Quantum Shaman (tm)

What God? Where?

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 14:29:38 GMT

QUESTION: Sometimes I enjoy to stalk the news on TV. Every now and then i have been struck by some story which really makes me think.

One in particular was the news that a man who was legally over the alcahol limit had crashed on the motorway, injuring two and killing two. What came next were the details. The driver was a footballer on his way home from a party the morning after. The adults in the car he collided with survived but their two young twin boys age (around) 5 both died in the crash. The report went on to show compelling clips of the two sweet young blonde twin boys, who were football fans themselves, and who ultimatley would have had the rest of their little lives ahead of them. How could this be?

Life is intellegent and has always made intellegent choices. I believe that those boys were chosen to die that die so that the impact of their story would perhaps be felt and inspire true outrange and finally change. I know this wont be a popular theorie but I klnow also that this is not the only story which seems to provoke a similar view in me. What do you think?

_________

When you say "I believe that those boys were chosen to die that day so that the impact of their story would perhaps be felt and inspire true outrage and finally change..."

My mind is flooded with questions which are answers in themselves.

1. Who would have "chosen" them to die? If you're going to say "god" chose them, then that requires a huge leap of faith which has been debated since the dawn of time. If you prefer the more modernized version of saying "spirit" chose them to die, then the implication is that spirit is an intelligent force, a deity in its own right, and that it predetermines our lives by some whim of its own. So that takes us right back to another name for God. And, not to mention the consequences of such a choice - how many lives would it destroy in addition to the two who actually died? Is God such a bad communicator that s/he would need to make an example of innocent children, shatter the lives of their parents and everyone else involved, not to mention all the relatives, et al? If God is that inefficient in his "choices," s/he needs to go back to Common Sense 101.

2. When you go forward into the conclusion that the reason for this choice to kill these boys would be to bring forth awareness in other humans, don't forget that this kind of thing happens every day. If that's god's way of awakening our awareness, it doesn't seem to be working very well, since drunks are still rampant on the highways and tragedies of this calibre are, sadly, not uncommon. So, if god or spirit or some sentient (but malevolent) deity wanted to awaken our awareness to drunk drivers, I'd say a more practical way to achieve that would be to reinstate prohibition. But, then, of course, the humans would only find other ways to get themselves high and kill one another, or they'd do it while talking on their cell phones and text messaging and the like.

3. I like the sentiment of your statement - that it's a wake-up call - but the implications of saying the boys were chosen to die is too much like the xtian doctrine of claiming "God works in mysterious ways" whenever something happens that disrupts our comfort zones. The explanation is just another comfort zone.

. I just tend to have a personal button with regard to the notion of any type of god or deity that would choose children (or anyone/thing else) to die, just as a way to make its point. One more reason I could never believe in the god my mother tried to sell me back when I was 7.

"Mom, why do we put men in jail who kill other men?"

"Because they're evil, honey."

"Then is God evil, Mom?"

"No, honey. God is good."

"But last week you said God killed my Uncle Jack because he wanted him with him in heaven. So why isn't God in prison with those other men?"

"Eat your turnips, honey. You think too much."

Maybe I do. I have folks on other forums occasionally tell me I should just let it go, be free, accept all things as they are, and grin like an idiot all the way to the grave while suckling at the teat of all those things humans tell themselves so they can feel better during the day and sleep better at night.

There are times when I wish I could do that.

Then I come to my senses and remember why I'm on this path. It's a solitary journey. No gods or devils. No malevolent deities deciding my fate. No guardian angels protecting me from the predatory universe. Some would say it's not a pretty picture - and believe me, it's not a popular opinion either. *LOL* That's okay. If I wanted to sell it, I'd dress it up in pretty clothes and offer it with tours to Peru or retreats in the desert.

I tried that route briefly. Very, very briefly. Planned a retreat here in Joshua Tree, secured the facility, even went so far as to do some major advertising. Then, again, I came to my senses when Wendy said to me: "You're too honest, Della. You can't tell people what they want to hear without choking on the lie."

I cancelled the retreat and removed the "for sale" sign on my spirit. And that was the end of my days as a "guru." There's undoubtedly lots of money in it, judging by the amount of new age practitioners peddling shaman tours and the like, but I rather doubt there's much real truth in it. Why? Because when push comes to shove, people don't really want truth. They want to feel good. The two aren't mutually exclusive, but it's a long, hard road to that place where the apprentice finally realizes her own silent knowing (gnosis) and then there is no more mistaking truth for lies or lies for truth.

