Sing the rapturous love-song unto me!

So Much Better than the Original!

2007-07-18T14:14:00.000-07:00

Who Else Wants to Develop a Society Based on Love?

2007-06-29T07:52:00.000-07:00

It's such a cliche now in our culture to say that the man is keeping us down.
I don't even think anyone's actually considered that statement since the sixties.
What does it mean anymore?
Who's the man?
What's he doing?
Why's he doing it to us?

I realized something yesterday. I was walking with my girlfriend and I started thinking about everything I've ever had to do to get some help from "the man". Consider health-care subsidies, student loans, employment insurance, welfare, career counseling, aptitude tests, high school, grants, college, etc, etc.
There is a pattern with all of these.
Every single one of them has inlaid mechanisms designed to try to either get you to conform, make sure you are conforming, and/or classify your degree of conformity.
For instance try to get a student loan in Canada.
First you have to define your level of conformity and the conformity of your parents. You have to be classified, fitting certain criteria, and those criteria are obviously based on an arbitrary standard of conduct. I guess it's not entirely arbitrary, the criteria are obviously in place to make sure you're acting the same way others act.
Case in point: if you've been away from school for X number of months they expect you to contribute x number of dollars to your tuition. Otherwise they won't give you funding or won't give you full funding.
Counterintuitive I think. Doesn't really make sense to deny full funding to someone who has less just because he was able to sustain himself by other means than a typical job.
This one instance alone doesn't prove my point, and don't think I'm saying that there are "people at the top out to get the little guy". What I'm saying is that it's always like this. Society as a whole is risk averse, and it sees individuality and creativity as risky. Is this a conscious thing? Probably not, at least not for the most part.
I think it's just the fact that the average person, most of the people reading this I'm sure, refuse to actually question things.
Our culture is so obsessed with the status quo, consumption, appearances, and prestige that it's never stopped to look at what it's actually doing to a large part of the population.
The powers that be are effectively stomping on whatever they don't recognize. Anything that's actually new and inovative, especially in the artistic world, is ignored, or ostracized.
Try to get funding for an artistic endeavor in Canada. Try to explain to the welfare bureau that you've been absorbed in meditation for the last six months and that's why you weren't working. Try to tell a career counselor that you want to help and teach people but you don't want to be a teacher because there's too many restrictions and you can't be a priest because you're too honest. She'll tell you to take a journalism class.
We all need to start taking more chances on people, see them as individuals and not categories.
We need to educate ourselves, start seeing what's truly important, give up the things that we cling to cuz they're holding us all down.
Our progress as a race depends on our willingness to see past our own consumptive wants and lecherous greed and gain a perspective that takes into account the monumental benefits of art, religion, personal growth, and compassion.

Two Views on Emotional Control.

2007-06-28T08:15:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking a lot lately about emotional control.
For a long time I thought that the best way to deal with my emotions was to try to a appreciate them for the energies that they are manifesting but recently I came to the realization that I can just let them go.

I've known about the Buddhist idea of non attachment for a long time, and I've also known about the Sedona method for a while as well, but until just a few days ago I viewed them as a type of repression. I saw them as a denial of the unity of existence and nothing more.
I still think that adopting this type of practice to deal with your emotions is in a sense a denial, but now I've also come to realize that they are just too darn practical (especially when you first start trying to control your emotions) to ignore.
Let go of emotions for now, then when your living in some sort of state of imperturbability move on the trance of wonder to gain that sense of unity.

I'll go into it a bit more later.

Eurpean Kids are so much More Creative...

2007-06-21T08:36:00.000-07:00

than north american kids.

JimJams from glasgow

2007-06-21T08:28:00.000-07:00

The Intellectual Aspect of Life.

2007-06-19T08:01:00.000-07:00

Intellectual development isn't as complicated as most people seem to think (especially considering that most books you'll find are 80% garbage).
It get even simpler once you've developed the right skills.
Just get some concentration under your belt (that's the hard part), then work on your memory (I think the Qabalah offers one of the best mnemonic/peg systems), then work on your information processing abilities (ie. photoreading and image streaming). Once you've got all these things highly developed you'll be able to understand everything and be able to do it in a quarter of the time.
As for the topics to consider I think everything is good to learn. There are, however, a few that stand apart from the rest.
First you got the obvious ones Math, Classics, and Science. Just dive in and have at er. Don't stop until you're perfectly satisfied.
Other than that anything to do with language is really valuable, and psychology and philosophy can be a lot of fun.
The main point should always be to get an understanding of something not knowledge.
It's so much less important to be able to memorize a bunch a facts than it is to be able to understand the larger concepts. Thankfully Photoreading and the Qabalah help immensely with this.

Caravaggio

2007-06-18T08:28:00.001-07:00

The lusciousness of Caravaggio is unrivaled, even today.
His expression was pure ecstasy, unadulterated living. He was a real artist, with eyes for reality, an internal light that comes through his work unimpeded by bias or rational interference.
He is a great representative of artists as merchants of messianic messages.

ART

2007-06-16T09:44:00.001-07:00

I like this one Too.
makes me think of Greek Mythology

A fiery Horse

2007-06-16T09:35:00.000-07:00

A horse in a fire is a dangerous thing. might get himself burned for a while, in the time it takes for him jump.
Don't matter, doesnt smell too bad anyway.
He'll get his leg broke anyway.
Then it'll all be better.
Keep in mind I love the little animals, even the ugly ones.
They're quieter than most,
smellier I think,
but kind,
small,
like the little dolls of God.
I'd like to be god one day, then I wouldn't have to watch this horse jump through fire if I didn't want to.
I'd be able to keep him in the mist, all raw and moist.
mmmmm... moist horse.
I'd like me a piece of raw horse right now, goes good with toast.
Tao toast would be better.
Or a bagel with lots of cream cheese.

My Right to Peace

2007-06-15T09:29:00.001-07:00

Don't let cowardice impede you,
don't let fear control your life,
don't let feelings be your kilter,
don't let love control your strife.

Compassion is a virtue
but right action is as well.
Choose the measure for your meanness
based on where you find your hell.
It's not simple, wouldn't want it
if it was. I'd be a mess
If every time I felt uneasy
I turned it to distress.
But when I'm laughing
hard and easy
at the walls or nothing else
I know that if I wasn't
Something must be in repulse.
Keep me easy is my moto,
its by this that I find peace
but when easiness is wanting
I find easy in the crease
right between the pain of acting
and the pain of my release
on the border of compassion
There within my right to peace.

Odd to an Intimation of NonMortality.

2007-06-13T07:48:00.000-07:00

Keep the measure of the madness so distinct to set me free
and the harlot of master is the one for you and me.
She's beatic and full measure, so delicious for the feign,
that she's come to be the master of the dickless and the cain.
It's immortal to be happy on the moors and in a heath,
as a kid came running to me, I think his name was Keith.
He was plump as yorkshir pudding, not delicious but he'll do
cuz I lost my means to make it sans a thousand pots of pooh.
He'll be meaner as I make him
dance a dance of fance and frill
He'll be kinder when I kill him,
but I think he'll catch a chill.
Don't berate me, I'm immortal
on the breezes of the south
and the south that came to chill you was the breathing of my mouth.
Ha, just kidding I can't breath you, I've got nothing in my mouth
But i thought I'd make a monkey of the poor delicious louts.
So I came to say you something:
So much faster than the south,
So much silkier without it,
when there's nothing else in doubt.
Keep it real,
for the master,
its the keel on the ship.
It's been waiting ever faster
on the heal of my tip.
its Subina on my rapture
it's Subina on my mouth
so I'll keep the mass to keep you
on the keel through the drouth.
sempiternal, all engulfing,
on the summer month of may
I've waiting Long to hate you
so come out dear and play.
We'll play dear on the roses like the Thelemites of old
and the cross shall come to bear us through the tempests of the cold.
It's alright dear it's the future here to comfort us in heat
and we'll lay us down upon her after summer months of meat.
Keep me with you I can't save me,
I've got too much fucking gold,
I'll be waiting warm upon you when the torrent tales are told,
I'll be bearded old and weary on the summer times to scold
all the children that can't worship
cuz their parents are too cold.
It's the tragic and forgetful that I've come to set them free,
It's their majesty of magic
that spells happiness for me.
I've been waiting in Subina,
on the shore of my release,
on the border, come to fill me
on the shore of Ingle Lees.
It's this Island,
I can't stand it,
I'm no longer one of them,
I can see the warmth upon them
and I Puke me at the stem.
I can't take it, I don't want to
I'd be happier in jail,
so I'll keep my sense to free you
just before you post my bail.

I shall have you
I shall see you
On the summer of my mouth,
through the flirting fog of winter
and the northness of the south.
My Gitana,
my saliya,
More delicious than my love
I have come to see the torments
on my god forsaken dove.

The Spiritual Side of Life. A Brief Note on Carryover.

2007-06-12T07:55:00.000-07:00

The carryover effect.
The most profound and potent thing you can do for your life is dedicate as much time as possible to cultivating love, concentration, and awareness/sensitivity (i.e. sensitivity to the subtle energies around and in you).
This is spirituality.
Feel love for something external if you don't feel like you feel love for yourself yet. Focus on the universal creative force. Focus on the perfection of all that is. Find a quiet place and find yourself able to look at the simplest little thing without judgment, without labels, and try to see the stillness of it.
Appreciate everything that comes to you, and through you.
Feel whats most subtle in your body.
Feel every emotion as a controllable energy.
Introspect.
Notice your reactions.
Be vigilant.
Notice everything always.

You can't even imagine yet how profound this can be right now. You'll see it as soon as you start but you have to start.
Would you like some help?

Adonai

2007-06-11T08:32:00.000-07:00

What else is left but the perfume to keep us on track?
I'd like to smell the flowers of heaven
but yours would be enough.

I think it's great,

I think the last thing I'll see will be your face.

I think there's nothing more surreal than feeling the faint
and liminal fancy of the feathery scent of You.

It's thrilled me a thousand times,
in heat and rapture while I danced about
in hopes that we'd combine.
I'd like to smell you once again
and be the dew upon the lamen,
I'm enchanted,
all together,
I'd be once again your mate.
I'm enchanted,
in the morning
after time has set me still
and I watch to see you whisper
in my ear so you can thrill
me through my body
till my spirit keeps the pace of what I feel.
You're my father,
my saliya,
my enchaunter from above.
I've been happy since you left me
but I'd like to feel your love.

Piracy is a Good Thing!

2007-06-09T08:24:00.000-07:00

I'm in favor of Piracy!

I'm in favor of Piracy!

I'm in favor of Piracy!

I think it's a great thing.
I really have a hard time believing that the movie or music industry will ever seriously suffer from piracy, even if it became a widespread norm.
Do you think they'd stop making movies or music? Hell no! At least not the true artists anyway (and they're the only ones that count anyway).

Music: I predict that the increased exposure (via online communities) for artists will make it easier for starting artists to be heard. Once they're heard they'll become viral (if good) and to get money they'll either get a sponsor or go on tours.

Movies: I predict that the big production companies will get advertising deals (sponsors) which will take advantage of the already present multi-million person audience. This is great for advertisers. We're living in a post TV age where traditional marketing doesn't work anymore. The best marketing strategies for the new era is branding.
You see a brand in a few entertaining movies (discreetly placed so as to not interfere with the artistic integrity of the work of course;), and bob's your uncle. You'll see that brand as unique and therefore valuable.
Production companies might lose some money at first but that's ok. THey make too much as it is. I imagine that the first things to go would be the gratuitous special effects and the Pantagruelian salaries for the actors.
This would translate into movies with better story lines (no longer relying on the flashy effects), more down to earth actors (people just starting out perhaps), a more even opportunity for actors to get into the business, and hopefully a lot less celebrity worship.

Is Piracy "wrong" or "immoral"? No! Ethics is a dead line of thinking. We can no longer think in terms of right or wrong, but only in terms of "how can we progress further?". As soon as the film and music industry gives up they're dying pleas against piracy we'll all be much better off. The sooner they realize that no one's going to be bullied into a syrupy-slow pace of communication the sooner they'll be able to step into the new evolutions of art, marketing, humanism, ethics, communication, and global comradery.

Don't get left behind. Step into the new evolution yourself and start downloading.
Start spreading the message of tolerance and communication.

He's One God, and there is no other God than He.

2007-06-08T08:24:00.000-07:00

Hua allahu alazi, la illaha illa hua.
Keeps the same pace,
day in, day out.
Keep the same pace,
day in, day out.
Hua allahu alazi, la illaha illa hua.
Keepin the same pace
day in, day out.
Keepin the same pace
day in, day out.
Hua allahu alazi, la illaha illa hua.
He's the same face
day in, day out.
Keepin the same face
day in, day out.
Hua allahu alazi, la illaha illa hua.
It's all the same pace
day in, day out.
Never the same face
day in, day out.
Hua allahu alazi, la illaha illa hua.
He's always the same face
day in, day out.
Never the same pace
day in, day out.
Hua allahu alazi, la illaha illa hua.
Always the same pace
day in, day out.
Always the same pace
day in, day out.
Hua allahu alazi, la illaha illa hua.
Hidden behind pace
day in, day out,
is always the same face,
day in, day out.

I didn't know marty knew slayer.

2007-06-07T20:52:00.000-07:00

The Spiritual Side of Life. Part . The Exercises.

2007-06-07T06:35:00.000-07:00

I'm not allowed to talk about most of the spiritual exercises that I've experimented with (*shhh*) but I don't have to talk about my own experiences to talk about the theory and benefits of certain practices.

Spirituality can be divided into two categories: the internal and the external.

The internal deals with concepts like the ego, concentration, emotional control, mental health, etc.

The external deals with situations like relationships, control of environment, right interaction based on proper perception of reality, and so on.

The former is generally labeled "Yoga", and the latter is generally labeled "Magick".

Let me take a moment here to address something that the weaker of the brethren might not have considered since they were children: Magick Is Real!
So are "miracles", super powers, demons, angels, gods, and fairies. They may not all be as real as we imagined when we were kids, or at least not in the same way, but there are forces in nature that the ancients labeled as demons, gods, angels, etc. which we can understand and interact with in a predictable way to effect change in ourselves and our environment.
Modern science is even beginning to support a lot of these things as being not only possible but essential aspects of the natural order.

Lotsa fun to be had all round.

So how do we go about causing these changes?

For environmental change we have to first make a connection between us and the thing we want to change. Most of the time this can be done with the scin laeca (the body of light. AKA the astral body). Sometimes things like talismans can make the connection or we can even employ certain beings to do what we need (this theory is based on the fact that humans are co-creators alongside gods and therefore we have divine authority to command and control every lesser being) . Such beings are usually demons or elementals, but can even be discarnate beings (dead people or animals) or created beings (egregors). I won't go into to much detail about these things, I really don't have enough experience with any of them to say much else without making an ass of myself. If you're curious (and you should be) check out Liber ABA and Transcendental Magic.

For internal change we have to develop concentration. I bet you can imagine what this entails. Lots of starring at blank walls, visualizing simple shapes, avoiding distracting noises etc. It's all good fun and the benefits are almost instantly apparent.
A couple things you might not have realized is the fact that your breath plays a very important role in facilitating concentration, and so does a very specific faculty of mind that has to be trained in a particular way.
The breath is your link between the automatic faculties of your mind and body, and the volitional faculties. Physiologically speaking your breath is the only function in your body that you can do both consciously and unconsciously. This gives you a great key to your unconscious processes, your control of the autonomic nervous system and consequently a whole host of lovely benefits.
(NB. Notice that during a flight or flight response your immune system shuts down as well as the parts of your brain responsible for rational decision making and creativity. Bummer for people under stress. They're sick and stupid.)

The particularly useful part of the mind is the inhibitory faculty. This aspect of mind is curiously useful. It's responsible for the inhibition of thoughts and actions. Now I know it doesn't seem like it's that important to be able to prevent yourself from thinking or acting in certain ways but I honestly couldn't recommend a more useful, simple and foolproof exercise than this: Liber Jugorum. If you were to spend a mere 6 months (a drop in the bucket and not unreasonable when you consider how long most personal trainers say it takes to "get in shape". Six months is nothing) doing the exercises as recommended (no fudging or wussing out on the cuts) you'd be a completely different person. A lot of your neuroses and fixations would naturally come to the surface so you could examine them (and therefore destroy them), you'd be able to think more clearly, more elaborately, you'd be able to follow longer and more complex trains of thought, your mental stamina would be outrageous, and you'd probably end up with a whole heap of really cool scars. You'd also most likely develop a moving grace that comes with perfect awareness.

Prizes all around.

Could Internet Piracy be a Good Thing?

2007-06-07T06:29:00.000-07:00

It's been a weird and wonderful past few days.
I have been working on the 5 aspects of life series so don't get all worked up about it. I just wanted to do it right so I've been spending a lot more time on them, especially taking the time to review and edit them properly. So one day, Probably on the weekend, you'll get bombarded by a whole bunch of back dated posts.

I'd like to make a shout out to my best homie K-Dog. What up ya grimmey MF?

I was thinking of doing a little rant in favor of Piracy (internet, not Caribbean). What do ya'll think?

I'd like to discuss this with you.

I can support my side, can you support yours?

Yogic Rain

2007-06-06T06:22:00.000-07:00

It rained here yesterday
and my mantra slowed down.
It slowed to the point where it matched
The speed of water,
maybe slower,
still repeating,
Hua Allahu alazi, la illaha illa hua.
Keeping me steady in pace.

And as the rain came down I wondered why the waters
and the vision of my voice were dancing.
I'd never seen the sense of beauty be so melodic,
it was hypnotizing me under the stream.
Each drop seemed slower every inch.
Every inch another tempest of the timelessness of sleep.
I saw a world that had no order
and a man that had no peace,
because the time on which they border
could do nothing else but cease.

The Spiritual Side of Life. Part 4. The Abyss.

2007-06-05T07:27:00.000-07:00

Crowley claims that the primary function of the Holy Gardian Angel (HGA) is to guide the adept to the brink of the Abyss. The HGA cannot cross with the adept.

The name "crossing the abyss" comes from the structure of the Qabalistic Tree of Life. The tree is conveniently divided into three main sections, mirroring the sections I've been talking about.
The tree is set up so that if you could imagine walking from one sphere to another you'd be able to get from sphere 10 to sphere 4 without having to make any leaps. After sphere 4 however you're gonna have to jump to get to sphere 3. This jump is crossing the abyss.
This stage is out of all relation to anything that could be called "normal consciousness". I'm entirely unwilling to make any sort of claims about what it's like because my investigations of it have led me to conclude that this stage is intimately tied up with the development (or realization) of altogether new faculties of mind.
Crowley describes it as being the realization of the futility of logic and the transcendence of logic in favor of a mode of "thinking" that is so different from what we are normally used to that it's entirely unrecognizable.
This stage could be called "union with godhead", maybe "transcendence", "one with the Tao", or anything like that. I really don't know what else to say about it except that you can read about it in Crowley's confessions, in Liber 418, and you can actually get a fair appreciation for this side of the abyss through Kant's Critique of Pure Reason and Wittgenstein's Tractatus.

Have fun kids.

Once lost on the waters

2007-06-04T06:34:00.000-07:00

I don't know how many people feel that something hurting
Can bring them closer to god's closest quarters,
but a light at the end of a horrible trial has broken onto me.
I've lost a lot of myself with this one, and I looked too far to get it back.
I sought out comfort in various places,
and ended up coming right back,
Empty handed,
Still a wreck.
I'd rather be a lost tormented soul on the waves of the waters
than face this greatest fear of mine again.
I've had to address this before,
but never again,
I've faced it and know what I have to do.
It's all in the wrist.
It's over and over again lost in the fight,
I'd kill it if I could,
but loving it is better.
I'd really like to keep this down
but it's exalted like the rest.
This is me,
body and mind,
this is me.
I'm him in the most intimate way,
I'm in love with him,
Myself, in a spiritual way
and I love me.
Does dissolution save,
or does the draught of discontent?
Does it pay to be sporadic
or does unconditional reign?
I'd like to be opratic
but I couldn't stand the feign.

The Spiritual Side of Life. Part 3. Adonai.

