronicities, saying “Walking the shaman’s path is like
having an ongoing dialogue with Nature or with the invisible world or with the
Goddess, in which you are asking a question, receiving information, processing that
information, and asking the next question.” When we are open to learning, we
learn. When we are open to experience, we experience. When we are open to
caring, we care. When we are open, we evolve, change, and grow. We are fluid,
receptive. When we are open to experience, the whole world is remade anew.

* * *

This concept
of being united
with the divine reality

by a love union
with the Angel who is present

in the person of
my Beloved

this experience

of mystic union
LOVE
conjunction of the spiritual and the physical, matter and energy
imparts the higher Energy of
ACTIVE IMAGINATION

which alone is capable, in its concentration

essentiation
instantiation
of creating new transformations in the outside world.

–poem from Notes for a Supreme Nonfiction by Julian Upwinger, available at

www.scribd.com/doc/29242132/Notes-for-a-Supreme-Nonfiction-vs1-0

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