Of course, the problem with THAT is that most people (even most who claim to be warriors or seekers) really aren't interested in walking that road, despite what they will tell you. So, right back to square one, where folks really want-to-believe in their malignant gods and unseen angels. Guess it's easier than the truth of Knowing we are alone in the universe. Each of us - entirely alone.

A friend of mine once said, "I'd rather eat alone every night than dine with a roomful of gods or gurus."

Indeed.

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Machinations of the Meditation

Sat, 20 Jun 2009 04:02:45 GMT

The devils are writing poetry inside my head again. It's 3 a.m. on a sleepless night somewhere at the intersection of Dreaming and time, and not a goddamn thing in all the worlds makes a single lick of sense. A blue scarf on the dresser rests where it was thrown at winter's end, reminding me that it's all just dust in the wind anyway. Folly. Somewhere outside my window, coyotes compose love songs and owls cry funeral dirges, and the whole world is just spinning spinning out of control, little lost marble on the edge of space, filled with teeming organisms struggling to make sense of the senseless, lining up all those unruly ducks just to have them scatter again like sand in a windstorm, wind in a sandstorm, ho hum and there goes any semblance of control right out the dusty window looking out over the invisible abyss that rests between one breath and the next.

Who are we? What am I? Where am I going and who will guide me if not myself, and where or where has my sanity gone, and by what measure do I measure it, if not by the standards of a lunatic population of blind mindless followers looking for the blood of the vampire Jesus to wash all their sins away and carry them safely across the River Styx to their next fix of tee vee or booze or drugs or mechanical sex.

And I want to scream.

"Ain't no salvation, boy! Ain't no fairy tale prince gonna come climbing down off the cross to lift you up over the threshhold of your death and carry you like a lover to your coffin bed!"

Wake up.

Smell the gravedust and damn the roses. Nowhere to go but in circles, and round and round we go again, nowhere and someplace and everywhere in between, and still no real knowing where the journey begins or if it ends or what becomes of the evil queen when the fairy's tale ends.

What does it mean?

Am I breathing still or has my lifeforce stilled? Am I dead or alive or is there really any difference in the grand shebang of things, and why do we so easily accept the reality with which we're presented, when we could just as easily turn the world on its ear and look for leprechauns or lizards with their eyelids sewn shut under don Juan's ramada?

3 a.m.

And I know now that I have to be "the one" because no one else will.

(She laughs at her self-importance.) Is there anyone who is really "the one" or is that just another thread in the tapestry of fantasy? Fists clenching, the baring of fangs into a snarl of contempt that is all at once love of life and the battle with the angel of death, each contained in the finite confines of an infinite drop of blood swelling from a pricked fingertip.

Breathe.

Just remember to breathe.

As if that one more breath separates us from the abyss, as if we suckle breath from the sky like a parasite baby clinging to its mother's withered teat. And the lies we tell ourselves by the star's fires - "It's all for the best. It's all good. Every story has a happy ending somewhere in the making. We live again. We can never die."

Lies.

Beings who are going to die.

Is that a truth or a belief? The cat of all cats died 13 years ago, committed to the desert ground where all that remains are the bare white bones of some memory, nothing that can be touched, and yet, still alive somewhere in time, some otherwhen, back when we were both kittens together in the sanctified womb of the illusion of perpetual youth. I stroke grey fur in a dream and wake with it clinging to my palm, or maybe it's just the cobwebs from the windowsill where I stand at times looking out at the night that never ends, conspiring with the unseen immortals in a plot to overthrow the kingdom of time.

Dead and alive. Schroedinger laughs. Rat bastard.

Such are the machinations of the meditation. One of those middle of the night battles a warrior engages with the windmills in her mind. Have at you, Death, my ever present advisor. Kiss my ass and die. You're starting to remind me of some perverse Sunday School teacher with one of those deceptive religious smiles meant to lure unsuspecting children in to whatever rhetoric you're selling.

I will not lie down for you.

Not even sure I believe in you. Not at all sure why I should, when you are the shadow's shadow, after all, the mirror reflecting itself in the endless hall of mirrors. Nothing real there. Just another illusion. The quantum paradox cancelling itself out. Antimatter dictator.

And then I am breathing again, back in the world of matter and men. 3 a.m. My eyes open and instead it's barely midnight, and I find myself sitting up in bed, talking to Wendy about my petty humanform frustrations, hearing the prattle in my voice even as I recite the well-worn inventory of observations on the dark subject of our programming which runs so deep it convinces us we are this way or that way and no other way.

"I will not lie down for you."

I say the words out loud, mantra of the living driven like a blade into the cold left eye of Death.