2007-06-01T06:32:00.000-07:00

The second major stage of development is marked by what modern hermeticists call The Knowledge and Conversation of your Holy Guardian Angel.
This state is described by most, if not all, of the major religious traditions.
It is in effect a realization of some preternatural intelligence as a built in guide for one's life.
This intelligence is recognized by the experiencer as distinct from his own intelligence and it gives him access to abilities and knowledge usually acknowledged as "miraculous".
This intelligence has gone by many different names.
Socrates called it the Higher Genius,
Abramelin called it the Holy Guardian Angel,
The Hebrews called it Adonai, the personal god.
It's also been called the Daemon, the genius, Augoides, and a host of other names.
When the experience and methods of achievement are described the similarities far outweigh the differences.

This experience is essentially the high water mark of the first phase of the path of the wise. It is the first truly enlightening experience.
It requires all of the student's previous accomplishments to attain.
He must have mastered his mind (at least to a high degree), his emotions, his body of light (aka astral body) and his circumstances (though Crowley holds some contention over what mastery over circumstances really means).

I'm speaking from theory and not experience so I can only speculate what it would take to accomplish this but there are a few things that seem pretty necessary.
Yoga seems to be a must (vid Liber ABA and 8 Lectures). A steady Asana, balanced Prana, and calm Chittam seem absolutely necessary.
Also the control and development of the body of light (vid Liber ABA).
See for yourself in John st John, TOSK, The Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage, and more genrally throughout the Equinox and Liber ABA.

The Spiritual Side of Life. Part 2.

2007-05-31T06:24:00.000-07:00

There are three basic stages in the life of a person engaged in spiritual development.
The first is characterized by the transition from "normal consciousness" to a "spiritual consciousness".
(NB. I really dislike the word "spiritual" because I find it horribly unspecific, and there are a lot of weird connotations behind it. I'm using it however, because it's instantly recognizable and it's simple. I would like to make it a little more clear what I mean here though. For me a spiritual state is one where the functions of normal consciousness are replaced with the functions of a conscious capable of expanded awareness and appreciation of singularities. I think that's fair enough. If you'd like to contest it, or if you think it's insufficient in anyway please let me know and we can discuss it.)

This shift usually takes the form of what Crowley called "the lesser trance of sorrow". I don't think this is a necessary step in a spiritually minded person's progress but it does seem common. This state is characterized by a realization of the futility of all "earthly" endeavors.
I personally went through this when I was about 13. I started thinking a lot about what I wanted to be when I was older and I just couldn't justify anything to myself. I just kept thinking that no matter what I choose it won't make any difference after I die. Even if I left behind something great, like a work of art, or a great idea, there would come a time when even that would dissolve and the people who new about the idea would die. This trance is often accompanied by an acute depressive state that subsides by realizing that the "earthly" pursuits are in fact futile but that there is another way. I quickly realized that if I were in "heaven" (the only concept in my vocabulary at the time that even approximated an enlightened state) I would be past all that, I wouldn't need these trivial ideas anymore. I just wouldn't care because I'd be past all that.
This left me with a deep calm for a while until I found my true path. I had found the reason and once I had found the way I was off running.
I think the important thing to remember with spirituality is that some people want it and others don't. There comes a point in spiritual development when you really can't force it anymore. You come to see that everything you know must be left behind and either you're compelled or you aren't. It's in your blood. No amount of philosophizing can change this (see ! & ?).
The true fulfillment of the spiritual path seems to lie in a state of consciousness that is entirely enigmatic to the mundane consciousness. Once you've reached a certain point it seems, you are no longer willing to admit that you've ever done anything at all. Like Crowley says "In fact, the man in Kether is out of all relation to these boots and hats." The enlightened mind is no longer willing to abide on the material plane. But it goes even further than that I think, he's out of all relation to the material.
He is out of all relation.
This also implies that he would be unwilling to affect anything so distant from "himself" or affect anything at all for that matter.
This is where my point lies. As Crowley says:

"But (you will doubtless say) I pith your ? itself with another ?: Why question life at all? Why not remain "a clean-living Irish gentleman" content with his handicap, and contemptuous of card and pencil? Is not the Buddha's goad "Everything is sorrow" little better than a currish whine? What do I care for old age, disease, and death? I'm a man, and a Celt at that. I spit on your sniveling Hindu prince, emasculate with debauchery in the first place, and asceticism in the second. A weak, dirty, paltry cur, sir, your Gautama!

"Yes, I think I have no answer to that. The sudden apprehension of some vital catastrophe may have been the exciting cause of my conscious devotion to the attainment of Adeptship --- but surely the capacity was there, inborn. Mere despair and desire can do little; anyway, the first impulse of {132} fear was the passing spasm of an hour; the magnetism of the path itself was the true lure. It is as foolish to ask me "Why do you adep?" as to ask God "Why do you pardon?" C'est son métier. "

What's the point if it's not good for your poor health, or won't bring you more money?
The answer is that the path of wisdom is innate in some people and not in others.
I was born to Adept, c'est mon metier.

I've already said a bit about the third stage (what little I know of it) but tomorrow I'll go over it again in a bit more detail along with the second stage.
For now read ! & ?.

13

2007-05-30T14:59:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking a lot about death today
It's a comfort to think I'll be like they are.
Keep quiet and it'll pass I thought,
Just sit here on the banks and a boat will come
I'll just sit here and wait for it.
And came it did I saw it aways away and sat up.
I saw a man in it, not callous but serene,
I saw his face and I loved him.
He was blank as a night shade of Salvia,
and just as plastic I think.
I couldn't tell if he loved me back
but I still don't care.
I love the end and I can feel it as a part of me.
Death is the bringer of fortune in time,
It's all gotta go down sometime,
and has before I thought,
I loved him even more.
I can feel him beside me even now,
his breath isn't heavy but it smells like nothing else,
I can feel it on my bones as I love him,
He brought me here, he'll take me back,
Over and over and over again.
Is this hell?
Cuz I think I must be dreaming.
Doesn't everyone think of this
and feel the scent of peace
on the tips of every hair?
I can see him look at me from his boat,
I've been waiting so long and I love it.
I love waiting, it comforts me,
keeps me quiet when I can't feel it.
I'd like to meet him up close again,
I forgot how much to feel.
I forgot how much to smell.
It's not like they won't love me too,
I came to be with them.

Black Bush

2007-05-30T14:08:00.001-07:00

The Spiritual Side of Life. Part 1.

2007-05-30T06:51:00.000-07:00

The spiritual aspect of life is both the most complex and the most useful. Almost everything "spiritual" that you do has carryover to almost every other aspect of life. This is due to the fact that the basic spiritual exercises deal with the control of breath, the control of mind, the control of nature, the development of intuition, and the development of what can be called "life force."
I'd like to deal with each of these in their own place at a later time, but for now I'd like to go over what's obviously necessary for gaining a decent intellectual grasp of the whole matter.
Reading a spiritual text is often a developmental exercise in it's own right. The carryover isn't as great as some of the other exercises but there is still a whole heap of benefits. For instance, prolonged contemplation of texts like the Tao Te Ching or Liber AL will eventually lead to certain very "useful" realizations like the benefits of the path of non action, the power of love, true morality, and a lot of other very profound "secrets of life". Someone whose inclination is heavily intellectual could probably achieve a high level of realization just from contemplative readings, but it's my opinion that there are much more efficient (though sometimes significantly more uncomfortable) ways of attaining the same result.

For today though I'd like to give a brief outline of the specific texts that have helped me on my way. This list is by no means complete. For instance I've never really studied Islam, Voodoo, Santeria, the Essene traditions, Alchemy, Rosicrucianism, and a ton of others. I fully intend to at some point, I just haven't yet.

To start you should get a taste for everything.
I think it's a really good idea to realize that all religions are essentially the same with the only differeces coming from terminology.
This list is more or less copied from the general reading list of the brotherhood of A:.A:. Most of these texts can be found for free online through Sacred-Texts.com

Study the Taoist traditions with Lao Tzu and Kwuang Tzi.
The Buddhist traditions with The Suttas and The Dhammapada.
The Hindu traditions with the Bhagavad Gita, The Upanishads, The Vedas, and the books on Yoga (Siva Samhita, the hathayoga pradipika, the Aphorisms of Patanjali, and Raja Yoga by Vivekananda).
The Christian traditions with the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Pistis Sophia, and the spiritual guide of Michael Molinos.
The Thelemic traditions with Liber AL, Liber ABA, Liber Aleph, The Equinox, and The Confessions of Aleister Crowley (just to name a few).
The Qabalistic traditions with 777, The Book of Thoth, and the works of Eliphas Levi (which will also give you a fair grounding in Hermetic traditions). Qabbalah has a mixed heritage so you might also want to study some of the Lurianic texts to get the Jewish side of things, but from what I've studied the Hermetic tradition is both clearer and more complete (mostly due to Crowley's contributions).
Also the pantheons (taking each god and goddess to be a representation of either a force of nature or an aspect of the human condition) of all the pagan traditions, esp. the Egyptian, Greek, and Hindu.

This is a very good foundation of reading and if you are diligent you'll be different person when you're done.

The 5 Areas of Life. Intro.

2007-05-29T06:34:00.000-07:00

I apologize for the lame ass post from yesterday but this time I had a really good excuse. I started writing my usual morning post and everything was going swimmingly when I realized that I might be on to something. I started systematically going through every area of life where I have found at least some degree of mastery and I figured that I should be sharing this everyone.
I've found a lot of really valuable information and developed a lot of very powerful techniques and realizations for living a highly fulfilled life.
You want to learn how to imitate my meager success?

I've broken down the areas of life into 5 sections.
I'll be dealing with each of them on separate days for the next week or two.
I'm gonna be as thorough as possible so it might take me a few days to get everything out on any one topic.

The 5 sections are:

1. The spiritual.
2. The intellectual.
3. The emotional.
4. The social.
5. The physical.

Now, there are a few things that overlap two or more of these sections, like money, sex, and love, so there might a slight bit of repetition but you don't mind I'm sure.
Also I'll be paying close attention in particular to those things (exercises, and books in particular) that have a strong carryover effect to two or more sections. This carryover effect is, I believe, a greatly overlooked concept in most people's lives. I'm absolutely certain that my refusal to spend significant time on anything that doesn't carryover to at least one other area of my life is the reason that I've been able to accomplish what I have at such a young age.

So hang on cuz you'll never be the same again.

Another Festival of JimJams

2007-05-28T19:03:00.000-07:00

"Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law"

2007-05-26T06:14:00.000-07:00

I've been doing a lot of thinking lately about the interconnectedness of all things.
I've been considering things like Samadhi, entanglement, divinity, superposition, how Mandelbrot sets might be a reflection of natural processes and how it is very reasonable to say that existence is One.
I've been considering these things, and I find that the more I consider them the more one question in particular keeps popping up in my mind "if this is the natural state of being why do we usually feel so separate? Why are we given separate bodies, a separate ego, a distinct sense of being an individual when in reality we are merely reflections of the whole of existence? If we are unity why do feel like this?"

I think of these things and one experience in particular keeps coming back to me.

When you start reading anything of Aleister Crowley's you're often faced with a similar question. This idea was something he dealt with very thoroughly. He even devised meditations and exercises to help us comprehend this aspect of ourselves and how this idea can be resolved.
He called it the practice of the magical diary.

The exercise is really simple and really isn't as much work as it looks like at first (who's afraid of work anyway?).
Basically all you do is get a notebook and start writing out your life in as much detail as possible.
You can start by writing out a bit about your family, traditions your family has, your distant relatives, what parts of the world they came from, what kind of work they engaged in, and anything else that seems important.
Then you can start writing about your parents, how they met, what work they do, what are their hobbies, their body types, their humor and disposition, their parenting styles, how they see they see the world and anything else you can think of.
Now you can start writing about yourself.
Be as detailed as possible!
Write out your first memories, write out experiences from school, who your friends were and what they were like, how you liked to play, what interested you, what scared you, your views and attitudes about sexuality, and anything else.
Then as you start writing about yourself as a teen or a young adult (then later as an adult) start including more details about your political views, what books you read, what your personal philosophy is like, what your sex life is like, what you prefer sexually, your attitude towards sex in general (sex is important), your views on religion and how you came to those, who are your friends now, what are your hobbies and literally as much as you can think of.
(something you might find useful is writing on only one side of the page or do it on the computer so that you can fill things in as new memories pop up.)

After completing this exercise (which can take anywhere from a week to a month depending on how many hours a day you put in) you'll be able to read it over and intelligently trace some very obvious currents in your life. You'll find that perhaps as a young child you really enjoyed contact sports and anything martial but because of emotional imprint events those tendencies were suppressed and ended up coming out in your life in unhealthy ways. Or you might find that you've always really enjoyed drawing, ever since your first memories, and you find that some of your happiest memories are from the simple enjoyment of art.

You'll notice these currents as clear as day. They'll be unmistakable.

Then you might start asking yourself "why have I been struggling so hard against these things all my life when it's so obvious that I was born to do this?"

This is where it gets really interesting.
How can we deny that we are living a life with a definite purpose when we can see it so clearly once we gain even a little perspective?
How can we claim that we are not part of some plan when everything seems to fit together so perfectly (even the seemingly imperfect things)?

So I've been playing with the idea that we are not "separate" from this unity arbitrarily or by some fault of our own or of nature but by design.

We are all supposed to be doing something specific, our individuality is a sign of our function, and fulfilling that function seems to be necessary to the fulfillment of the function of the whole.

Demosthenes...

2007-05-25T09:25:00.000-07:00

I just wanted to thank you for coming into my life.
Our relationship so far has allowed me to consider aspects of myself that I was unwilling to acknowledge before we started our discussion.
I can't believe how blind I was (and still am).

I honestly feel so blessed to be a part of such a perfect state of existence, and I'd like to show my appreciation by doing something for you.
I'm not sure yet what that would be, but if you can think of something, anything at all, I'll do whatever I can to make that happen for you.

Thank you again.
Hua Allahu Alazi, Lailaha Illa Hua.

Who Else wants to be Free of the Ego?

2007-05-25T07:33:00.000-07:00

The ego likes to play games.
It hides behind a lot of things hoping that it won't be noticed. What it doesn't usually realize, however, is that we can pick it out from a mile away.
Anytime you find yourself statements of identity that's the ego.
Anytime you find yourself judging yourself or others that's the ego.
Anytime you feel superior or inferior, that's the ego.
Anytime you feel emotional pain, or seeking emotional pleasure, that's the ego.
Anytime you find yourself making statements like "I'm getting rid of the ego, what a good boy I am" that's the ego.
Basically the ego is very intimately tied up with conscious thought. It is very concerned with both right and left brain functions and the concept of time.
It loves to put labels on things, and judge whether those things are good or bad. That's basically it's job.
And it loves to take you out of the present moment to make those judgments.
If you ever watch yourself making judgments about things, labeling them good or bad, you're more often than not referencing a state of time. At that moment you are outside of the present moment.

Good news about the ego is that it's not so formidable as it seems. Both Crowley and the Buddha Sidartha thought that it was possible to do away with the ego with a very simple shift in awareness. It's just a matter of choice.

Like Eckhart Tolle says all you have to do is shift your mind from a state of thinking to a state of awareness. Just be aware of your surroundings without labeling them, without referencing your past experiences, or your future projections. Just settle into the present moment and appreciate pure awareness. It really is that easy.
Once you've found that odd state of being you can summon it whenever you like, and the more you do the less frequently you'll have to do it consciously.

In times when the ego would normally rear it's head, like times of anxiety or fear, all you have to do is acknowledge the ego, thank it for doing such a good job, and stay present and free from labels.

A couple little things that you can do to make it easier at first is to ask questions. The ego dissolves instantly when we start truly examining the situation in which it pops up. So the Meta Model of NLP or Byron Katie's inquiry process work really well for gaining some perspective on what's really going on.

Hello again Mr. Thacker.

2007-05-25T06:33:00.000-07:00

Mr. Thacker we've obviously revealed a great blessing in our relationship. You see my arguments as superficial in the same way that I see yours.
It's curious that you think I was taking things personally. I thought the exact same thing about you a few times especially when that friend of ours first showed me your response to her bulletin. Seems to me we have more in common than either of us is willing to admit.

So where do we go from here?
Do you actually want to keep going with this train of thought and keep ourselves open to some sort of honest resolution?
I'm willing to admit my faults in the argument. Namely that my piece was too personal to be publicly accepted if you're willing to accept that at least for the one statement you picked out (if you're willing to allow me to isolate it) I sufficiently supported it using psychological principles (leaving entanglement out of it).
Other than that the only other thing left unresolved with this discussion is the "rules of art", especially with regards to universal language. You want to keep at it or move on?
I'm fine with moving on, I'm perfectly comfortable with my faults and failings in this situation.

So, let's hear your thesis! I'm excited for it.
Actually, before we start onto another train (hopefully one as invigorating as the last) do you mind if I ask a little about your background?
I know you've done your masters in phil. of religion. Is that right? What did you do your undergraduate work on? I also see that you at least have a personal curiosity about esotericism (ref. Zarathustra, Tao Te Ching etc.) but I'm just curious how far you've taken it in your personal life. Have you ever practiced any sort of transcendental meditation or anything similar? Any energy work, pranayama, asceticism, concentration practices, magick, or anything like these?
I'm just curious because if you have I think we have a LOT more to talk about than I first realized. BTW have you ever read any Eliphas Levi, Aleister Crowley, or Vivekananda? If you dig the Tao Te Ching you'll get a kick out of these (don't let all the qabalistic language deter you in Levi and Crowley, you're a bright guy, I'm sure you'll work yourself through it). If you do decide to tackle them make sure you don't make the mistake of underestimating them, (especially Crowley) like Lao Tzu they're deceptively simple sometimes.

But anyways, let's hear that thesis. I requested all the books from the library I could find by the guys you mentioned but unfortunately there was only a handful. Hopefully I'll be able to stay on the same page.

Cheers.

P.S. your link doesn't work, says the video has been removed or something.

The Life of a Blogger

2007-05-24T14:44:00.000-07:00

Life Of A Blogger

See more like this on kontraband.com

What's wrong with an Ego?

2007-05-24T06:40:00.001-07:00

The ego is a curious thing isn't it?
Let me tell you a little story I heard recently.
A friend of mine was in a grocery store, just lookin around for a few things and he walked down one of the aisles.
While he was there a woman walked down the same aisle pushing a cart.
She had her little girl in the top part of cart and they were both just shopping.
Then for just a second the mum turned the corner and this little girl just started to wail.
My friend said it was one of those deep, throaty, blood curdling wails, like someone was trying to kill this kid.
Her mom had just turned the corned for literally about 2 seconds and this little girl frickin lost her mind. I guess she was convinced that her mom had left her for good, and that she'd be stranded in this grocery store with my friend. I thought to myself, hey that wouldn't be so bad, my friend's a nice guy, she'd have lots to eat, what's the big deal?
Right?
What's the big deal?
The funny thing is though that that little girl couldn't tell the difference between a non existent threat to her survival and an imaginary one.
She just didn't know what else to do but wail.
Our egos work in the same way. They're really quite naive. They work really well for what they're intended for, namely survival of the physical self, but what about when the threat is really just imaginary, or when we know that the physical self is actually a hindrance (e.g. transcendentalism and the like)?
What are we supposed to do when we confront situations that our ego tells us is dangerous?
How can we tell when it's just our ego talking and not a reasonable response to our environment?
How can we get rid of this pesky nuisance and start living a life that is more in tune with "reality"?

I'll talk a little more about this tomorrow.

Another Post to Demosthenes

2007-05-23T06:51:00.000-07:00

I must confess Demosthenes, I was looking over your response again and I really just got bored with it. Your arguments are unsupported and superficial, and basically just a rehash of what we've already been through. I really just don't feel like walking you through your own arguments again and picking holes in them.
Let's just get a couple things straight for now and maybe tomorrow I'll feel like doing something more with what you said.
First of all yes it was very personal. I was just writing because that's what I do. Like I said in my first post I was simply expressing my state at the time using words that fit the mental picture I constructed to represent it. I respect your curiosity about my work but I still feel that it was grossly inappropriate to criticize it with the arguments you chose. If you just wanted to understand it better you could have approached me with more of an attitude of curiosity and less of an attitude of biased judgment. But that's just my opinion.
Second, if you're interested in my perspectives about certain things (the progress to enlightenment, humanity as parasites, the nature of art, how entanglement is essential to cosmology or whatever) I'd be more than happy to discuss these things with you but let's start fresh because we've made a mess of the last discussion and it's clear we're not ready to talk to each other about it (I think it was all founded on a ridiculous premise and was doomed right off the bat).
Third, if you really want to continue our previous discussion I think we should just focus on the nature of art, especially on what is and isn't permissible under the label of "art". That will simplify things and I think it will cut to the core of why you were attacking me.
Fourth, I'd really appreciate it if you'd be willing to talk a little about your perspective on the holographic universe. It's a subject I'm really interested in and the public library here has very few books on it. So if you're willing to talk I'm eager to listen.

I think that's all for now. Please consider the post I made on Monday as demonstrating my "metathesis" and my post yesterday (on art) as further support. Don't be too harsh on yesterday's though I haven't had a chance to look it over yet so I don't know if I'm missing anything or being repetitive etc.

In any case keep checking back cuz I might still deal with your response formally and provide you with some meat to chew on.

Kenny Rogers Jackass

2007-05-22T20:56:00.001-07:00

What is Art?

2007-05-22T07:18:00.000-07:00

What is Art?
can we really say what it is? can we really use language to define it? Can we come to some agreement about a definition or are we forced to admit that it's far too intangible to speak about? Where is true beauty but beyond the means of speech and logical form?
Where is that sense of accomplishment when we appreciate a great piece?
Where does our mind find it's sense when it's wrapped up in intangible images and flitting like butterflies on the tips of senselessness?
Can we talk about art at all?
Do we need to?
What part of the mind is at work when we appreciate something for it's undeniable beauty?
What part of existence are we appreciating in those time?
certainly it's no where near the same parts as when we calculate Riemann sums, or construct a mighty proof tree, or look out to the world and recognize that Fibonacci was right.
So what are we doing when we create?
What are we doing when we appreciate?
We're certainly not in a state of mind that allows for conscious consideration (that only produces shitty art).
We're certainly not in a state of mind that we can even call rational, unless we stretch it and force ourselves to label every conscious movement as rational.
So where are we?
We're in a space of expansion. We're free of those limiting thoughts of logic and language, free of the concept of time, sense, work, right, and wrong.
We come to a place where our liberty, our ability, our place of pure creation is paramount.
We come to realize our own deepest sense of what's truly going on around us.
"We aren't separate", we say.
"we're all conjoined in this ambient fluid of mush and light. All we have to do is stop putting the brakes on, abandon for a moment our constraints and give ourselves over to pure being, pure love."
Emotion is the first step, shifting from thought to consciousness is the second, recognition is the third.
The entire universe is made from three.
Above all else be free of the constraints of thinking and all it's implications.
Thinking implies limits.
Just be aware.
Health and happiness come rushing forward when we do this. They comfort us in our deepest sense. We come to realize that nature is our mother, the universe is our play ground, we are one with them, we come to them easily. The only thing that stands in our way is that which keeps us tied to our own ego.
We're geared to survive. Ego allows to live when we're learning about life.
It allows us to garner some sense of what might kill us, what might keep us safe.
We look around and value things, quanify and qualify, analyze and combine.
We like this when we're young, it tells us when to run, when to bask, and when to feel like the world is not a safe place.
But we forget that we don't need this. We are powerful creators, we can change reality with our thoughts and directed emotion.
We can feel safe while falling off a cliff or while feeling a bullet pierce into our hearts.
We don't need to analyze and combine.
We can live in the present moment, free of thought altogether, just basking in the infinite glow of love and radiance.
This is our birthright. The only thing that keeps us from living in perfect peace is not wanting to let go of that mechanical safety mechanism.
We cling to it until we see that everything is as it should be, life is in perfect balance, whatever we do, whatever happens, is exactly as it should be.
Art is a way to feel that, a way to express it to others who feel it, a way to develop it in ourselves, but is entirely obscured to someone who is still trapped in their own sense of right and wrong, safe and unsafe, life and death.
Free yourself from your own fetters and just rest in this moment for a bit.
Calm down and just see what you're seeing right now. Hear what you're hearing right now. But don't judge or label it. Just be for a moment. Remove those thoughts you're having, remove those judgments and past experiences. Remove those expectations and definitions. Just be in a state of pure experience.
Thats art.

Back to Demosthenes

2007-05-21T17:57:00.000-07:00

Hello again Demosthenes (I'm curious why you chose that name), I just read your response and wanted to tell you something that may or may not change what you think of my piece (I don't think it's my best work of poetry, honestly I only published it because I thought someone might get a kick out of it).
First of all I often deliberately omit conclusions, a thesis, and incorporate a bunch of incoherence into some of my work. That’s part of the structure. The lack of "foot or measure" is just a cosmetic reflection of that (as is much of the wording).
This has honestly been a large part of my poetic work for a number of years.
Secondly a couple years ago I had the good fortune to meet with a couple of very respected "authorities" on poetry; Dr. Manijeh Mannani of the U. of A. and Dr.Ted Blodget (I think I spelled his name right). Both of these individuals are quite respected in their fields (Comparative Lit. and English Lit. respectively) and both have said that they have a lot of respect for my work, (including the above idea) and when we were discussing my early work Mannani confessed that she believes I'm the greatest poetic genius she's had the pleasure to talk with.

I just wanted to bring these points to the table for you to consider while I prepare a more formal refutation to many of your statements.
BTW I'd really like to read your thesis on the holographic universe if you'd be so kind as to share it.

My Confession.

2007-05-21T06:56:00.001-07:00

I confess to being a man.
I confess that my body is the vehicle for my spirit and that the conduit for it's expression is fractured.
I confess to my heart, my head and my penis.
I confess to enjoying life and all that it has to offer.
I confess to enjoying all learning, all love, and sex.
I confess to being free.
I confess to being willing to protect my freedom in any and all ways.
I confess to violence.
I confess to nonviolence.
I confess to not caring if this may or may not imply the violation of local laws or customs.
I confess to being a citizen of the planet earth.
I confess to having the right to travel wherever I please, whenever I please, however I please.
I confess that every other man woman and child has the same rights as me.
I confess that there is great good in human pleasure, and that I'll take it in as many varied forms as I can find it.
I confess to being a criminal.
I confess to having a criminal record under the criminal code of Canada.
I confess to being free of this criminal code because I am free of sin.
I confess to having been pushed around by the guys with the guns.
I confess to not having a gun.
I confess to liking the thought of dieing for my ideals.
I confess to enjoying the thought that there are others like me.
I confess to enjoying the thought that there are others not like me.
I confess to being a man of my word.
I confess to having fun.
I confess to working myself sick.
I confess to playing myself sick.
I confess to being white, French, Canadian, male, tall, blond, strong, thin, healthy, young, smart, tolerant, intolerant, ignorant, enlightened, benighted, in the dark, pious, fulfilled, restless, in love, hateful, violent, perverted, sacred, indolent, resistant, changing, appreciative, grateful, pure, chaste, lascivious, lustful, controlled, uncontrollable, weird, shy, boastful, poetic, scientific, merciful and kind.
I confess to having impure thoughts.
I confess to having pure thoughts.
I confess to having imbalances.
I confess to my sins.
I confess to be free of sin.
I confess to absolve myself of sin.
I confess to not caring whether or not my sin keeps me from heaven, or keeps me in hell.
I confess to being apathetic.
I confess to being passionate.
I confess again to being a pervert.
I confess again to loving life, lust, sex, passion, flesh, boobs, ass, smooth skin, the smell of roses, spring mornings, walking with my girl, holding hands, pressing our cheeks together, watching movies, keeping focused, eating candy, taking showers, exercise, cuddles, hugs, expansion, newness, reciprocity, a good strong crush, eye contact, girls, music, getting drunk, getting high, experimentation, and keeping myself.
I confess to love.
I confess to hate.
I confess to will.
I confess to living in the breast in the goddess.
I confess to having the movement of the god within me.
I confess to circles.
I confess to squares.
I confess to two that create the third.
I confess to one being the soul of two.
I confess to my view of the world in three.
I confess to wanting to spit on the ignorance of bigots, the mindless, the TV watchers, the unhealthy, the religious, the baptists, the Mormons (and their ilk), the left handedness of Jesus, and the people who support him.
I confess to being a Thelemite because it's the only reasonable option.
I confess to wanting to be able to stand up in court and declare my religious views and have them protected under the constitution of Canada.
I confess to being bored with this.

M.H. on Poetry, Psychology, and Quantum Physics.

2007-05-20T06:49:00.000-07:00

Hi again. I tried to keep my response brief so if there's anything I didn't deal with just let me know.
For those of you just joining us this is a continuation of my discussion with Demosthenes about a poetic work I wrote and which Demosthenes has issues with. If you're curious to read the rest of it just look for the posts "We" and "Lex Orandi".

“I do not feel that Dummett and Popper were necessarily correct”
Could you support this? All you say is that Popper and Dummett use this idea as a way to place value on ideas but I’m pretty sure even they would say that’s exactly what they wanted. How is your position different from theirs other than merely stating that it isn’t necessarily so? Of course it isn’t necessarily so. There’s always room from reevaluation.

“prolegomena”
You’re using this term in a way that I’m unfamilar with so I’d like to make sure we’re on the same page. You allude to math and scientific method to evaluate cosmological theories and say that this is the same type of idea you’re refering to. So a prolegomena is basically a type of proof structure? I’m fine with that.
So this prolegomena is what you meant the whole time when you used the term authority? If so I’m fine with that too. I’d rather use the term prolegomena than authority though.

“I am referring to that level of accepted idea that has no proof.”
How’s about psychology and Quantum physics? You’ll have to be willing to accept a bit of empiricism with both of these though. Is that alright?

“Now in your psuedopoem (def: a work of poetry with neither foot nor measure)”
An unflattering choice of terms but fair enough. Most modern poets wouldn’t appreciate it however, seeing as how conventional structure is no longer seen as either necessary or complementary to the true spirit of poetry. I’ll leave it for now. (I’d definitely like to deal with this idea in more depth in a latter post so if you’re curious to see how I deal with it keep checking back).

“you make many statements that have no proof, but I believe many of them need proof.”
Is this just your opinion? I mean, are you simply trying to understand my work or are you trying to force me to admit that my work (especially the statement you had issues with in the last post) doesn’t fit with your personal biases and view points? How can you believe that a statement presented in a piece of art needs to be held philosophically accountable? I’d like you to support this.
If you’re just trying to understand what I have to say I gave you a bunch of acceptable interpretations in my last post. I’m also willing to accept any interpretation you’re willing to arrive at on your own. Such is the beauty of Art, the artist needn’t be attached to the piece. In fact it’s absolutely desirable for the artist to be distanced from it and to refuse to support it. This gives the piece that coveted quality of timelessness. The fact that it can be interpreted differently by different people (hopefully endlessly) gives a piece that stamp of “high art”. Case in point: the mona lisa.

“Not formal proofs, even, but simply proof that they can all be arived at from the same prolegomena.”
I’m always willing to entertain philosophical problems even when I think their inappropriately placed.
My first prolegomena: psychology. There is a generally accepted theory in psychology (based on empiricism. It’s the best proof structure available with psychology. I can elaborate on how the evidence is compiled if you want) that people have a mechanism (rather a set of them) in their mind (or brain, the distinction is trivial at this point) that allows them to cope with the enormous task of interpreting perceptions. This coping mechanism is composed of three functions: deletion, distortion, and generalization. These are necessary functions of the human condition and are as rigorously supported as anything in physics.
So I can use psychology as my prolegomena in this case by stating that these functions of the mind are ensuring that “reality” is being perceived in the most useful way possible based on past experience. This implies that, despite appearances, we are truly functioning at out greatest capacity.
Something like 400 billion bits of information are reaching our brains every second but our conscious mind can only cope with something like 50 bits. These mechanisms, therefore, allow us to sort through those 400billion bits and translate the most important ones (at least what we perceive to be the most important based on our how our past translations have or haven’t served us. There’s more to it than this but I’m trying to be brief. If you’re still unsatisfied I’d be happy to devote a whole post to this topic and deal with it in great detail) to our conscious awareness. We are functioning at maximum capacity 24/7. It may not look like it because most people don’t know how to reconcile what we want with how the deletions, distortions, and generalizations are taking place. This is how you can perceive a person that is engaged in “self-sabotage”. Both you and the other person are ignoring the mechanisms at work and misinterpreting the 400billion bits of information.

I can also use another Prolegomena: Quantum physics. I went into this in last post as well. I’ll just say briefly that since there is no other resolution (at least not so far) for the entanglement issue (which implies a paradox when it is assumed that there are two or more distinct observers) than to assume that we all are really just facets of a great, single, universal mind, then we are forced to admit that in the present moment (as opposed to the intellectual structures of past and future) we are each of us truly standing at the acme of human potential. The only thing keeping us from realizing this truth are those aforementioned mental mechanisms.
A third Prolegomena could found in religion as well. I’ll go into if you want but it doesn’t go much beyond the quantum interpretation, I’d really only have to get into it just to satisfy the narrow minded people who can’t see past their own religious prejudices.

“Nor is it acceptable to hide behind the idea of poetry.”
Who’s hiding? I can easily support the idea of artistic license if you want. In fact I will, just not in this post. For now just take a look at Dadaism, and the artistic revolution of the turn of the last century with all that non-representationalism. The artist needn’t answer to the viewer just so long as the viewer gets something out of it (be it exaltation, distaste, introspection, or, like you, a chance to interpret it in a way that leads to some new insights).

“Poem or prose, you did have a reason for your words… and those reasons should be ideas. Preferably, coherent ideas.”
Whether or not a poem conveys a coherent idea to the reader is much more dependant on the reader than the artist. I had a coherent idea in mind when I wrote this piece. I also had no idea whatsoever. What I mean by this is that I was working from a non conscious state of mind. I use visual spatial awareness (and sometimes auditory awareness) when I write much more than linguistic awareness. That’s not to say that I didn’t have a very definite vision of what I was writing, only that that vision is not liable in the same way my philosophical writing is liable. As you can see from the above I can support what I wrote and I can honestly say that I wrote the piece with the intention of conveying those ideas (at least to myself). I was not, however, concerned with how it would be interpreted because I would prefer to let the words that I chose to act as representatives of my “vision” to be interpreted by the reader however the reader prefers to interpret it.

“(to those who doubt authorial intent, I only ask why the sceptics bother to publish their works?)”
You must distinguish authorial intent with allowing the reader to be influenced by the piece how the reader sees fit. It must be based on their personal penchants and past experiences and being too clear in a work of art, especially when it comes to poetry, is going to effective stymie any chance of that. Authorial intent in poetry, novels, short stories or even pseudopoems, is very different than authorial intent in philosophy and hard science. The former seeks varied interpretation based on the reader’s subjectivity, the latter seeks a very specific interpretation based on the author’s views. Imagine what would change in your perspective if you accepted this distinction, even if only for a second, just to try it out.

“Even if this is meant relative to a person's awareness (in which case they are not at the end of themselves, they are at the limits of their awareness),”
I addressed this in my last post. I admit there may have been some things missing or misrepresented in my last post but I think I cleared most of them up in the above points. You’re statement, however, is open to suspicion. What are you alluding to when you imply that there might be other limits to the human condition besides limitations of awareness? Please, if you don’t mind, could you clarify what other limits you're referring to?

“I have observed that many people go through life as self-sabateur. Deliberately.”
First of all are you actually making the blind assumption that you know what is going on in someone’s head? You say “deliberately”. Doesn’t this imply that you know for sure that this person is fucking themselves over? Did this person say to you (or are you implying that your observation skills border on telekinesis) “I’m going to do this (whatever it might be) because I know it will hurt me. I’m also not willing to say that such pain is one of the ways in which I seek pleasure. I am doing this thing knowing that it will hurt me and knowing that such pain is honestly distasteful to me”? If you’ve honestly observed this I’d be hard pressed to not consider that person insane. True I did say “we have ALL been to the end of ourselves” and this does bar any perceived anomalies (should they come up), but you also said you weren’t concerned with the words per se, just the intention behind them. So I’d hope you’re willing to overlook my generosity with the use of the universal quantifier.

“Many people don't want to test there limits, or do well with what they have.”
Yeah that’s true superficially but you can look at in a way (the quantum way) that demonstrates progress regardless of intention. As William James said “we are embarked”. No matter how hard you try to struggle against it and no matter how convinced you are (consciously) that you’re succeeding, you, like everyone else, are at the fore front of human evolution with every passing moment.
Another way of looking at it would be that these people only think this way because of their perception of reality. Their deletions, distortions, and generalizations have told them that since right now they are safe, and doing something different might make them unsafe, they become unwilling to consciously change to admit that there is something else going on. These people are simply misunderstanding themselves, an unavoidable (from time to time) byproduct of the human condition. This does nothing to undermine my arguments.

“Enev Melanowski's hierarchy is strained by desperate men who above all else fear what they might actually be.”
Ok, their experience has led them to believe that change is dangerous. Even ignoring the quantum principles and the psychological interpretation of such a state this is still saying that those people are living at, or at least have been to, the end of themselves. They’re just afraid of it. That does absolutely nothing to reveal flaws in my original statement.

“Presuming that nature is engineered optimally and efficiently, it would seem that nature is stunted, especially in humans. We are, after all, a part of nature, and yet we are also one of nature's most damaging enemies.”
I’d like you to support this (where’s your authority?) before I make a comment. A hoard of recent research done by men like Bruce Lipton, Gregg Braden, and tons of others (especially environmental scientists) are very convincingly saying that this is just not true. Quite the opposite is true in fact.

“But your words here could have two different meanings. The first is that man is limited from reaching his full potential by his awareness (or lack thereof).”
True but only consciously limited. That true potential is always present. Every religion in the world would support this as well as quantum physics, neuroscience and psychology.

“The second, and more interesting to my mind, is that man's potential grows concordantly with his awareness.”
The Potential here referred to is the limitless potential of humanity. There is nothing we can’t do. The only limitation we experience is self imposed and dissolves with increased awareness. Is the Potential a fixed thing, static and mysteriously absent from our current experience? Not at all. Is it something that we can experience at every step and that changes as we develop? Yes. It’s both. As we experience new states of awareness we have access to more and more of that potential. So our experience of it is “dynamic” even though we can all attain to that level of “full potential” that would stand as a “static limit” only because it is infinite. I think we’d have to start using mystical language (the language of the Qabalah is well suited for this) to be able to deal with this fully. If your Qabalistic vocabulary is up to it we can get into it further if you’d like. Otherwise I’m not sure you’re gonna like what else I have to say. I guess for now I’d have to just say that we experience a dynamic, ever developing potential that will eventually lead to a state that could only be appropriately called “infinite potential”. If you want to call that state a static state that’s fine with me but at the same time you’d have to admit that it is a limitless state.
(after reviewing the above I could probably support this using physics if you’d like. I just don’t think it would be as satisfactory or rigorous as a Qabalistic treatment.)

Gettin the Point Across

2007-05-18T13:20:00.000-07:00

Somehow I think the way this guy does it is a whole lot more effective.

The Fall of the Niche and the Rise of the Brand.

2007-05-18T12:44:00.000-07:00

Where do we go from Niche Marketing?
You're an internet marketer, or maybe someone trying to get into it, and you're constantly faced with this idea of Niche Marketing.
"You gotta have a niche to work with! It's the only way to generate organic traffic! NICHE! NICHE! Gotta get the NICHE!"
But what about further down the line you ask?
Where's the next revolution in marketing going to take place?
Where are all of the niche marketers going to turn when all (or at least most) of the profitable niches are over saturated (which could very easily be in the next couple years)?
Will the niches simply get more refined and essentially branch off into subniches, then again into subsubniches, until finally we're being saturated with an overwhelming amount of sites about training golden retrievers named Bill that refuse to heel but that obey commands with the letter N in them?
Maybe, but god I hope not.
Would you want that?
So where are we headed then?
I predict that in the next few years marketing (especially on the net) will be all about the BRANDS.
Look at the people who are getting a lot of attention right now (attention=traffic=money). Go to YouTube and check out the big names, you got LonelyGirl and Daxflame. Sure they're not really selling anything but they could be. All they'd have to do is get a sponsor or two and there ya go. Cash flow out the ass.
People don't find them because they're looking up "funny movies" or "retarded kids" or anything like that it's completely viral. People spread the word simply because they're worth watching. They provide real content and they make their presence known in a community that seeks real content.
This is an awesome leap forward in a great new direction.
It will eliminate (or at least seriously reduce) the profit potential of spam, it will encourage individuality and creativity, and there are literally no limits as to how many people can earn a living.
This is essentially the shift from a competitive mind frame to a creative mind frame.
We can all make a living on the net because we will all be able to resonate with some community or other. All we have to do is develop our individuality to the point where it's interesting and engage in some real life creativity.