That's when I see it. Up near the ceiling, just above the door. Only way to describe it would be as a congregation of light. Not diffused light like some wayward beam shining in through the window. Not like that. Points of light. Orbs, if you will. Probably 5 or 6 of them, varying size, but all of them white.

Can I explain it? Of course not. Do I need to? Not in the least.

It came like a validation and that is how I am choosing to interpret it. "They" stayed there in the corner of the bedroom for about 15-20 seconds, and then just blinked out. Reminded me of the famous Marfa Lights I witnessed a few years back. The Marfa lights who, when asked, "What are you?" replied... "I am a singularity of consciousness."

I did not sleep last night.

The lights did not come back, though I looked for them for a long, long time - amused at myself for my desire to see them again, while at the same time experiencing a profound sense of gratitude for having seen them at all.

Transcending the Matrix (continued...)

Wed, 03 Jun 2009 20:49:13 GMT

The way I see it (for myself personally), is that the only way to transcend the matrix is to turn and look it squarely in the eye, see it for what it is, see it for WHY it is, and then decide what we want to do about it. Do we want to stay in our existing comfort zones because the steak is tasty and the flowers in our gardens give us pleasure, or do we have the courage (raw and often ugly) to wholly and absolutely acknowledge that the trappings of the cage can't really disguise the fact that it is STILL a cage?

Now, some would say that's a grim outlook. "Oh, Della! Just stop and smell the flowers!" And, yes, there's something to be said for that, as long as we can acknowledge that even the flowers are just props in the play, and the play is going to end sooner rather than later. The matrix is the structure on which is written the ugly truth: "We are beings who are going to die." And as long as we REMAIN in the matrix, that statement continues to be true. And - here's the rub - the matrix itself is designed in such a way as to encourage us to accept that fate unquestioningly, because even while I sit here writing these words, we are being slowly digested in the belly of the universe, ground up by the unrelenting fangs of time, and soon enough, we will be dust in the wind, tombstones in the sand... forgotten.

Grim? Sure it is.

Now, on the other hand, I could try to water that down and say we are all part of an endless cycle of interconnectedness and energetic Oneness with the universe and one another... but somehow that just doesn't have the impact necessary to get ME off my butt and into Do-ing mode. *LOL* That's why I have often argued against traditional ideas of reincarnation, because ultimately they give us that "second chance" which I do not believe for a moment really exists. We are here and we are Now. There is no yesterday, no tomorrow, no second chance. And if we believe otherwise, if we think, for example, that we have the luxury of "getting it right in my next life", we are deluding ourselves through the programming of the matrix itself - which programs us to live and die without question, and even gives us lots of pretty fairy tales to soften the impact of the ugly truth: we are beings who are going to die UNLESS WE TAKE THE INITIATIVE TO EVOLVE.

Now, throughout history, it certainly APPEARS that the matrix doesn't really want us to evolve, because then we take our energy OUTSIDE the matrix, and it can no longer feed on us. Sure, that's a VAST over-simplification which starts to stray into the realm of flyers and inorganic beings, and that's not really my intent here. Mainly, just wanting to say that the old conundrum Orlando presented to me years ago holds true in this case, too, though slightly re-worded:

"You have to BE outside the matrix before you can TRANSCEND the matrix." As far as I have been able to determine, there aren't a lot of ways to do that. Dreaming is one, though even Dreaming CAN be impacted by the matrix itself. Gnosis (silent knowing) with one's double is another way - which appears to be far more reliable than even dreaming, because the double is already projected outside the matrix, and therefore can provide an assemblage point NOT dependent on the program in which the humanform self resides.

I think it's largely a matter of predilection. Some people feel very motivated by the more new agey approach, while others are going to respond more actively to a more ruthless or even "dark" truth. Doesn't matter in the big picture, as long as it gets the job done. My PERSONAL problem with the new age stuff is that I have a LOT of people writing me emails through my website or the book, saying essentially that they feel in hindsight they were "derailed" by the new age stuff and organized religion for a long time, because it tends to offer COMFORT far more than motivation.

Otherselves, Otherworlds, Otherwhens

Tue, 02 Jun 2009 20:01:13 GMT

Question to Orlando: Tonight I experienced perceiving many selves...very much as if many lifetimes were flashing before me. I did not feel order really...and I saw each more than once or twice. I really couldn't keep up and count. What was happening? Was my AP in a certain position enabling me to be in this experience or was my AP fluid so that I was able to experience many positions quickly?

I understand that our energy fields hold our "history" - I also feel this is only a small portion of the information we can perceive being in Oneness with the All. I would love your insight.