So stop developing your niche and start developing yourself.

Any Scientologists Wanna Dig Through My Garbage?

2007-05-18T09:28:00.000-07:00

I just found this BBC program about Scientology. It's very tense and sort of interesting. I have absolutely no opinion of Scientology because I've never studied it but based on this program I'm not definitely not convinced that it isn't a cult.
It just seems like it's entirely lacking the necessary requirements of unconditional love, and the endless pursuit of perfection that necessarily characterizes true religion. I'd really like to dismiss the whole mess as a cult but I'd also like to hear from someone who is actively involved in the church.
Any takers?
I think it might be fun to have a Scientologist go through my trash.

Another note on Learning Chinese

2007-05-18T07:03:00.000-07:00

Gotta dig the new autosave feature.
Learning Mandarin is FUN!
I love it. I can totally see myself using mandarin as my primary language. It feels like I should have been born speaking it. I'm just finding it so natural and easy it's incredible.
Apparently most people find it quite easy to learn to speak it but have a hard time writing it so maybe I'll be changing my tune once I really get into the writing. Whatever. I love it so far. So rich, so poetic. I always thought that English was the best language to write poetry in (probably because the only other languages I knew, French and Latin, are entirely unsuited to poetry), but now that I've caught a glimpse of Mandarin (standardized Beijing dialect) I can totally see myself writing poetry in Chinese.
I've been photoreading a Chinese/English dictionary, a couple books on grammar, and I'm constantly listening to vocabulary and pronunciation CDs. I'm also looking for some soap operas in Mandarin cuz I read on the learningstrategies.com forum that soaps are a good way to begin immersion. So if anyone knows where I can find some mandarin soaps I'd really love to know. I'm not sure at this point how to make it worth your while but I'm sure we'll find something.

A Feast of JimJams

2007-05-17T19:16:00.000-07:00

A Note About Learning Chinese

2007-05-16T06:36:00.000-07:00

So I went ahead and started learning Chinese. I wanted to get a couple things done first so that I could fully immerse myself in the language without other obligations but when I saw how many books there were at the library I couldn't resist.

So I've got some vocabulary playing softly in the background right now, I'll be PhotoReading a Chinese/English dictionary every day, and watching a bunch of Chinese movies and shows. I'll start with ones that have subtitles then move on to ones that don't after a little while.

I tried immersing myself in the same way when I learned Latin but Latin audio and video resources are hard to come by. I was able to find a couple things and I played them constantly for a while which seemed to help quite a bit but I think a more thorough immersion will be better.

So if you're lookin to learn a new language and would like some ideas I got tons.

On top of what I already mentioned you could try some rhythmic memorization of vocabulary. It's a technique I learned from "Accelerated Learning for the 21st Century".
What you do is you pick out a musical piece from a list of specially chosen classical composers. (I can send you the list if you want, just leave a comment asking for it or subscribe and I'll send it to you). Then as you're listening to the piece recite your list of vocabulary words to the rhythm of the music. When you're done let the words incubate for a while (just let them sit in your mind without trying to recall them), preferably about 24hours. Then you recite them in a normal tone (without rhythm) while listening to another piece of classical music (from a different list. I can share that list as well).
I haven't tried this technique yet but it seems like it would work. I'll give it a shot and report back to you. Hopefully all goes well.

I'm also planning on doing some creative problem solving using Image Streaming (Genius Code) on how to better learn Chinese so if I come up with some good stuff I'll post it all here.

Be FREE!!

Success Books

2007-05-15T18:36:00.000-07:00

I read a book today by Robin Sharma called "The Greatness Guide". If you're looking for something to help you get motivated, organized, and more successful it's a great resource. I realized later though that I had actually read the exact same book at least three times before!
I guess it wasn't the exact same book, they had different titles, authors, and slightly different wording, but essentially they were all exactly the same.
They all recommended prioritizing.
They all recommended keeping a journal.
They all recommended excercise and meditation.
They all recommended visualizing your goals.
They all recommended networking and all gave the same advice on how to go about it.

Books on success all seem to be saying the same things. I've yet to find a book that is really innovative on the topic of becoming more successful.

Bummer.

Good news is now I know that that type of book is rarely worth the half hour it takes me to read them.
Also now I know that if you want to improve your life in that area all you have to do is read one really complete book of this type.
Imagine getting all the wisdom that CEOs get from thousands of dollars of personal coaching from just a few hours of reading and feeling confident that you've gotten everything you need to level the playing field between you and them.

Don't trust me to be able to lead you in the right direction. At least not until you've read Jack Canfield's book "Success Principles". This is the most complete book in this genre I've found so far. It covers all the essentials and gives some really great new ideas.

Markings of an Albino Cave Hoek

2007-05-15T06:31:00.000-07:00

Hi all,
if you were wondering why I posted a seemingly detached set of arguments rambling to some unknown figure it's because I got a comment on my poem "we" below. I forgot to mention in the Lex Orandi post that it was actually a response. I'm sure Demosthenes realized that but others might not have. I would like to elaborate on some of the topics quite a bit but I think I'll leave it till after Demosthenes responds.

Also, Demosthenes, I was reviewing my response again and I realized I'm still at a loss for how to "intelligibly" translate your notions of authority and encroaching. Especially in the context you used I was able to work myself into a few different interpretations. I think I used the interpretation that makes the most sense to me but that may not be consistent with your intentions. I'd enjoy it very much if you'd elaborate.

On to bigger and better things.

I had planned on developing a social experiment of sorts this week but I think I might leave it until next week. It was going to be an experiment in revealing to you your blind, unconscious, responses to sensationalism. I wanted to provide a context then bombard my blog with... stuff...
I will still do it, just not today and probably not tomorrow. I just have a couple other things I'd like to work on.

As a bit of an aside, I was wondering if anyone knows of any good resources for learning Mandarin Chinese? I've set a goal of becoming at least conversationally fluent in three months. I plan to test myself by going to china town and if I can keep a conversation going then I pass, if I can't then I'll put some more work into it.
I haven't been this excited to learn something in a while! It'll have to wait at least two weeks before I start giving it a good effort though. I've got too much on my plate right now to be tackling Chinese on top of everything else.

I'll post something a little more interesting later today. I hate reading bullshit posts like this on other people's blogs. "Get on with already" I say. "Say something useful!"

If you're not training like this you're kidding yourself.

2007-05-14T06:43:00.000-07:00

Paul Chek is my new hero.
Here's an interview he did for T-nation. He's got the perfect perspective on life, training, health, and spirituality. It's easily one of the best articles I've read on training in a LONG time.

Also check out Mark Reifkind's blog. It's fantastic.

Lex Orandi...

2007-05-13T19:44:00.000-07:00

hello,
good to hear from you. Our friend is mutual.
To start my piece "We" was intended to be poetical (regardless of it's "pseudo" appearance). I wrote it as a free expression of my state. The words were not contrived through some filter of "knowing" I was simply using poetry to express a more remote state of consciousness that I enjoy playing with. I am however willing to entertain the rigorousness that you seem to like to play with.
Also "art" does have meaning (at least depending on what theory of meaning you're willing to accept. I personally have a hard time arguing with Dummett and Wittgenstein when they deal with meaning as use).

"You make some authoritative, absolute statements, such as 'we have all been to the end of ourselves'".
Please define your intentions when you use propositions like "authority". I find it too confusing to deal with otherwise. We'd be here all night.
That being said I'm just gonna go for the gusto and assume I know what you mean by this. My authority comes from experience, empiricism, modern psychology and plain old intuition. The reason I didn't demonstrate my authority is because it was meant more as a game than a philosophical position (this was a work of verse not prose). On the more rigorous side of things, however, I literally meant that every person is always working in the best way they know how with the resources available to them at their current level of awareness. This is sound psychology (I'm sure I could find quotes and peer reviewed sources if you really don't believe me).
Interpreted another way (this is poetry after all and poetry does work on levels even if it is pseudo) I'm willing to say that I meant we all (at least on some level) know what we are and aren't capable of. This is a weaker interpretation however.

"I ask only by what authority you speak."
Again I'm not entirely sure what you're after here. I'll assume you just want some support for what I said. Consider the statement "we have all been to the end of ourselves." Let's interpret it in a new way, a more rigorous analytical way (then maybe we'll address a synthetic interpretation). It's not unfair to break it down into reworded sentences such as "for every element that is aptly called an element of Humanity (We) that element has an awareness, and that awareness necessarily entails an awareness of what the element is capable of being aware of(awareness of awareness isn't unreasonable). That awareness of capacity marks one of the limits of what the element can aptly call 'self'." Is this awareness the only thing that marks our limits? No not by a long shot. Does it provide a tangible limit that may or may not be useful for dealing with one's present circumstances? Yes. Put in yet another way: people never knowingly fuck themselves over. No one wakes up in the morning and says to themselves "I'm gonna make things hard for myself". It does happen that a person's self awareness and awareness of their surroundings and of reality in general is so distorted, generalized and incomplete (owing to a necessary function of the human brain to cope with the staggering mass of information presented to it every second) that that person works in an inappropriate way. That is not to say that they are not functioning in the best way they know how (at the end of themselves) it just means that, for whatever reason (environmental factors, genetics, habit, or just due to misunderstanding of the presence or nature of those deleting, distorting and generalizing faculties) that person does not know how to get the results they want or that they have distorted what they think they want into what they are use to, or to what they think works for others (a poor M.O.). Whatever the case the human condition, just as nature as a whole, is engineered to function efficiently and optimally. Consciousness is designed to give us choice (a great creative faculty) but in so doing it also opens up the possibility of making strange choices. That's not to say that those choices are not always in the form of optimality based on the subjective relation of the element to it's environment.

"How is it possible to quantify a statement such as this? What metrics are used in its apprehension?"
Do we really need to invoke metrics? It is possible. I'm sure I could lay out a formal proof with Venn diagrams or quantifiers or whatever if you'd like but I'd ask you first to let me know why such formality is necessary. As far as I'm concerned this will only provide an analytic proof, not very interesting. The synthetic support for this is much more appropriate to the task of translating my intent (at least attempting to anyway).

"Are you speaking of an absolute human condition?"
Poetically no I hadn't intended that. But I am, obviously, willing to entertain the possibility. Like I said above it is a common psychological position that human behavior (used in a very broad sense so as to include mental and emotional behaviors as well as conscious awareness) is constantly working at it's current relative optimality.
Now, you might have been questioning my ability to support the statement in the context of "absolute human potential". If that's the case I'm not sure how I could reasonably support that except by referencing the ever elusive entanglement principle of quantum physics. By invoking entanglement we can now discard the conscious realizations of any one individual and accept that humanity as a whole (as well as every other aspect of existence and the universe) is inseparable and privy to the awareness of any and every awareness that has ever been, both human awareness or otherwise. So we can effectively say that if you believe in the existence of a man like Jesus (or his ilk), and that such a man was privy to the consciousness of godhead (even in a remote way, whatever that may mean) then every other part of humanity is likewise privy (this I assume would be the limit of human potential. Unless of course you're either unwilling to acknowledge Jesus as either the hight of human potential or a human at all. Either way I'd love to hear your arguments for that;). The only difference between Jesus and Joe Slob is that Jesus acknowledged and used that consciousness. Joe Slob has only availed himself of this consciousness through Jesus and has yet to call it up into conscious awareness. That is not to say that he is unaware of what Jesus was aware of (Joe Slob has been to the end of himself just as Jesus had) only that Joe is using a more remote aspect of himself to do it than Jesus did. Entanglement is unable to differentiate between individual minds. It literally supports the notion of universal consciousness, ever present, all pervasive. No one is exempt. So if Jesus did it he did it as a result of Humanity as a whole, and also if you are willing to say that Jesus did then you must say that the entire human race did as well.
Yet another interpretation of my statement. Not a bad one either.

"Is it possible to know such while being a part of the control group?"
It is just as supportable to say yes as it is to say no. That being the case is it even worth discussing? Probably not so let's just say that I'm willing to say "yes it is possible." How would I support that? This is not like Wittgenstein's case of the eye that can see everything but itself. Humanity has an advantage that it can collectively reflect on it's elements and on the whole. It's called communication (we've also previously invoked Entanglement so we can reference that as well). What you are proposing is like saying that we cannot know anything absolute about ourselves because we can't see our own faces. We can however introspect about the whole of ourselves and our parts. Also there are mirrors all around, and friends. If the opposite were true you would have effectively demolished the entirety of psychology and possibly a large part of philosophy. How could psychology stand as even a pseudo-science if your proposition were consistent with reality? Also we really wouldn't be able to say much about Logic or Language, maybe even physiology, neuroscience, or biomechanics, the very concept of introspection would have to be dismissed, infact I'm libel to think that the mind in general would have to be dismissed as merely a pipe dream, something left for the musings of confused poets.
I'm a bit unsatisfied with my treatment of this section so pleas be as brutal as possible with this as you can (that goes for the rest of it as well). It's the only way I'll learn.:)

"To quote myself (because it is a good quote), given a large enough context, any field of human study encroaches upon itself."
It sure does (if I'm translating your intention properly). But the good thing about this is that such a broad perspective is only useful when considering holistics. A good thing to do and a whole heap of fun, but a bit inappropriate in this context. Context is important otherwise we'd all have to face this "encroaching" at every turn and I don't think that'd be too much fun. In most cases we have to abandon broadness in favor of usefulness. If we didn't we'd have to do away with philosophy (at least a large part of it) and I'd be forced to ask you to stop philosophizing about my poetry (something I'm not willing to do). Popper deals with this concept nicely when he deals with the infinite regress. Seems to me Dummett treats it in the same way.
(reviewing this I'm no longer convinced that we're dealing with similar concepts. I'd really appreciate it if you'd elaborate on this. It might be fun to explore this in more depth with your help.)

I'd Fuck Me

2007-05-12T21:19:00.000-07:00

Claymation Satan

2007-05-12T21:17:00.000-07:00

We

2007-05-11T06:58:00.000-07:00

We've all been to the end of ourselves, some more conscious than others, but all of us have in one way or another. And what comes of this? this is realization that we feel. we feel it in our veins, this is the peace that we feel in the breast of us. That is reflected in the stars and the sun and the person we sit next to. We've all felt it, some more conscious than others but we all have. We've all had that sense that we must be missing something when we look out into the world and think that we've mastered the art of seeing. We've all felt that we're missing our mark when we think that sight is the master of our thoughts. We've all been to heaven, we live in hell, we've all been in love with the eternal ecstatic trance of becoming. We are all becoming. We are all.
We've all been blind at some point or other, and seen past that, sometimes more consciously than others.
We're all alone in our minds when we think, but when we feel we can sense the eternity of the presence. We are all present in the time frame of eternity, though some more consciously than others.
We are free. All of us, in every way. We are divine, benediction, compassion, walking love, thinking harmony, eternal masses of stone and mortar. We are the rest, the few, the many, the full, the void, the universal consciousness.
We are light and dark, and we are pure light. We are dual and we are one.
We are the sun and son, the daughter of the starry heavens, in the sky of the tempest's abode. We haven't succumb to no devils, we don't have any guns, we've never been murderers, we've never been murdered. We are god in the flesh of the roses, and the sky in the vestments of earth. We are the wind in the trees and the leaves that rustle and the peace of the spring in the city.
We are light, effulgent, luminous, void, eternal, deified, and deifying.
We are creators both of us and of the world.
We are the last, the first, the greatest, the least, the middle, the edge, the measure, the sum.
We are that we are.
There is no other than we.

The Shift of the Ages

2007-05-11T06:38:00.000-07:00

The last couple days me and my girlfriend have been watching Gregg Braden's presentation on the shift of the ages. It's fascinating seeing the perspective of an obviously qualified scientist (I think he was a geologist and aerospace engineer or something like that) on such topics as enlightenment, the advent of a new age of humanity, resurrection, the shroud of Turin, and especially compassion. He's a brilliant man.
I can't help but wonder what will actually happen when the earth reaches the moment of zero-point magnetics, the pulse of the earth reaches 13 beats per second, and we finally reach the point of greatest density in that photon field thingy.

I think every man, woman and child should watch this presentation (and everything else by Gregg Braden that you can get your hands on).

A couple Poems I Wrote for my Girlfriend

2007-05-10T07:58:00.000-07:00

Openings

Such days of perfect passion
I never want to end.
I want them all to come
To be as pleasant and fulfilling.
Soft and sweet relaxing
Smoothness of the sounds
I lay and limp I rest me
On the Love-bed of my Passions.

Thoughts for Kristina

While waiting.

Dancing in the land of Adventure and Romance,
Dancing in art in the hopes to aspire.
Coming to sense that the beauty's in feeling,
In feeling the whole and in parts all the while.

Vitium Regum

2007-05-10T06:39:00.000-07:00

I'm thinking of starting some satellite blogs to handle the diversity of my interests. I'm going to be starting a site devoted to books. I'll be doing reviews, critiques, and all things literary. I think I'll call it either VitiumRegum or LibriRegum (the vice of kings or the books of kings respectively). If you have an opinion please share.

This brings me to a great topic: the vice of kings. Why did I choose that name? Well, I originally wanted to call my blog Coagula, latin for coagulate, to bring together. It's a philosophical/mystical idea concerning the essential elements of nature. I can't remember who said it originally but someone posited that the human thinking mechanism can be separated into two distinct functions: to analyze (separate, solve) and to combine (coagula). This is a very similar idea to what Wittgenstein said when he broke down logic into two functions tautology and contradiction. Essentially the same ideas.
I wanted to call it coagula but that was taken. So I thought to myself "what would be another way of saying that?" and instantly I thought of Love. Love is of the same class of action. But a blog named love seems a bit hokey, so I thought some more. Then I thought of Compassion but to me that brings to mind Buddhism and all sorts of weak religious connotations. I really don't feel like that would be a good representation of who I am. I'm a lot of things but I think few people would ever call me weak. So I thought of the Thelemic equivalent which is "the vice of kings". Because in the Book of the Law it says "compassion is the vice of kings." There, done and done. Now I wish I would have used the Latin phrase but oh well.

Older Dave Chapelle

2007-05-09T14:22:00.000-07:00

How to check a baby's diaper

2007-05-09T07:56:00.000-07:00

What do you have in common with Crows?

2007-05-09T07:36:00.000-07:00

Crows are incredibly intelligent animals. Their societies are complex and hierarchic. One North American species the New Caledonian Crow has developed tool making capacities (once thought to be only present in higher primates) and the Hooded Crows of Israel have been known to use bread crumbs for fishing. This level of intelligence is attributable to their enlarged frontal lobe, a characteristic found in only two other bird species, Ravens and Parrots.

Liber Librae

2007-05-09T07:17:00.000-07:00

Liber Librae

Language

2007-05-09T07:16:00.000-07:00

Language is a limit of life.
Not THE limit but one of them.
It can be said that language governs money.
It can also be said that politics is one of the ways to translate language into action.
Isn't a president merely a speaker and a writer?
What governs language but logic?
What governs logic but intention, and emotion?
What is intent?
What is emotion?
Thought?
Energy?
The interaction of two planes of existence?

AHA!

2007-05-08T09:35:00.001-07:00

AHA!

cool tornado

2007-05-07T07:17:00.000-07:00

Mitt Romney for the 2008 election

2007-05-07T06:56:00.000-07:00

I was just visiting Mitt Romney's blog out of curiosity. He's gov. of Massachusetts I think and he's running for the 2008 election. It seems like his major platform for this election is the obvious hot topic of the preservation of the "nuclear" family. He's all about preserving and strengthening the traditional family unit. I'm curious to know how any reasonable adult could possibly buy into that? Sure it's a great campaign move because it would easy to use that topic to create buzz on both sides of the issue, it's emotionally charged, and a lot of people in the US strongly (and blindly) agree with him. Politically it's probably a really smart move but I'm forced to ask a question like "how do you address the fact that this is a blatant statement of prejudice and intolerance. To judge a certain sexual penchant as unworthy of the same respect as any other is simply bigotry. There is not enough scientific evidence to support the claims that same sex marriage is any worse (either for the children or for the couple) than a traditional marriage. Is your platform not, in essence, encouraging bigotry and intolerance, two of the biggest causes of social unrest? How can you conscientiously condone the propagation of these attitudes in a country that is notorious for that in the first place?"

I've already posted a few questions to the same effect on his site and I'm still waiting for a reply. I sure am curious how he's able to skirt around this issue.
I've also asked him how he can reasonably support the US military presence in the middle east knowing that it isn't sanctioned by the UN. That should be interesting.

It sucks knowing that he's got the best shot in this election. Good thing I'm not American.

Feel the Father of God

2007-05-06T13:14:00.001-07:00

A Tip for Next Time you Masturbate

2007-05-06T07:40:00.000-07:00

Sex is the cultivation of Jing energy.
As though we needed another reason to do it.
The end of sex however is the real matter.
To have sex with the ultimate goal of genital orgasm is to rob yourself of the fullness of all that is truly possible. With the control of the sexual energy comes the possibility of the dissolution of universal boundaries for the practicer.
Shifting from an orgasm centered view to an energetic view can be enormously gratifying and can take place instantaneously. Just start noticing your arousal not as a means to an end but an end in itself.
That feeling of arousal is the energy that should be controlled.
Taken from the usual orgasm centered perspective arousal is just the catalyst of the goal but from a Tantric or Taoist perspective arousal is the vital energy of life. You can start cultivating this energy by simply being aware of it and cultivation can lead to some amazing occurrences. For both men and women it can mean the development of multiple orgasms, greater health and vitality, spiritual realizations, emotional health, stronger connections with your lovers, and just a better overall experience. Neglect of the cultivation of Jing energy can lead to numerous detriments such as less vitality, poor health, mental blocks, addictions, and general dissatisfaction with life in general.
So next time you masturbate just be aware of the feeling in your body you get as you become aroused. Notice it flowing through every part of you. Try moving it around with your thoughts (intend it to move somewhere) and see what happens. Also, notice your breathing. Breath deep and even and you'll start experiencing some of the fullness of this energy.

Have fun.

Feel the Burn

2007-05-05T06:44:00.000-07:00

By Angus Needle

A brief thought on Wittgenstein

2007-05-05T06:17:00.000-07:00

Stupid feedblitz subscription thing. I'm not sure if it's working yet so if you want to subscribe and you get a message that says you're subscribing to "unified health" please let me know. Also if you aren't getting the updates.

What should I talk about now? I'd like to talk about logic, how the unit of measure of the mind can't be considered as a unit but only as a process. I'd like to talk about the fact that all we see is a reflection of our thoughts, and those thoughts are entirely governed by this relational structure that keeps us from seeing beyond the possible preconceptions of our own minds and into the realm of Truth. That would be nice. To be able to speak about speech itself and map out it's limits, from the inside, Like Ludwig. I'd appreciate that if I could, or if I really wanted to. But how do I come to do that? How can we really speak about the laws that govern speech? These laws (or rather consistent structures) totally pervade every aspect of ever word we utter. We cannot utter a word or phrase or any sort of intelligible or unintelligible sign without it being controlled by the logical form that our minds have imposed on us. I say imposed because I have an inkling (like old Witty) that, even though we are entirely subject to it, we can actually use logic to arrive at a place that will enable us to be free of it's confines. Logic cannot take us the whole way, I think only concentration can, but it can draw an out line of what lies beyond itself (from within itself). So what could this mean? That, first of all, we are limited to the possibilities of combinations of thoughts, that those combinations are limited by logical form (at least our interpretation of them is limited), and that logical form is destroyed by...

Morning gibberish. Just straightening out a couple things I learned this week about the great and powerful Wittgenstein. I think everyone should study at least some logic. At the very least every person should be taught (preferably in high school or junior high) the basics of informal logic and the basics of propositional logic. At the very least a person should know the most common fallacies and be aware of why they are fallacies. This would clear things up a bit.

The Jesus Beats

2007-05-04T06:39:00.000-07:00

From Angus to Poetry

2007-05-04T06:34:00.000-07:00

There's a nice classy comic from Angus. I feel so proud. I had to fix the formatting and crap for him this morning so that's why there's only the one for now. He did say that he's going to put up some new ones later today and that there might be a surprise or something for all of us sometime over the weekend. Yay!
I think Angus has one of the most startling and thought provoking styles I've ever come across. He's actually quite an accomplished artist so to see such crappy drawings in his comics leads me to believe that he intended that to mean something. Any ideas as to what that might be?
Also, he said he might want to start saying some things every once in a while so be prepared.

Where does the shadow of life
dance with the love of the body?
Who's the one that keeps the faith
in the face of the immanent fall?
Where in life does light seep through
from the rays of the radiant sun?
Another has been to the palace of two
and come back through the palace of one.

Just sort of burst out of me that time. Seems to be a good one, don't judge it till I've had a chance to incubate it though. Incubation is very important to all sorts of artistic and intellectual endeavors. It broadens perspective, gives a certain clarity to the work, allows the artist to see the work through different eyes and reconsider what ought to be reconsidered. Don't neglect incubation. Take breaks, have fun, but always with the calm assurance that this fun is also part of the creative process.

The moon

2007-05-03T08:38:00.000-07:00

Sentimentalism on a stick.

2007-05-03T06:54:00.000-07:00

I'd rather be the futile mess of Wittgenstein than Russell's prize apostle.

Yesterday a friend of mine asked me if I'd be willing to let him put some of his comics on this site. I said "sure why not?" then he said "thanks I will." So today at some point he's going to put up a comic or two. They will more than likely be offensive but that's ok. I don't mind. I would definitely like to hear from you if you find it offensive, not because I'll take it down but I always like to discuss such limited views with people.

Speaking of which I'd just like to mention something that I've been working on for the last few months. I was introduced to something called "the inquiry process" through Paul Scheele's Abundance for Life course. It originally came from a woman by the name of Byron Katie.
Essentially the work is just a few questions that are supposed to lead you to uncover the truth behind limiting beliefs and false perceptions of reality. So far I've had a whole bunch of great successes. Like yesterday I finally realized that I struggle to keep my apartment and stress over money for absolutely no reason. The money I need, whether I have it or not, does not control me. I am in control of where my attention, energy and emotions go, and it has nothing whatsoever to do with the money. I also realized that living on the street wouldn't be so bad. Like the last time I lived on the street I got used to it. It's only bad or uncomfortable when we attach our sense of self to these external circumstances. If we can realize that our state is only dependent on our thoughts then the external reality matters much less than our internal reality. Though we might be in a "bad situation" we can still be perfectly happy and fulfilled.

I really want to give you the questions because I think they really could benefit anyone who uses them but I'm sure they're copy written. Whatever, if they want to try to sue me for a few books and some kettlebells they can go right ahead.

The inquiry process is as follows.

First make a statement about whatever it is thats been bothering you. This works really well for dealing with petty interpersonal problems, jealousy, "shoulds" and "shouldn'ts" and just about anything else. It might look something like "I'm angry at Sylvia because she treats me badly."
Now ask yourself the first question "is that true?" Usually you'll get something like "yeah it's true I feel terrible every time she treats me bad."
Now ask yourself "do I know absolutely that it's true?" and you might get something like "well no I'm not feeling it right now and I'm not sure I'll react that way in the future, but in the past it has been true."
Then you ask "how do I react when I believe that it's true?" and you'll get all sorts of reasons like "angry" "I feel useless" "I hate her" etc.
Now ask "who would I be without that thought?" and you'll find your answers.
Once all these questions are answered (this should be done on paper by the way. The mind is difficult to pin down so writing things helps keep them steady) you can do whats called a turn around. Just play with your original statement to see if you can come up with another statement that is at least as true, if not truer, than the original. You'll get stuff like "I'm not angry at Sylvia because she treats me badly" "I'm angry at myself because I treat me badly" "My thinking is angry at Sylvia because she treats me badly" and tons of others. With each of these new statements just ask yourself if it's true. Often you'll be surprised at which ones really are truer than the original. For instance the first turn around might be truer because you'll realize that you really aren't angry at Sylvia you're angry at yourself, or you're just not actually angry. Lots of new considerations can come of this and rarely will you find that you've not received a whole new perspective on the situation.
Seems too simple to be effective I know but just ask yourself "if there really was such an easy way to permanently improve all my relationships would I take it?" and if the answer is yes then check it out.

Loving What Is

The Tree of Life

2007-05-02T08:40:00.000-07:00

Memorize it

crap on a stick

2007-05-02T07:08:00.000-07:00

Whats left to be forgotten is the end of what's to be
I've been to be forgotten but found that I can see
what Life in all it's rapture
has in store for me.
So I have tried to capture
What's in that store for free.

Follow Your Bliss

2007-05-02T06:50:00.000-07:00

What is a balanced life? Does it mean that I should spend so much time doing my hair, so much time reading, so much time in exercise, and so much time with leisure? I'd rather follow my bliss. Joseph campbell, that myth lovin mofo knew what was goin on. Did you know he spent 5 years of his life alone in the woods reading mythology for 12 hours a day? Apparently he couldn't get a degree in mythology at the time so he just decided he would educate himself. I have no idea how he was able to support himself while he did this but hell, who cares. Now we have a bunch of really good books by a guy who wouldn't take no for an answer and who had the balls to follow his bliss.

Could I, even I, be like him and follow my bliss? Should I do it? It might cost a lot of money, or time, or emotion. I don't think I could handle that. Should I go for it anyway? What if I fail, then what? Then I've spent all this time, money and emotion on "being blissful" when I could have been mortgaging a house that I'd have to pay for for the next 20 years. Shit! I've been wasting all this time being happy when there's money to be made.

It's a lonely road to true fulfillment.
Naw not really.
Along the way we find friends and family, colleagues, mentors, mentees, and the dog next door that find it in their hearts to recognize what we are doing. They see it in our faces when we beam from ear to ear telling them how our day was, or how this project is going. We gird up our loins with the meat and potatoes of self-satisfaction and expansive joy. We give all we have to follow this bliss and in return we are given the whole world. Every door, window, and corridor is opened up for us when we embrace our true purpose and we know our purpose through that feeling of fulfillment.

Listen to yourself, you know best.

Beach Man!

2007-05-01T12:38:00.000-07:00

PhotoReading

2007-05-01T06:57:00.000-07:00

I want to start today by giving you a little glimpse of what is possible with some of the things that I mentioned in yesterday's post.
PhotoReading.
I started Photoreading back in 2002. It really took me a long time to fully realize the potential of the system. I started by trying to photoread the books that really piqued my interest but unfortunately they were way too hard for someone just starting out with the system. I didn't think it should make any difference so I just kept going. I had some success but I really wasn't properly utilizing the "whole mind system". I was basically trying to read with conscious comprehension every time I went through the material. That combined with difficult material caused a whole bunch of discouragement. I plodded along, revisited the course a couple times, forced my way through a couple years of college but never really realized how far I could really take this.
Then around this time last year I ordered the Photoreading accelerator course. It's just a couple of DVDs of Paul Scheele's photoreading seminar and a paraliminal CD. The instant I watched the DVDs and listened to the CD I realized what I was missing. I wasn't allowing myself to read with my mind. I was constantly trying to read with the old paradigm that reading occurs with the eyes, then with the mind as you go. With photoreading you have to suspend your need for conscious comprehension and allow yourself to listen to your intuition. Sounds a little hokey but it works, and well. Ever since then I've been able to read a 300 page book in about 30mins with the same level of comprehension that used to take me 4 hours or more. Not only that but because of the fact that you are using your internal faculties to read, and the fact that those faculties are closely intertwined with emotion you get a deep sense of involvement and pleasure from the reading. Even when the material is dry and technical I still get a very definite emotional response to the material, just like when I used to read novels. It's great stuff.

So now I can read 5-10 books in a day and I love it. I'll never go back to regular reading. It's so invigorating knowing that there are literally no limits to what I can learn.

If anyone out there doesn't believe me I'd be more than happy to accept any sort of learning challenge they can throw at me. Seriously, anything. I've already done a whole semester's worth of college classes in about a week (which included learning a bunch of Latin and writing papers for comparative literature), learned calculus in a week (both differential and integral), and now I've deepened my understanding of Wittgenstein's philosophy to the point where I could easily write a whole book on the Tractatus after only a few days.

I know its sound too good to be true but when you're really willing to open up to your true potential anything is possible. Anything.

7 Ways to Dramatically Improve your Life

2007-04-30T06:50:00.000-07:00

I read the other day that some sci-fi writer (don't remember who) wrote something like 400 books in life, a bunch of screenplays and some other crap. He said he was able to do this by starting every morning with writing a bunch of nonsense. He would just sit down and empty his head of all sorts of diarrhea. Then from this offal he would pick out some ideas and just go hard for the rest of the day. "Good idea" I thought. I had played with this technique on my own when I was a teen and it dramatically improved my creativity. I was never at a loss for something to write about and everything I wrote was some degree of decent. I revisited this concept a few times throughout the years but never consistently. Now I'm trying it again. I'm still deliberating whether or not to post the morning's nonsense so if you'd like to see it just leave a comment. The last post here is a short little example of that.

Also I was thinking of putting up this little thing where people can chat with me when I'm logged on. I thought I might have some weekly discussion topics or something like that. We could talk philosophy, religion, politics, art, pop culture, bullshit, whatever. Let me know what you think.

Now, I haven't been getting much feedback from you. You're just sitting there reading while I'm doing all the work.
That just won't do.
I'd like to hear from you. So put all your thoughts down and start posting them in the comments sections. I'll respond to every single one of them I promise.

This week I'm learning I whole bunch of really interesting stuff. I'm getting a deeper understanding of Wittgenstein's writings, I'm learning some stuff about Tantric and Taoist sexual practices (fun!), I brushing up on my Kabbalah, I'm learning set theory, and I'll be reading a couple self-help books. So I'll be posting some crap about all of these topics throughout the week and if there's anything in particular that you'd like my opinion on just let me know.

I didn't do a post yesterday and for that I'm sorry. I just always seem to have trouble doing any kind of work on Sundays. It must be all those years of being raised Christian. "don't work on Sundays or you'll offend the lord" and all that shit. I heard that a few times growing up, mostly from teachers in school. But I'll do better next time.

Today I want to leave you with a list of personal development tools. These are the ones that I've used consistently over the years and have proven to be infinitely useful.

1. PhotoReading. A great compliment to anyone's arsenal of weapons with which to take heaven by force. Combine this with Image Streaming and mind mapping and you've got yourself a first class brain in a few easy lessons.

2.Kettlebells. The single most difficult (and therefore most effective) workout tool know to modern science. Exercise is vitally important to every aspect of one's life, from mental and emotional health, to the development of will power and discipline, to the expansion of one's usable reserves of energy.

3.Yoga. Here I'm not talking about that crap that everyone does. All the poses and stretching are good for emotional stability and they can be a decent form of exercise but the Yoga I'm talking about goes so much further it's not even funny. For a good treatment of this type of yoga check out Crowley's "Eight Lectures on Yoga" on the left in the books list. Fantastic.

4.Liber Jugorum. This is actually a branch of yoga but it's not explicitly presented as such. Suffice it to say that this is probably the single most useful exercise for the development of mental control, introspection, awareness, and concentration. Don't be squeamish and make sure you follow the directions to the letter.

5.Magick. This can be summed up succinctly with one word: Love. For books check out Liber ABA, and Transcendental Magic. These two will give you the best introduction to the subject and will lead you to further resources (if you need them).

6.Qabbalah. This should probably go under the magick heading but it's got so many uses it's hard to classify. It's a great memory tool when used as a peg system or mnemonic device. It helps deepen one's understanding of just about every concept imaginable and it can be used for practical magick. An all around useful tool.

7.Language. Learn to speak well and persuasively and the whole world can open up for you. NLP is a great place to start with this.

There are others, many others, but these are the indispensable ones that I've found. If I had to recommend a starting place I'd say go for Photoreading first. Learning how to read at 60,000+ words per minute will literally change your entire life. From there it's up to you but probably the next best step would be Liber Jugorum. Great stuff.

I've found free online resources for all of these topics so if you'd like me to give you the links or to guide you through somethings or if you just want to talk about something you can either leave a comment, subscribe (on the left) and I'll email you a whole bunch of stuff, or you can wait for me to put up that little chat window I'm going to put up. I'm always here to help.

Just before eight aighem

2007-04-30T06:47:00.000-07:00

This is my sanctuary, this hole in the electronic age of non reason. I'd rather be a hippie, all long haired and troubled about the bad acid. I tried it once, I kept sleeping on the hair. Hurts too much to care about. I'd like to have it easier, an Iraqi war is better. More sand than Nam. Better sand castles. Drier too. Could you pass the butter.

The Harmony of the World.

2007-04-28T10:44:00.000-07:00

What makes me think the world is harmonious? I see the world as a body. I see every element in the world as a cell within that body. This body desires health and optimal functioning just like any other body. It has mechanisms in place that provide self correction. It has a multitude of elements with individual functions that all rely heavily on each other.
I also compare the world to the internet sometimes. Consider what would happen to a website that serves no purpose, that doesn't further the general interests of the internet (considered as an organism. BTW the interest of the internet might be something like efficient information transfer or something like that). Such sites (I've ran across a few, usually trying to sell some crap) never get visitors. The life blood stops flowing towards it and it eventually dies.
The world is similar though sometimes it might be difficult to appreciate that since you're looking at it from within. It can be difficult to see the entirety of a room while standing inside it. You can only really appreciate it wholistically from an elevated perspective. But I can sometimes see the harmony of things even from where I'm standing. Sometimes.
I can see the sun that causes the grass to grow, the grass feeding the cows, the cows feeding us, us appreciating the sun.
I can see life in alternating cycles of living and death. Both complementing each other. Each one necessary for the other to exist.
I can see that when something (seemingly insignificant) is removed from the system (e.g. extinction) the whole system feels the effects.
I see the resolution of the "schizophrenic observer" paradox in quantum physics being resolved by the assumption of a single universal mind.
I see the singularity from which we came and to which we are returning. All in the same boat.
The world is a whole. At least the way I see it.

Easy Chess Scam

2007-04-28T10:42:00.000-07:00

The Testament of Magdalen Blair.

2007-04-27T07:56:00.000-07:00

Here's one of the best short stories I've ever read. It's by the great Aleister Crowley and originally appeared in The Equinox vol. 1 no. 9. I had to copy and paste it because the formating on the original is atrocious. This isn't much better but it'll do. Enjoy.

THE TESTAMENT OF MAGDALEN BLAIR
In my third term at Newnham I was already Professor Blair's favourite pupil. Later, he wasted a great deal of time praising my slight figure and my piquant face, with its big round grey eyes and their long black lashes; but the first attraction was my singular gift. Few men, and, I believe, no other women, could approach me in one of the most priceless qualifications for scientific study, the faculty of apprehending minute differences. My memory was poor, extraordinarily so; I had the utmost trouble to enter Cambridge at all. But I could adjust a micrometer better than either students or professor, and read a vernier with an accuracy to which none of them could even aspire. To this I added a faculty of subconscious calculation which was really uncanny. If I were engaged in keeping a solution between (say) 70 Degree and 80 Degrees I had no need to watch the thermometer. Automatically I became aware that the mercury was close to the limit, and would go over from my other work and adjust it without a thought. More remarkable still, if any object were placed on my {139} bench without my knowledge and then removed, I could, if asked within a few minutes, describe the object roughly, especially distinguishing the shape of its base and the degree of its opacity to heat and light. From these data I could make a pretty good guess at what the object was. This faculty of mine was repeatedly tested, and always with success.Extreme sensitiveness to minute degrees of heat was its obvious cause. I was also a singularly good thought-reader, even at this time. The other girls feared me absolutely. They need not have done so; I had neither ambition nor energy to make use of any of my powers. Even now, when I bring to mankind this message of a doom so appalling that at the age of twenty-four I am a shrivelled, blasted, withered wreck, I am supremely weary, supremely indifferent. I have the heart of a child and the consciousness of Satan, the lethargy of I know not what disease; and yet, thank --- oh! there can be no God! --- the resolution to warn mankind to follow my example, and then to explode a dynamite cartridge in my mouth. II In my third year at Newnham I spend four hours of every day at Professor Blair's house. All other work was neglected, gone through mechanically, if at all. This came about gradually, as the result of an accident. The chemical laboratory has two rooms, one small and capable of being darkened. On this occasion (the May term of my second year) this room was in use. It was {140} the first week of June, and extremely fine. The door was shut. Within was a girl, alone, experimenting with the galvanometer. I was absorbed in my own work. Quite without warning I looked up. "Quick!" said I, "Gladys is going to faint." Every one in the room stared at me. I took a dozen steps towards the door, when the fall of a heavy body sent the laboratory into hysterics. It was only the heat and confined atmosphere, and Gladys should not have come to work that day at all, but she was easily revived, and then the demonstrator acquiesced in the anarchy that followed. "How did she know?" was the universal query; for that I knew was evident. Ada Brown ("Athanasia contra mundum") pooh-poohed the whole affair; Margaret Letchmere thought I must have heard something, perhaps a cry inaudible to the others, owing to their occupied attention; Doris Leslie spoke of second sight, and Amy Gore of "Sympathy." All the theories, taken together, went round the clock of conjecture. Professor Blair came in at the most excited part of the discussion, calmed the room in two minutes, elicited the facts in five, and took me off to dine with him. "I believe it's this human thermopile affair of yours," he said. "Do you mind if we try a few parlour tricks after dinner?" His aunt, who kept house for him,protested in vain, and was appointed Grand Superintendent in Ordinary of my five senses. My hearing was first tested, and found normal, or thereabouts. I was then blindfolded, and the aunt (by excess of precaution) stationed between me and the Professor. I found that I could describe even small movements that he made, so {141} long as he was between me and the western window, not at all when he moved round to the other quarters. This is in conformity with the "Thermopile" theory; it was contradicted completely on other occasions. The results (in short) were very remarkable and very puzzling; we wasted two precious hours in futile theorizing. In the event the aunt (cowed by a formidable frown) invited me to spend the Long Vacation in Cornwall. During these months the Professor and I assiduously worked to discover exactly the nature and limit of my powers. The result, in a sense, was "nil." For one thing, these powers kept on "breaking out in a new place." I seemed to do all I did by perception of minute differences; but then it seemed as if I had all sorts of different apparatus. "One down, t'other come on," said Professor Blair. Those who have never made scientific experiments cannot conceive how numerous and subtle are the sources of error, even in the simplest matters. In so obscure and novel a field of research no result is trustworthy until it has been verified a thousand times. In our field we discovered no constants, all variables. Although we had hundreds of facts any one of which seemed capable of overthrowing all accepted theories of the means of communication between mind and mind, we had nothing, absolutely nothing, which we could use as the basis of a new theory. It is naturally impossible to give even an outline of the course of our research. Twenty-eight closely written notebooks referring to this first period are at the disposal of my executors. {142} III In the middle of the day, in my third year, my father was dangerously ill. I bicycled over to Peterborough at once, never thinking of my work. (My father is a canon of Peterborough Cathedral.) On the third day I received a telegram from Professor Blair, "Will you be my wife?" I had never realized myself as a woman, or him as a man, till that moment, and in that moment I knew that I loved him and had always loved him. It was a case of what one might call "Love at first absence." My father recovered rapidly; I returned to Cambridge; we were married during the May week, and went immediately to Switzerland. I beg to be spared any recital of so sacred a period of my life: but I must record one fact. We were sitting in a garden by Lago Maggiore after a delightful tramp from Chamounix over the Col du Geant to Courmayeur, and thence to Aosta, and so by degrees to Pallanza. Arthur rose, apparently struck by some idea, and began to walk up and down the terrace. "I was quite suddenly impelled to turn my head to assure myself of his presence." This may seem nothing to you who read, unless you have true imagination. But think of yourself talking to a friend in full light, and suddenly leaning forward to touch him. "Arthur!" I cried, "Arthur!" The distress in my tone brought him running to my side. "What is it, Magdalen?" he cried, anxiety in every word. I closed my eyes. "Make gestures!" said I. (He was directly between me and the sun.) He obeyed, wondering. {143} "You are ------ your are" ------ I stammered ------ "no! I don't know what you are doing. I am blind!" He sawed his arm up and down. Useless; I had become absolutely insensitive. We repeated a dozen experiments that night. All failed. We concealed our disappointment, and it did not cloud our love. The sympathy between us grew even subtler and stronger, but only as it grows between all men and women who love with their whole hearts, and love unselfishly. IV We returned to Cambridge in October, and Arthur threw himself vigorously into the new year's work. Then I fell ill, and the hope we had indulged was disappointed. Worse, the course of the illness revealed a condition which demanded the most complete series of operations which a woman can endure. Not only the past hope, but all future hope, was annihilated. It was during my convalescence that the most remarkable incident of my life took place. I was in great pain one afternoon, and wished to see the doctor. The nurse went to the study to telephone for him. "Nurse!" I said, as she returned, "don't lie to me. He's not gone to Royston; he's got cancer, and is too upset to come." "Whatever next?" said the nurse. "It's right he can't come, and I was going to tell you he had gone to Royston; but I never heard nothing about no cancer." This was true; she had not been told. But the next morning we heard that my "intuition" was correct. {144} As soon as I was well enough, we began our experiments again. My powers had returned, and in triple force. Arthur explained my "intuition" as follows: "The doctor (when you last saw him) did not know consciously that he had cancer; but subconsciously Nature gave warning. You read this subconsciously, and it sprang into your consciousness when you read on the nurse's face that he was ill." This, farfetched as it may seem, at least avoids the shallow theories about "telepathy." From this time my powers constantly increased. I could read my husband's thoughts from imperceptible movements of his face as easily as a trained deaf-mute can sometimes read the speech of a distant man from the movements of his lips. Gradually as we worked, day by day, I found my grasp of detail ever fuller. It is not only that I could read emotions; I could tell whether he was thinking 3465822 or 3456822. In the year following my illness we made 436 experiments of this kind, each extending over several hours; in all 9363, with only 122 failures, and these all, without exception, partial. The year following, our experiments were extended to a reading of his dreams. In this I proved equally successful. My practice was to leave the room before he woke, write down the dream that he had dreamt, and await him at the breakfast-table, where he would compare his record with mine. Invariably they were identical, with this exception, that my record was always much fuller than his. He would nearly always, however, purport to remember the details supplied by me; but this detail has (I think) no real scientific value. But what does it all matter, when I think of the horror impending? {145} V That my only means of discovering Arthur's thought was by muscle-reading became more than doubtful during the third year of our marriage. We practised "telepahty" unashamed. We excluded the "muscle-reader" and the "super-auditor" and the "human thermopile" by elaborate precautions; yet still I was able to read every thought of his mind. On our holiday in North Wales at Easter one year we separated for a week, at the end of that week he to be on the leeward, I on the windward side of Tryfan, at an appointed hour, he there to open and read to himself a sealed packet given him by "some stranger met at Pen-y-Pass during the week." The experiment was entirely successful; I reproduced every word of the document. If the "telepathy" is to be vitiated, it is on the theory that I had previously met the "stranger" and read from him what he would write in such circumstances! Surely direct communication of mind with mind is an easier theory! Had I known in what all this was to culminate, I suppose I should have gone mad. Thrice fortunate that I can warn humanity of what awaits each one. The greatest benefactor of his race will be he who discovers and explosive indefinitely swifter and more devastating than dynamite. If I could only trust myself to prepare Chloride of Nitrogen in sufficient quantity. ... VI Arthur became listless and indifferent. The perfection of love that had been our marriage failed without warning, and yet by imperceptible gradations. {146} My awakening to the fact was, however, altogether sudden. It was one summer evening; we were paddling on the Cam. One of Arthur's pupils, also in a Canadian canoe, challenged us to race. At Magdalen Bridge we were a length ahead --- suddenly I heard my husband's thought. It was the most hideous and horrible laugh that it is possible to conceive. No devil could laugh so. I screamed, and dropped my paddle. Both the men thought me ill. I assured myself that it was not the laugh of some townee on the bridge, distorted by my over-sensitive organization. I said no more; Arthur looked grave. At night he asked abruptly after a long period of brooding, "Was that my thought?" I could only stammer that I did not know. Incidentally he complained of fatigue, and the listlessness, which before had seemed nothing to me, assumed a ghastly shape. There was something in him that was not he! The indifference had appeared transitory; I now became aware of it as constant and increasing. I was at this time twenty-three years old. You wonder that I write with such serious attitude of mind. I sometimes think that I have never had any thoughts of my own; that I have always been reading the thoughts of another, or perhaps of Nature. I seem only to have been a woman in those first few months of marriage. VII The six months following held for me nothing out of the ordinary, save that six or seven times I had dreams, vivid and terrible. Arthur had no share in these; yet I knew, I cannot say how, that they were his dreams and not mine; or rather {147} that they were in his subconscious waking self, for one occurred in the afternoon, when he was out shooting, and not in the least asleep. The last of them occurred towards the end of the October term. He was lecturing as usual, I was at home, lethargic after a too heavy breakfast following a wakeful night. I saw suddenly a picture of the lecture-room, enormously greater than in reality, so that it filled all space; and in the rostrum, bulging over it in all directions, was a vast, deadly pale devil with a face which was a blasphemy on Arthur's. The evil joy of it was indescribable. So wan and bloated, its lips so loose and bloodless; fold after fold of its belly flopping over the rostrum and pushing the students out of the hall, it leered unspeakably. Then dribbled from its mouth these words: "Ladies and gentlemen, the course is finished. You may go home." I cannot hope even to suggest the wickedness and filth of these simple expressions. Then, raising its voice to a grating scream, it yelled: "White of egg! White of egg! White of egg!" again and again for twenty minutes. The effect on me was shocking. It was as if I had a vision of Hell. Arthur found me in a very hysterical condition, but soon soothed me. "Do you know," he said at dinner, "I believe I have got a devilish bad chill?" It was the first time I had known him to complain of his health. In six years he had not had as much as a headache. I told him my "dream" when we were in bed, and he seemed unusually grave, as if he understood where I had failed in its interpretation. In the morning he was feverish; I made him stay in bed and sent for the doctor. The same afternoon I {148} learnt that Arthur was seriously ill, had been ill, indeed, for months. The doctor called it Bright's disease. VIII I said "the last of the dreams." For the next year we travelled, and tried various treatments. My powers remained excellent, but I received none of the subconscious horrors. With few fluctuations, he grew steadily worse; daily he became more listless, more indifferent, more depressed. Our experiments were necessarily curtailed. Only one problem exercised him, the problem of his personality. He began to wonder "who he was." I do not mean that he suffered from delusions. I mean that the problem of the true Ego took hold of his imagination. One perfect summer night at Contrexeville he was feeling much better; the symptoms had (temporarily) disappeared almost entirely under the treatment of a very skilful doctor at that Spa, a Dr. Barbezieux, a most kind and thoughtful man. "I am going to try," said Arthur, "to penetrate myself. Am I an animal, and is the world without a purpose? Or am I a soul in a body? Or am I, one and indivisible in some incredible sense, a spark of the infinite light of God? I am going to think inwards: I shall possibly go into some form of trance, unintelligible to myself. You may be able to interpret it." The experiment had lasted about half an hour when he sat up gasping with effort. "I have seen nothing, heard nothing," I said. "Not one thought has passed from you to me." {149} But at that very moment what had been in his mind flashed into mine. "It is a blind abyss," I told him, "and there hangs in it a vulture vaster than the whole starry system." "Yes," he said, "that was it. But that was not all. I could not get beyond it. I shall try again." He tried. Again I was cut off from his thought, although his face was twitching so that one might have said that any one might read his mind. "I have been looking in the wrong place," said he suddenly, but very quietly and without moving. "The thing I want lies at the base of the spine." This time I saw. In a blue heaven was coiled an infinite snake of gold and green, with four eyes of fire, black fire and red, that darted rays in every direction; held within its coils was a great multitude of laughing children. And even as I looked, all this was blotted out. Crawling rivers of blood spread over the heaven, of blood purulent with nameless forms --- mangy dogs with their bowels dragging behind them; creatures half elephant, half beetle; things that were but a ghastly bloodshot eye, set about with leathery tentacles; women whose skins heaved and bubbled like boiling sulphur, giving off clouds that condensed into a thousand other shapes, more hideous than their mother; these were the least of the denizens of these hateful rivers. The most were things impossible to name or to describe. I was brought back from the vision by the stertorous and strangling breath of Arthur, who had been seized with a convulsion. From this he never really rallied. The dim sight grew {150} dimmer, the speech slower and thicker, the headaches more persistent and acute. Torpor succeeded to his old splendid energy and activity; his days became continual lethargy ever deepening towards coma. Convulsions now and then alarmed me for his immediate danger. Sometimes his breath came hard and hissing like a snake in anger; towards the end it assumed the Cheyne-Stokes type in bursts of ever-increasing duration and severity. In all this, however, he was still himself; the horror that was and yet was not himself did not peer from behind the veil "So long as I am consciously myself," he said in one of his rare fits of brightness, "I can communicate to you what I am consciously thinking; as soon as this conscious ego is absorbed, you get the subconscious thought which I fear --- oh how I fear! --- is the greater and truer part of me. You have brought unguessed explanations from the world of sleep; you are the one woman in the world --- perhaps there may never be another --- who has such an opportunity to study the phenomena of death." He charged me earnestly to suppress my grief, to concentrate wholly on the thoughts that passed through his mind when he could no longer express them, and also on those of his subconsciousness when coma inhibited consciousness. It is this experiment that I now force myself to narrate. The prologue has been long; it has been necessary to put the facts before mankind in a simple way so that they may seize the opportunity of the proper kind of suicide. I beg my readers most earnestly not to doubt my statements: the notes {151} of our experiments, left in my will to the greatest thinker now living, Professor von Buhle, will make clear the truth of my relation, and the great and terrible necessity of immediate, drastic, action. Part II I THE stunning physical fact of my husband's illness was the immense prostration. So strong a body, as too often the convulsions gave proof; such inertia with it! He would lie all day like a log; then without warning or apparent cause the convulsions would begin. Arthur's steady scientific brain stood it well; it was only two days before his death that delirium began. I was not with him; worn out as I was, and yet utterly unable to sleep, the doctor had insisted on my taking a long motor drive. In the fresh air I slumbered. I awoke to hear an unfamiliar voice saying in my ear, "Now for the fun of the fair!" There was no one there. Quick on its heels followed my husband's voice as I had long since known and loved it, clear, strong, resonant, measured: "Get this down right; it is very important. I am passing into the power of the subconsciousness. I may not be able to speak to you again. But I am here; I am not to be touched by all that I may suffer; I can always think; you can always read my ------" The voice broke off sharply to inquire, "But will it ever end?" as if some one had spoken to it. And then I heard the laugh. The laugh that I had heard by Magdalen Bridge was heavenly music beside that! The face of Calvin (even) as {152} he gloated over the burning of Servetus would have turned pitiful had he heard it, so perfectly did it express quintessence of damnation. Now then my husband's thought seemed to have changed places with the other. It was below, within, withdrawn. I said to myself, "He is dead!" Then came Arthur's thought, "I had better pretend to be mad. It will save her, perhaps; and it will be a change. I shall pretend I have killed her with an axe. Damn it! I hope she is not listening>" I was now thoroughly awake, and told the drive to get home quickly. "I hope she is killed in the motor; I hope she is smashed into a million pieces. O God! hear my one prayer! let an Anarchist throw a bomb and smash Magdalen into a million pieces! especially the brain! and the brain first. O God! my first and last prayer: smash Magdalen into a million pieces!" The horror of this thought was my conviction --- then and now --- that it represented perfect sanity and coherence of thought. For I dreaded utterly to think what such words might imply. At the door of the sick-room I was met by the male nurse, who asked me not to enter. Uncontrollably, I asked, "Is he dead?" and though Arthur lay absolutely senseless on the bed I read the answering thought "Dead!" silently pronounced in such tones of mockery, horror, cynicism and despair as I never thought to hear. There was a something or somebody who suffered infinitely, and yet who gloated infinitely upon that very suffering. And that something was a veil between me and Arthur. The hissing breath recommenced; Arthur seem to be {153} trying to express himself --- the self I knew. He managed to articulate feebly, "Is that the police? Let me get out of the house! The police are coming for me. I killed Magdalen with an axe." The symptoms of delirium began to appear. "I killed Magdalen" he muttered a dozen times, than changing to "Magdalen with" again and again; the voice low, slow, thick, yet reiterated. Then suddenly, quite clear and loud, attempting to rise in the bed: "I smashed Magdalen into a million pieces with an axe." After a moment's pause: "a million is not very many now-a-days." From this --- which I now see to have been the speech of a sane Arthur --- he dropped again into delirium. "A million pieces," "a cool million," "a million million million million million million" and so on: then abruptly: "Fanny's dog's dead." I cannot explain the last sentence to my readers; I may, however, remark that it meant everything to me. I burst into tears. At that moment I caught Arthur's thought, "You ought to be busy with the note-book, not crying." I resolutely dried my eyes, took courage, and began to write. II The doctor came in at this moment and begged me to go and rest. "You are only distressing yourself, Mrs. Blair," he said; "and needlessly, for he is absolutely unconscious and suffers nothing." A pause. "My God! why do you look at me like that?" he exclaimed, frightened out of his wits. I think my face had caught something of that devil's, something of that sneer, that loathing, that mire of contempt and stark despair. {154} I sank back into myself, ashamed already that mere knowledge --- and such mean vile knowledge --- should so puff one up with hideous pride. No wonder Satan fell! I began to understand all the old legends, and far more ------ I told Doctor Kershaw that I was carrying out Arthur's last wishes. He raised no further opposition; but I saw him sign to the male nurse to keep an eye on me. The sick man's finger beckoned us. He could not speak; he traced circles on the counterpane. The doctor (with characteristic intelligence) having counted the circles, nodded; and said: "Yes, it is nearly seven o'clock. Time for your medicine, eh?" "No," I explained, "he means that he is in the seventh circle of Dante's Hell." At that instant he entered on a period of noisy delirium. Wild and prolonged howls burst from his throat; he was being chewed unceasingly by "Dis"; each howl signalled the meeting of the monster's teeth. I explained this to the doctor. "No," said he, "he is perfectly unconscious." "Well," said I, "he will howl about eighty times more. Doctor Kershaw looked at me curiously, but began to count. My calculation was correct. He turned to me, "Are you a woman?" "No," said I, "I am my husband's colleague." "I think it is suggestion. You have hypnotized him?" "Never: but I can read his thoughts." "Yes, I remember now; I read a very remarkable paper in "Mind" two years ago." "That was child's play. But let me go on with my work." {155} He gave some final instructions to the nurse, and went out. The suffering of Arthur was at this time unspeakable. Chewed as he was into mere pulp that passed over the tongue of "Dis," each bleeding fragment kept its own identity and his. The papillae of the tongue were serpents, and each one gnashed its poisoned teeth upon that fodder. And yet, though the sensorium of Arthur was absolutely unimpaired, indeed hyperaesthetic, his consciousness of pain seemed to depend upon the opening of the mouth. As it closed in mastication, oblivion fell upon him like a thunderbolt. A merciful oblivion? Oh! what a master stroke of cruelty! Again and again he woke from nothing to a hell of agony, of pure ecstasy of agony, until he understood that this would continue for all his life; the alternation was but systole and diastole, the throb of his envenomed pulse, the reflection in consciousness of his blood-beat. I became conscious of his intense longing for death to end the torture. The blood circulated ever slower and more painfully; I could feel him hoping for the end. This dreadful rose-dawn suddenly greyed and sickened with doubt. Hope sank to its nadir; fear rose like a dragon, with leaden wings. Suppose, thought he, that after all death does not end me! I cannot express this conception. It is not that the heart sank, it had nowhither to sink; it knew itself immortal, and immortal in a realm of unimagined pain and terror, unlighted by one glimpse of any other light than that pale glare of hate and of pestilence. This thought took shape in these words: I AM THAT I AM. {156} One cannot say that the blasphemy added to the horror; rather it was the essence of the horror. It was the gnashing of the teeth of a damned soul. III The demon-shape, which I now clearly recognized as that which had figured in my last "dream" at Cambridge, seemed to gulp. At that instant a convulsion shook the dying man and a coughing eructation took the "demon." Instantly the whole theory dawned on me, that this "demon" was an imaginary personification of the disease. Now at once I understood demonology, from Bodin and Weirus to the moderns, without a flaw. But was it imaginary or was it real? Real enough to swallow up the "sane" thought! At that instant the old Arthur reappeared. "I am not the monster! I am Arthur Blair, of Fettes and Trinity. I have passed through a paroxysm." The sick man stirred feebly. A portion of his brain had shaken off the poison for the moment, and was working furiously against time. "I am going to die. "The consolation of death is Religion. "There is no use for Religion in life. "How many atheists have I not known sign the articles the sake of fellowships and livings! Religion in life is either an amusement and a soporific or a sham and a swindle. "I was brought up a Presbyterian "How easily I drifted into the English Church! {157} "And now where is God? "Where is the Lamb of God? "Where is the Saviour? "Where is the Comforter? "Why was I not saved from that devil? "Is he going to eat me again? To absorb me into him? O fate inconceivably hideous! It is quite clear to me --- I hope you've got it down, Magdalen! --- that the demon is made of all those that have died of Bright's disease. There must be different ones for each disease. I thought I once caught sight of a coughing bog of bloody slime. "Let me pray." A frenzied appeal to the Creator followed. Sincere as it was, it would read like irreverence in print. And then there came the cold-drawn horror of stark blasphemy against this God --- who would not answer. Followed the bleak black agony of the conviction --- the absolute certitude --- "There is no God!" combined with a wave of frenzied wrath against the people who had so glibly assured him that there was, an almost maniac hope that they would suffer more than he, if it were possible. (Poor Arthur! He had not yet brushed the bloom off Suffering's grape; he was to drink its fiercest distillation to the dregs.) "No!" thought he, "perhaps I lack their 'faith.' "Perhaps if I could really persuade myself of God and Christ ------ Perhaps if I could deceive myself, could make believe ------" Such a thought is to surrender one's honesty, to abdicate one's reason. It marked the final futile struggle of his will. {158} The demon caught and crunched him, and the noisy delirium began anew. My flesh and blood rebelled. Taken with a deathly vomit, I rushed from the room, and resolutely, for a whole hour, diverted my sensorium from thought. I had always found that the slightest trace of tobacco smoke in a room greatly disturbed my power. On this occasion I puffed cigarette after cigarette with excellent effect. I knew nothing of what had been going on. IV Arthur, stung by the venomous chyle, was tossing in that vast arched belly, which resembled the dome of hell, churned in its bubbling slime. I felt that he was not only disintegrated mechanically, but chemically, that his being was loosened more and more into its parts, that these were being absorbed into new and hateful things, but that (worst of all) Arthur stood immune from all, behind it, unimpaired, memory and reason ever more acute as ever new and ghastlier experience informed them. It seemed to me as if some mystic state were super-added to the torment; for while he was not, emphatically not, this tortured mass of consciousness, yet that was he. There are always at least two of us! The one who feels and the one who knows are not radically one person. This double personality is enormously accentuated at death. Another point was that the time-sense, which with men is usually so reliable --- especially in my own case --- was decidedly deranged, if not abrogated altogether. We all judge of the lapse of time in relation to our daily {159} habits or some similar standard. The conviction of immortality must naturally destroy all values for this sense. If I am immortal, what is the difference between a long time and a short time? A thousand years and a day are obviously the same thing from the point of view of "for ever." There is a subconscious clock in us, a clock wound up by the experience of the race to go for seventy years or so. Five minutes is a very long time to us if we are waiting for an omnibus, an age if we are waiting for a lover, nothing at all if we are pleasantly engaged or sleeping.<> We think of seven years as a long time in connection with penal servitude; as a negligibly small period in dealing with geology. But, given immortality, the age of the stellar system itself is nothing. This conviction had not fully impregnated the consciousness of Arthur; it hung over him like a threat, while the intensification of that consciousness, its liberation from the sense of time natural to life, caused each act of the demon to appear of vast duration, although the intervals between the howls of the body on the bed were very short. Each pang of torture or suspense was born, rose to its crest, and died to be reborn again through what seemed countless aeons. Still more was this the case in the process of his assimilation {160} by the "demon." The coma of the dying man was a phenomenon altogether out of Time. The conditions of "digestion" were new to Arthur, he had no reason to suppose, no data from which to calculate the distance of, an end. It is impossible to do more than sketch this process; as he was absorbed, so did his consciousness expand into that of the "demon"; he became one with all its hunger and corruption. Yet always did he suffer as himself in his own person the tearing asunder of his finest molecules; and this was confirmed by a most filthy humiliation of that part of him that was rejected. I shall not attempt to describe the final process; suffice it that the demoniac consciousness drew away; he was but the excrement of the demon, and as that excrement he was flung filthily further into the abyss of blackness and of night whose name is death. I rose with ashen cheeks. I stammered: "He is dead." The male nurse bent over the body. "Yes!" he echoed, "he is dead." And it seemed as if the whole Universe gathered itself into one ghastly laugh of hate and horror, "Dead!" V I resumed my seat. I felt that I must know that all was well, that death had ended all. Woe to humanity! The consciousness of Arthur was more alive than ever. It was the black fear of falling, a dumb ecstasy of changeless fear. There were no waves upon that sea of shame, no troubling of those accursed waters by any thought. There was no hope of any {161} ground to that abyss, no thought that it might stop. So tireless was that fall that even acceleration was absent; it was constant and level as the fall of a star. There was not even a feeling of pace; infinitely fast as it must be, judging from the peculiar dread which it inspired, it was yet infinitely slow, having regard to the infinitude of the abyss. I took measures not to be disturbed by the duties that men --- oh how foolishly! --- pay to the dead: and I took refuge in a cigarette. It was now for the first time, strangely enough, that I began to consider the possibility of helping him. I analysed the position. It must be his thought, or I could not read it. I had no reason to conjecture that any other thoughts could reach me. He must be alive in the true sense of the word; it was he and not another that was the prey of this fear ineffable. Of this fear it was evident that there must be a physical basis in the constitution of his brain and body. All the other phenomena had been shown to correspond exactly with a physical condition; it was the reflection in a consciousness from which human limitation had fallen away of things actually taking place in the body. It was a false interpretation perhaps; but it was his interpretation; and it was that which caused suffering so beyond all that poets have ever dreamt of the infernal. I am ashamed to say that my first thought was of the Catholic Church and its masses for the repose of the dead. I went to the Cathedral, revolving as I went all that had ever been said --- the superstitions of a hundred savage tribes. At bottom I could find no difference between their barbarous rites and those of Christianity. {162} However that might be, I was baffled. The priests refused to pray for the soul of a heretic. I hurried back to the house, resumed my vigil. There was no change, except a deepening of the fear, an intensification of the loneliness, a more utter absorption in the shame. I could but hope that in the ultimate stagnation of all vital forces, death would become final, hell merged into annihilation. This started a train of thought which ended in a determination to hasten the process. I thought of blowing out the brains, remembered that I had no means of doing so. I thought of freezing the body, imagined a story for the nurse, reflected that no cold could excite in his soul aught icier than that illimitable void of black. I thought of telling the doctor that he had wished to bequeath his body to the surgeons, that he had been afraid of being buried alive, anything that might induce him to remove the brain. At that moment I looked into the mirror, I saw that I must not speak. My hair was white, my face drawn, my eyes wild and bloodshot. In utter helplessness and misery I flung myself on the couch in the study, and puffed greedily at cigarettes. The relief was so immense that my sense of loyalty and duty had a hard fight to get me to resume the task. The mingling of horror, curiosity, and excitement must have aided. I threw away my fifth cigarette, and returned to the death chamber. VI Before I had sat at the table ten minutes a change burst out with startling suddenness. At one point in the void the {163} blackness gathered, concentrated, sprang into an evil flame that gushed aimlessly forth from nowhere to nowhere. This was accompanied by the most noxious stench. It was gone before I could realize it. As lightning precedes thunder, it was followed by a hideous clamour that I can only describe as the cry of a machine in pain. This recurred constantly for an hour and five minutes, then ceased as suddenly as it began. Arthur still fell. It was succeeded after the lapse of five hours by another paroxysm of the same kind, but fiercer and more continuous. Another silence followed, age upon age of fear and loneliness and shame. About midnight there appeared a grey ocean of bowels below the falling soul. This ocean seemed to be limitless. It fell headlong into it, and the splash awakened it to a new consciousness of things. This sea, though infinitely cold, was boiling like tubercles. Itself a more or less homogeneous slime, the stench of which is beyond all human conception (human language is singularly deficient in words that describe smell and taste; we always refer our sensations to things generally known)<> it constantly budded into greenish boils with angry red craters, whose {164} jagged edges were of a livid white; and from these issued pus formed of all things known of man --- each one distorted, degraded, blasphemed. Things innocent, things happy, things holy! every one unspeakably defiled, loathsome, sickening! During the vigil of the day following I recognized one group. I saw Italy. First the Italy of the map, a booted leg. But this leg changed rapidly through myriad phases. It was in turn the leg of every beast and bird, and in every case each leg was suffering with all diseases from leprosy and elephantiasis to scrofula and syphilis. There was also the consciousness that this was inalienably and for ever part of Arthur. Then Italy itself, in every detail foul. Then I myself, seen as every woman that has ever been, each one with every disease and torture that Nature and man have plotted in their hellish brains, each ended with a death, a death like Arthur's, whose infinite pangs were added to his own, recognized and accepted as his own. The same with our child that never was. All children of all nations, incredibly aborted, deformed, tortured, torn in pieces, abused by every foulness that the imagination of an arch-devil could devise. And so for every thought. I realized that the putrefactive changes in the dead man's brain were setting in motion every memory of his, and smearing them with hell's own paint. I timed one thought: despite its myriad million details, each one clear, vivid and prolonged, it occupied but three seconds of earthly time. I considered the incalculable array of the thoughts in his {165} well-furnished mind; I saw that thousands of year would not exhaust them. But, perhaps, when the brain was destroyed beyond recognition of its component parts ------ We have always casually assumed that consciousness depends upon a proper flow of blood in the vessels of the brain; we have never stopped to think whether the records might not be excited in some other manner. And yet we know how tumour of the brain begets hallucinations. Consciousness works strangely; the least disturbance of the blood supply, and it goes out like a candle, or else takes monstrous forms. Here was the overwhelming truth; "in death man lives again, and lives for ever." Yet we might have thought of it; the phantasmagoria of life which throng the mind of a drowning man might have suggested something of the sort to any man with a sympathetic and active imagination. Worse even than the thoughts themselves was the apprehension of the thoughts ere they arose. Carbuncles, boils, ulcers, cancers, there is no equivalent for these pustules of the bowels of hell, into whose seething convolutions Arthur sank deeper, ever deeper. The magnitude of this experience is not to be apprehended by the human mind as we know it. I was convinced that an end must come, for me, with the cremation of the body. I was infinitely glad that he had directed this to be done. But for him, end and beginning seemed to have no meaning. Through it all I seemed to hear the real Arthur's thought. "Though all this is I, yet it is only an accident of me; I stand behind it all, immune, eternal." {166} It must not be supposed that this in any way detracted from the intensity of the suffering. Rather it added to it. To be loathsome is less than to be linked to loathsomeness. To plunge into impurity is to become deadened to disgust. But to do so and yet to remain pure --- every vileness adds a pang. Think of Madonna imprisoned in the body of a prostitute, and compelled to acknowledge "This is I," while never losing her abhorrence. Not only immured in hell, but compelled to partake of its sacraments; not only high priest at its agapae, but begetter and manifestor of its cult; a Christ nauseated at the kiss of Judas, and yet aware that the treachery was his own. VII As the putrefaction of the brain advanced, the bursting of the pustules occasionally overlapped, with the result that the confusion and exaggeration of madness with all its poignancy was superadded to the the simpler hell. One might have thought that any confusion would have been a welcome relief to a lucidity so appalling; but this was not so. The torture was infused with a shattering sense of alarm. The images rose up threatening, disappeared only by blasting themselves into the pultaceous coprolite which was, as it were, the main body of the army which composed Arthur. Deeper and deeper as he dropped the phenomena grew constantly in every sense. Now they were a jungle in which the obscurity and terror of the whole gradually overshadowed even the abhorrence due to every part. The madness of the living is a thing so abominable and {167} fearful as to chill every human heart with horror; it is less than nothing in comparison with the madness of the dead! A further complication now arose in the destruction irrevocable and complete of that compensating mechanism of the brain, which is the basis of the sense of time. Hideously distorted and deformed as it had been in the derangement of the brain, like a shapeless jelly shooting out, of a sudden, vast, unsuspected tentacles, the destruction of it cut a thousandfold deeper. The sense of consecution itself was destroyed; things sequent appeared as things superposed or concurrent spatially; a new dimension unfolded; a new destruction of all limitation exposed a new and unfathomable abyss. To all the rest was added the bewilderment and fear which earthly agaraphobia faintly shadows forth; and at the same time the close immurement weighed upon him, since from infinitude there can be no escape. Add to this the hopelessness of the monotony of the situation. Infinitely as the phenomena were varied, they were yet recognized as essentially the same. All human tasks are lightened by the certainty that they must end. Even our joys would be intolerable were we convinced that they must endure, through irksomeness and disgust, through weariness and satiety, even for ever and for evermore. In this inhuman, this praeterdiabolic inferno was a wearisome repetition, a harping on the same hateful discord, a continuous nagging whose intervals afforded no relief, only a suspense brimming with the anticipation of some fresh terror. For hours which were to him eternities this stage continued as each cell that held the record of a memory underwent the degenerative changes which awoke it into hyperbromic purulence. {168} VIII The minute bacterial corruption now assumed a gross chemistry. The gases of putrefaction forming in the brain and interpenetrating it were represented in his consciousness by the denizens of the pustules becoming formless and impersonal --- Arthur had not yet fathomed the abyss. Creeping, winding, embracing, the Universe enfolded him, violated him with a nameless and intimate contamination, involved his being in a more suffocating terror. Now and again it drowned that consciousness in a gulf which his thought could not express to me; and indeed the first and least of his torments is utterly beyond human expression. It was a woe ever expanded, ever intensified, by each vial of wrath. Memory increased, and understanding grew; the imagination had equally got rid of limit. What this means who can tell? The human mind cannot really appreciate numbers beyond a score or so; it can deal with numbers by ratiocination, it cannot apprehend them by direct impression. It requires a highly trained intelligence to distinguish between fifteen and sixteen matches on a plate without counting them. In death this limitation is entirely removed. Of the infinite content of the Universe every item was separately realized. The brain of Arthur had become equal in power to that attributed by theologians to the Creator; yet of executive power there was no seed. The impotence of man before circumstance was in him magnified indefinitely, yet without loss of detail or of mass. He understood that The Many was The One without losing or fusing {169} the conception of either. He was God, but a God irretrievably damned: a being infinite, yet limited by the nature of things, and that nature solely compact of loathliness. IX I have little doubt that the cremation of my husband's body cut short a process which in the normally buried man continues until no trace of organic substance remains. The first kiss of the furnace awoke an activity so violent and so vivid that all the past paled in its lurid light. The quenchless agony of the pang is not to be described; if alleviation there were, it was but the exultation of feeling that this was final. Not only time, but all expansions of time, all monsters of time's womb were to be annihilated; even the ego might hope some end. The ego is the "worm that dieth not," and existence the "fire that is not quenched." Yet in this universal pyre, in this barathrum of liquid lava, jetted from the volcanoes of the infinite, this "lake of fire that is reserved for the devil and his angels," might not one at last touch bottom? Ah! but time was no more, neither any eidolon thereof! The shell was consumed; the gases of the body, combined and recombined, flamed off, free from organic form. Where was Arthur? His brain, his individuality, his life, were utterly destroyed. As separate things, yes: Arthur had entered the universal consciousness. And I heard this utterance: or rather this is my translation {170} into English of a single thought whose synthesis is "Woe." Substance is called spirit or matter. Spirit and matter are one, indivisible, eternal, indestructible. Infinite and eternal change! Infinite and eternal pain! No absolute: no truth, no beauty, no idea, nothing but the whirlwinds of form, unresting, unappeasable. Eternal hunger! Eternal war! Change and pain infinite and unceasing. There is no individuality but in illusion. And the illusion is change and pain, and its destruction is change and pain, and its new segregation from the infinite and eternal is change and pain; and substance infinite and eternal is change and pain unspeakable. Beyond thought, which is change and pain, lies being, which is change and pain. These were the last words intelligible; they lapsed into the eternal moan, Woe! Woe! Woe! Woe! Woe! Woe! Woe! in unceasing monotony that rings always in my ears if I let my thought fall from the height of activity, listen to the voice of my sensorium. In my sleep I am partially protected, and I keep a lamp constantly alight to burn tobacco in the room: but yet too often my dreams throb with that reiterated Woe! Woe! Woe! Woe! Woe! Woe! Woe! X The final stage is clearly enough inevitable, unless we believe the Buddhist theories, which I am somewhat inclined {171} to do, as their theory of the Universe is precisely confirmed in every detail by the facts here set down. But it is one thing to recognize a disease, another to discover a remedy. Frankly, my whole being revolts from their methods, and I had rather acquiesce in the ultimate destiny and achieve it as quickly as may be. My earnest preoccupation is to avoid the preliminary tortures, and I am convinced that the explosion of a dynamite cartridge in the mouth is the most practicable method of effecting this. There is just the possibility that if all thinking minds, all "spiritual beings," were thus destroyed, and especially if all organic life could be annihilated, that the Universe might cease to be, since (as Bishop Berkeley has shown) it can only exist in some thinking mind. And there is really no evidence (in spite of Berkeley) for the existence of any extra-human consciousness. Matter in itself may think, in a sense, but its monotony of woe is less awful than its abomination, the building up of high and holy things only to drag them through infamy and terror to the old abyss. I shall consequently cause this record to be widely distributed. The note-books of my work with Arthur (Vols, I-CCXIV) will be edited by Professor von Buehle, whose marvellous mind may perhaps discover some escape from the destiny which menaces mankind. Everything is in order in these note-books; and I am free to die, for I can endure no more, and above all things I dread the onset of illness, and the possibility of natural or accidental death. {172} NOTE I am glad to have the opportunity of publishing, in a journal so widely read by the profession, the MS. of the widow of the late Professor Blair. Her mind undoubtedly became unhinged through grief at her husband's death; the medical man who attended him in his last illness grew alarmed at her condition, and had her watched. She tried (fruitlessly) to purchase dynamite at several shops, but on her going to the laboratory of her late husband, and attempting to manufacture Chloride of Nitrogen, obviously for the purpose of suicide, she was seized, certified insane, and placed in my care. The case is most unusual in several respects. (1) I have never known her inaccurate in any statement of veritable fact. (2) She can undoubtedly read thoughts in an astonishing manner. In particular, she is actually useful to me by her ability to foretell attacks of acute insanity in my patients. Some hours before they occur she can predict them to a minute. On an early occasion my disbelief in her power led to the dangerous wounding of one of my attendants. (3) She combines a fixed determination of suicide (in the extraordinary manner described by her) with an intense fear of death. She smokes uninterruptedly, and I am obliged to allow her to fumigate her room at night with the same drug. (4) She is certainly only twenty-four years old, and any competent judge would with equal certainty declare her sixty. (5) Professor von Buehle, to whom the note-books were {173} sent, addressed to me a long and urgent telegram, begging her release on condition that she would promise not to commit suicide, but go to work with him in Bonn. I have yet to learn, however, that German professors, however eminent, have any voice in the management of a private asylum in England, and I am certain that the Lunacy Commissioners will uphold me in my refusal to consider the question. It will then be clearly understood that this document is published with all reserve as the lucubration of a very peculiar, perhaps unique, type of insanity. V. ENGLISH, M.D. {174}

Some More High School Poetry

2007-04-27T07:42:00.000-07:00

Here's another poem that I wrote in high school. I was just playing with the rhythm in this one so the plot is a bit off. I like it anyway though. If you love it don't be afraid to show your affection. Take it harder on me though I was only a child when I wrote it.

To the death of a friend.

As I ponder weak and weary,
On a summer day most dreary,
A solemn jest that’s felt before
Has come to take a soul for more.

It comes to life and sits there waiting.
Sits there silently debating.
Ponders what for death may hide
For he who stalks and demons ride.

The master purpose of his hiding
Is contained while sit he chiding,
Chiding as some dog of reason
Pounding on one’s darkest door.

Then to answer such a calling
The waiting demon sits for mauling,
Waits to maul the scared and breathless
While his blood lay on the floor.
Then as blood flows out, and dripping
The demon sits there, gripping, ripping,
Sits there feasting ever grinning
Grinning at the human gore.

A knock, what ho! Approaching foot steps.
Feet methinks of men with purpose?
Purpose then and backed with hatred
Hatred for the human gore.

Crashing, my, a knock intrusive.
I flee in fright, hide, most elusive.
Hiding from the guns of men with
A fear of death and nothing more.

“A slaughter” says one.

“A death from some dark vile demon,
Dark as night and dumb as reason.
Has come from some depraved nightmare,
So thoughts of his shall we implore.

“Seek out reason through the madness,
Madness never seen before”.
But they shan’t for all that madness
Has bled itself upon the floor.

Has bled itself a pool of question,
Questions n’er asked before.
Questions ere this time of demons
Have let the minds of men explore.

Then as the laughing demon leaps he
Lands upon the men with glee,
Then dancing on their minds and guns they
Fall in laughter to the floor.

They lay there dancing, singing, smiling.
Lay there knowing, happy, waiting,
As the demon looms above them
And they join the human gore.

Johnny's Meal

2007-04-27T07:37:00.000-07:00

Johnny was a good boy
Johnny was a saint
Johnny had a craving
So ate a quart of paint.

He loved the lovely color
He watched it paint his tongue
But still he had a craving
So downed a heap a dung.

To all the Perverts of Restriction with Guilty Consciences.

2007-04-27T07:03:00.000-07:00

How do you teach a child to be free of sexual fixations? It scares me to think that there are kids (even today) that will grow up with a fear of sex. It's disgusting to think that the little children won't be able to love because their parents are ignorant bigots too affraid to question what their parents told them to bring their children into a world of unconditional love, joy and ecstasy. Let's teach them to fear their own bodies and the bodies of others lest, for sure, their freedom and right knowledge should lead them to do something as foolish as sex! oohh shit some parts of flesh are reflecting the light of the sun and being received by the optic nerves of a small child! dear god what have we done?! They'll be marred for life because they have an accurate representation of what mommy and daddy do in the bedroom. I'll see you in hell I guess.

How can we bring our children up to be free to express the most recognizable manifestation of their wills in a safe and healthy way? Sexuality is the birthright of every child. She is born into the world with this amazing mechanism, this spiritual generator but no one is willing to show her how to use it because someone might accidentally see her vagina. That's dirty don't you know. Vaginas should always be hidden lest the secret of the oystered pearl be defiled by the plume sausage of the boy next door. Ohh GOD! Anything but that for my little girl! Best to forget about it and go fuck her mother.... better.

It's absurd to think a child should know about sex! She don't need to know no things like that! She's only a child! Life ain't available to her till she's eighty years old at least. An I aim to keeps it that way!

Life is love my friends.
Love is physical.
Purely.
No child should be afraid of life.
Respect and admiration friends.
Love is the law, love under will.

Religion or Philosophy?

2007-04-26T08:58:00.000-07:00

I was just reading a book by Michael Dummett (truth and other enigmas) and I realized something thats somewhat interesting. I've found that whenever I read philosophical books I get a certain level of comprehension of the topics I'm reading about. Often I read such books (the first time) with the intention of finding out how the author perceives reality. I usually leave disapointed. Like just now I got insights into all sorts of topics from Dummett's book like on the concepts of meaning, of an empirical logic, truth, functions, Wittgenstein's language games, etc. But I really couldn't tell you anything new about reality or Truth (capital T). With religious texts however, I always walk away with a sense of having gotten a glimpse of what lies beyond the veil. Perhaps this is due to the fact that a religious person is not (usually) focused on anything trivial. Essentially they are continually wrapped up in thoughts of infinity, unconditional love, and singularity whereas a philosopher is usually concerned with topics like truth, logical structure, teaching classes, writing books, meaning, and Wittgenstein.

Fear

2007-04-26T06:47:00.000-07:00

Whats so great about being afraid? It's not like we get paid for it. Its not like we get some sort of prize at the end of a hard lonely night, crouched underneath a behemoth of a man, one with a knife. He's about to do something foolish. I can feel it. He feels it too. Makes him all the more unpredictable. Can he really see me? Does he feel me. Does he sense the fear in the pits of my chest and the sweat in the curves of my eyes?
Am I still alive? Do I still hear you? Am I fearful without my body? do I have a heart without the sense of beating? Am I still here?
Whats left when it's all taken? Do I have some sort of quidditas? Do I matter when the lights are out? Do you? Do we stabilize without observers or are the observers the only ones that keep us phrenic?
This man again. Who does he think he is? What brought him here? does it matter more than what brought me here? i doubt it, death is pretty important.
It keeps us in the world, feeds the life of Adam.
This Kadmon business is tiring. I get tired everyday around 11 at night, sometimes earlier. sometimes later. This keeps me happy most of the time.
I'm neither alone nor lonely, only the lost can see that though.
It's so much easier to be free when life is all about the pussy.
It's so much furrier to be about the life when death is all around us.
War.
Keep up the good work. It's been a while since I've seen the end of the world acted out before us. Keep in mind I'm only 12, just like my lord.
Hua allahu alazi, lailaha illa hua.
Whatever man, Arabs still scare me, maybe another hijacker! who knows. I'd rather be hateful than sorry.
It's all a matter of opinion. I've been cherishing that thought for years and upon inspection I've found it to be wanting, both in substance and form.
Would you please pass the salt, I can't live without it. Hurts too much.
Could you please do me better?
I could live without it but I like the way it feels.
Sense me?
Sense you!!
keep it to yourself!
I've had enough. I'm building a boat and drowning the rest. Keep me raised up above the level I need to be and I'm sure I'll find my way.
Raise it good you stupid fuck!
keep me quietly devoured in a shelter for the homeless, rapt up in little beds of ambient flowers and the scent of young girls. They scare me less now that I've been to prison.
I could stab people in the eyes, not in the back though, too much blood.
I'd faint for sure.
I think jesus still loves me. If he doesn't I'll make him love me if it kills him.
Could it be, am I him? I've wanted this day my whole life. To be free of the turmoil of wanting brings to mind the fact that I've never really been satisfied.
Can you see it in my face? could you smell it on my breath?
I'd rather have a cavity. Clean it yourself!

Slow Down Sunshine. You Have Boobies!...2 3!

2007-04-26T06:38:00.000-07:00

David Blaine's best performance yet.

2007-04-24T11:49:00.000-07:00

David Blaine Street Magic Part 2 - Click Here for more great videos and pictures!

A Key to Magick

2007-04-24T08:38:00.000-07:00

I just realized a little key to effective magick. I heard this from Michael Beckwith in an interview with Bill Harris. He said that the universe can't recognize the difference between real action and symbolic action. So whenever you're working with "natural magnetism" (as Levi would put it), though you must act to bring about the results you want, those actions can be representations of the actual actions.
An intention without the will to act built into it is entirely impotent. You cannot just think and feel the things you want and have no intentions of acting on that. That sends a very definite intention out to the universe, and it's not really a very healthy one. Not only is it ineffective but it's libel to nurture some very disgusting habits.
There must be a will to act built into your intentions. The universe reflects back to you everything you put out. Every thought and emotion you experience literally changes the fabric of reality. So if your intention is idle you will see idleness, both in yourself and in others. But if you are willing to act you see willingness to act, both is yourself and in others.
Good news is, though, your actions can be symbolic. This is a great key to most practical magick. Now you can dance with ideas, have love affairs with your divinity, wine and dine your greatest potential, and thereby create them.

Another one from high school.

2007-04-24T07:33:00.000-07:00

And one more still. This I wrote for my English teacher. She thought I was some sort of genius and wanted me to enter some kind of young writer's poetry contest. I showed her this one and she loved it but I never got around to actually entering it. I think it was because the prize was really lame. I have since almost entirely rewritten this one over the last couple years and I'm definitely more satisfied with my new version but I still like to look at this one as reflective of my position when I was around 16. I've left it untitled. I also left some little gaffs that I wouldn't normally keep in my poetry just as a reflection of my immaturity at the time. This one was written with a little more conscious intention but, as with most of my poetry, it was written in a flash without stopping to think.

As it flows in the somber summer air,
The wings bateing in the breeze.
It stops and stoops to stare awhile
The starts a step and flows with ease.

As it comes to cross a meadow brook,
With stones along the Babel shore
It sits and thinks and laughs a bit,
Then swim it must and flow some more.

Then sail to a tree on the summer air
It waits anew for another breeze
Then up and up it flies again
But trapped it is within the leaves.

A warm wind comes to comfort it
But from this trap no flow may jeer
And with response it states in sigh:
“Ah fuck it all, I’ll just die here.”

More high school poetry.

2007-04-24T07:28:00.000-07:00

Yet another high school poem. This one has a similar story as the last one. I was sitting in drama class and this girl was pretending to die. She was a horrible loud mouth whose voice was absolutely wrenching. I just started the first couple lines based on her performance and the rest just kinda slipped out. I still like it. It has a decent pace and rhythm. I can't remember why I called it "journals".

Journals
I never knew the sound of death till
One took it to herself to die in mocking.
A gasp and rasp in voice befit her
As she grabbed and clenched her chest in laughing.
She fell to fear the ground that called her
But joked that dying comes when falling.
She cried a creed and fell when calling,
Out and up she winked a sigh and
Coughed and closed her eyes to all then
Looked up, laughed and died some more.
We all gathered, gawked and groped at
Her as writhing sang to us.
Then quite quick, as soon as starting,
She up and up and lived again.
She saw us gassed from groping gawking.
She saw us, smiled and pulled from her
The nagging, death knell, tolling needle
Then filled it, killed it and died for real.

Bio Notes

2007-04-24T07:20:00.000-07:00

Here's another poem I wrote in high school. I really had no intentions or vision when I was writing it I just started putting words together when I was bored in Bio. I found it a couple years after I finished school on a page of notes so I just decided to call it "bio notes". I'm sure someone could start interpreting it to mean all sorts of things, especially as a position statement about the death penalty. I actually tried to interpret it a couple different ways and it does seem perfect in it's own quirky way but I'm constantly forced to consider whether or not the original intentions behind writing it affect the artistic value. Does the fact that I wrote unconsciously destroy any sort of artistic value? Could it elevate the value? I dunno. All I know is that I still enjoy reading it when I come across it.

Bio Notes.

Should one be let to live lest
Lives be lost to him?
Should lives lost
Be let to die
While mourning eyes be dry?
Death comes swift and lives as well
Come through to die in lives of hell.
Soft loves and thrashing hates
Come when life to death negates.
‘Till last light lifts ‘pon veils of eyes
Shall death come swift to he who dies.

Where do I go to be at Peace with the World?

2007-04-24T07:14:00.000-07:00

here's a little poem that I wrote in high school. The question of the title was an assignment. We just had to answer the question. I like being dramatic sometimes.

Where do I go to be at peace with the world?

I go to the depths of the empyrean,
I sit in the basking glow of the dawning sun
‘Till the morrow’s eve breaks and the holy stars consume the day.
I sit in fields of grass and launder there ‘till
Shrubs devour themselves in the thought that I,
Like they, have not yet seen tomorrow’s burden.
I sit in a desolate room with no consoling hand
Upon my shoulder to help bring ends to ends
And cease the rolling thunder of pounding tears.
I sit perched, stooped and waiting, upon the edge of
The Abyss, peering down, holding on to reason
As the death knell tolls it’s final breath for life.
I sit to be at peace in the postures of the yogi
And as the trance consumes I see that peace is ever
With me but hidden by distractions.
I sit and revel in the shadow of the entire world
And hear the dreadful screams of the people
And I know that I will be at peace forever.

A New Conclusion to my Ethical Theory

2007-04-23T09:18:00.000-07:00

The world is all that is the case.
The world can be viewed in a similar way that a body can be.
There are individual elements to the world just as cells in a body.
The world is not made up of the interactions between these elements but rather the interactions are a reflection of the world as a whole.
Each element in the world has a purpose.
The fulfillment of that purpose creates the unity of the world. This is the harmony of things.
The harmony of the world is evidenced in the dependence of each element on every other element.
Harmony creates efficiency just as much as vice versa.
The world craves and creates efficiency.
The purpose (the function for which the individual is best suited) of each individual can be recognized through careful examination of the choices, inclinations, and available circumstances of the individual.
The recognition of purpose allows the individual to fulfill that purpose efficiently.
The efficiency with which the individual fulfills their purpose is sufficient for either an objective or subjective observer to label those actions as either worthy or unworthy of approbation.
The purpose of the world and its "desire" for harmony lies in the singularity of existence and is necessarily apart from the duality of common reason.
The support for this lies in experience not in logic.
"Success is thy proof" -- Liber AL vel. Legis. sub figura 220.

I finally crystallized my thoughts but I'm still not sure if I'm entirely satisfied with it. I'll leave it as it is for now and I invite comments and criticisms but I'm going to be refining it constantly over the next few weeks. Also since I made a couple fairly questionable statements I'm going to be clarifying them with some examples and what not. Essentially though this is the philosophy upon which my entire life is built. It is heavily influenced by the philosophy of Aleister Crowley and The Book of the Law but I am not willing to claim that this is anything more than a personal interpretation of those works and that no one else should ever follow my example except in that they came to it on their own.

Violence

2007-04-21T12:47:00.000-07:00

Whats wrong with fighting? Is there anything wrong with controlled violence? We must distinguish between the controlled violence of sports or friendly competition or even to resolve disputes, and the violence of the random attack or for profit. But in a controlled situation between consenting adults (meaning people old enough or experienced enough to realize the consequences of their actions) what could possibly be wrong with violence? If anyone can tell me I'd like to hear it.

Cast iron cross.

2007-04-21T11:50:00.000-07:00

give this a try.

Two keys to life.

2007-04-20T07:04:00.000-07:00

I tried putting up a game yesterday as I said I would but for some reason the code was screwed up or something. Oh well.
I have no idea what I'm going to talk about today. I suppose the great secret to life might be a good place to start. I won't go into much detail because I'm really not feeling well today. I think I caught my girlfriend's cold or something. But anyways...

Recently certain thoughts kept creeping up into my head, thoughts about the most efficient ways to live and how to simplify "living strategies" into as few categories as possible. By living strategies I mean techniques that have a significant benefit to all (or most) areas of life. Essentially this has been my continual study since my mid teens and I must say I have amassed quite a heft arsenal of nifty little tricks. During the last few weeks however I've been trying to seriously reduce them to the simplest terms. I've been considering what techniques really dominate over the other ones. Then I started reading books like "Evolve your Brain" by Joe Dispenza, "biology of belief" by Bruce Lipton, and "the Future of the Body" by Michael Murphy. These books really didn't shed any light onto what I thought were useful methods of personal improvement but they did show me just how useful some techniques really were.
I've been aware of the power of Love and Concentration since I was about 18 years old. I realized that there is nothing in life that can't be done with a mind that can concentrate and a body full of love. What I didn't realize was that neuroscience was in the process of confirming this for me. In Dispenza's book he demonstrates that if a person wishes to change their body all they have to do is rewire the brain. To be able to rewire the brain however we need to do a couple of things. We need to get the neurons firing together. Then we need the neurons to wire together. Now, there are a couple of different ways this can be accomplished. The simplest way is simply to think the thoughts (or feel the feelings) you want to become permanent in a repetitve way. The more the neurons fire together the soon they will wire together. This is the lengthiest but easiest way to do things. We can also attach a strong emotion to the thought. The stronger the emotion the quicker the wiring. This also usually leads us to repeat the thought over and over again as well causing further reinforcement. Then Dispenza tells us that the same thing is true for our attention. That the more focused we are on one particular thing the more focused the brain can be on rewiring itself. Concentration produces stronger connections between neurons and therefore necessitates fewer repetitions.
I'm sure I haven't done justice to Dispenza's work but I think I got my point across. It's interesting to compare this with everything that every religious teacher has ever taught us. It's the same old things, focus your mind and fill yourself with love. Like Aleister Crowley says "Concentration is the key to life" and also "love is the law, love under will."
I guess thats all for now, I'll probably revisit this topic several times in the future to work out all the details. Till then stay fit and have fun.

Fun with Math and Magick

2007-04-19T06:54:00.000-07:00

Since yesterday's entry was so lame (due to the confusion I engorged myself with) I decided to give you some treats today. I'll start with just a normal little entry, boring to some enlightening to others, then later in the day I'll give you something special.
Today I want to talk a little about what I learned recently about mathematics.
A couple weeks ago I decided it might be a fun exercise to learn calculus in a week. I was entirely confident in myself when I started but I soon realized that my basic algebra and trigonometry competence was seriously wanting. I did end up learning all of the principles and basic applications of calculus within a week but I did need to take a few more days to brush up on my algebra so I could become more proficient at solving problems. So now I know calculus after only a couple of weeks. I'm no expert at it but I'd say I'm doing pretty good for someone who was recently completely deficient when it came to math.
Anyways, the reason I wanted to learn math in the first place was to get a hold of what math reveals about reality. I wanted to watch the mechanism of the mind in action and I figured numbers and graphs would be an alright place to start looking. It was all fun and games for a while but then yesterday I started to realize that math is as limited as anything else. Math is just another "language game" as Wittgenstein would say. It is not the purity of math that reveals anything, just the fact that it is a language. The only difference, however, between regular games and math games is the fact that very few people can find any attachment to numbers whereas certain words can be very emotionally charged (especially in combination, like "baby rape") It is language that creates the mind and the mind that creates reality. Is this true? I dunno. The great book of the Rota seems to suggest something along those lines but who knows. Right? So we can see the mind in a naked state by doing math problems.

Anyways, so yesterday I got a little jolt in my guts when I realized this. It was a good feeling knowing that I've cracked another piece of the puzzle (at least superficially) but I'm still not satisfied with it. Math contains more than that. I know it does, I can feel it. That statement in itself is a reflection of my current philosophy (whatever that means anymore) but I'll leave that for another day. For now lets consider this feeling and where it led me.
This morning after getting out of bed and molesting my girlfriend I started thinking about these "language games" of math and how they relate to the regular "language games" we play. I realized that the math games differ from common language games in that they can be played with without attachment. We can all play around with the calculus without investing any emotion or becoming fixated to ideas that can become filters for our experience. This is very useful as a training of the mind or as a meditation. So we can look at math as an exercise rather than a topic. It must be placed in the same category as meditation practices, brain gym type stuff, image streaming, painting and the like. We shouldn't be studying math, we should be practicing it. It allows us to access a very clear state of perception, uncontaminated by bias or experience. It allows us to experience pure thought. This is especially useful for those of us who want to reach states of perception that are not only free of bias but free of any sort of thought whatsoever. For instance during the operation of the sacred magic of Abramelin the mage. The practitioner needs to keep his focus. He needs to stay in a state of purity and receptivity while he awaits the movement of his angel. Unfortunately for him though it can get boring and sometimes boredom can cause attachment just as fast as any stimulus. So we can recommend math. Just get a few exercise books and work through them. Fun and safe!
Play around with this. Do some exercises in linear algebra or differential calculus and just watch how your mind works while you're doing them compared to how it normally works (even if you're not interested in attaining any sort of enlightenment). I think anyone could find it to be just as developmentally beneficial as poetry or painting.

I think that's all for now. Have fun.

ethics as a function of efficiency

2007-04-17T15:49:00.000-07:00

How can we determine, from moment to moment, which acts produce optimal functioning and which ones don't?
We must assume that the universe craves optimization. By optimization I mean that the universe craves a state of working that is as efficient as possible while using the least amount of resources.
How do humans fit in?
Humans fulfill a function in the universal system. We must because we use resources and if we use any resources at all we must be an efficient means of fulfilling some function. What that function is I can only guess (possibly to provide the universe a self-awareness, or the possibility of some sort of growth) but it can be assumed that the universe is a system with an inclination towards progress (e.g. the arrow of time) and that it prefers to make that progress in an efficient way.
How does an element in a system knowingly fulfill it's function in an efficient way? First by noticing its role in the system. Humans can notice what function suits them best by simply looking back over the years of their lives. We all are presented with situations and choices in our lives that reflect an undeniable individuality in everyone. Our inclinations, humors, passions, distastes, are all manifestations (when differentiated from neuroses and misapprehensions) of our own most suited function. Once this is recognized each individual can then ask themselves, moment to moment, whether or not they are efficiently fulfilling that function or not. So called "virtue" then rests with the choice of whether or not to act in accordance with that function and "wickedness" lies with the impediment of the universal progress.

This is my first rough draft of this theory and over the coming days and weeks I'll be presenting new details and support. If you find anything wrong with it or just want to challenge something about it feel free to leave comments.