************

To use a somewhat amusing analogy, if you were to think of your double as a vast and infinite library of experience and information, and then see your humanform self as someone sitting at a table in that vast library browsing through some of those dusty tomes filled with so many mysterious experiences, it may help to understand how these other 'me-s" relate to the Now.

You are the author of each and every book, you see, the creator of all collective experience stored within that infinite library of the Self. In one book, perhaps you were a pirate on some far distant sea. In another, a maiden or mistress in Rome or Greece.

These are the infinite experiences of the double, which are what some might call 'past lives', but are more accurately the adventures of your infinite spirit throughout space, time, and into the infinite and eternal. You are the source and the creator. What sorcerers and wo/men of knowledge call 'the double' is the energetic vessel through which these creations are manifested in what you might perceive as "outside of time", but which is actually the persistent and inescapable Now.

When you achieve the state of gnosis, or silent knowing, you may be able to perceive many of these otherselves simultaneously, such as what occurred during your meditation. This is when you begin to knit together the tendrils and fragments of the infinite self, through integrating the lessons and experiences of those otherselves into the core of oneSelf. It is not necessary, of course, to wholly remember the minute details of each otherself's experience. What is important is learning to access the CHANNEL of energy which leads to all of those otherselves (all of which may be seen to represent 'a day in the life' of the Whole Self - the totality of oneself). You do not remember, for example, every moment of your humanform life in detail, yet it is the simple existence and acknowledgement of those details that have formed and shaped the infinite you whom you recognize as Self.

As above, so below.

Orlando - June 2, 2009

Confronting the Matrix

Sun, 17 May 2009 15:14:06 GMT

Most nights, it's my practice to engage in a form of meditation/contemplation which could be loosely described as "dreaming awake" or "observing dreaming." Hard to describe, but the essence is that I have developed a method for this meditation whereby my "della-self" is able to observe my "dreaming-self" - not the same as lucid dreaming, because in this particular form of meditation, the dreaming-self is not aware that it is being observed, and not aware that it is 'dreaming' - if, in fact, that is what is actually occurring. As was pointed out to me recently, we're out on a limb, where no man has gone before, or where few have been able to report back what they have seen, even assuming they have seen it.

End result: we attempt to describe the indescribable, and may end up simply sounding like a lunatic. Ah well... that's okay, too. such is the plight of every Neo and every Morpheus who has awareness of the matrix in the first place.

I've been practicing this form of meditation for a few years now, and have commented to Wendy from time to time that the only real 'problem' is that what occurs in the dreaming self can be observed, but I had not been able to bring much of it back into the conscious, waking awareness of the observer. Very similar to journeys with the mushroom ally in that regard - we experience all manner of wonder, yet even as it is occurring, we are haunted by the Knowledge that we will not be able to 'retain' more than a fraction of it when morning comes.

At any rate, prior to engaging my meditation last night, I had been talking to Wendy about this apparent 'barrier' between the observer and the dreamer, essentially wondering why we are designed in such a fashion so as not to be able to really 'know' certain parts of ourselves, except through the most convoluted methods, and sometimes perhaps not even then. So, in a way, I had asked a question of the universe, of the double, of the infinite.

And then I meditated, expecting nothing, just allowing it to unfold.

After several minutes, my della-awareness realized I was observing the dreamer. And there was a further awareness that Orlando (my double) was there to act as a guide. I observed that my dreaming self was at a casino, playing video poker - something I do on occasion just for the hell of it. As I watched, the dreaming self essentially won a substantial amount of money on a royal flush, which resulted in one of those wake-up moments we all know so well. One of those moments when we simply jolt to a more 'awakened' state - not any great moment of profundity, necessarily, just more awake. Like when somebody cuts you off in traffic and you abruptly realize how close you came to your death. The adrenaline rush. The small gasp in the back of the throat.

At any rate, as the dreaming self experienced this little 'jolt', Orlando essentially removed the 'barrier' between the dreaming self and the observer, and this matrix training room in which I had been dwelling froze like some still-life painting on the canvas of the cosmos. No barrier between the observer and the dreamer, and at that point, with both realities simultaneously hanging in space like some hologram which was neither real nor unreal, Orlando said very calmly and succinctly, "You can open your eyes in either one."

Now, this is something any beginning warrior knows from reading Castaneda, at least to some extent. We can open our eyes inside our humanform self, or we can open our eyes inside the double. That's one simple way of looking at it. But when the barrier was removed and I found myself presented with the conscious awareness of actually do-ing so... let's just say that, too, was one of those wake-up moments - because it also brought to light the quantum aspects of our existence, which may be summed up in the words, "All things exist within the realm of possibility, but only some things will be forced to go through the motions of actually occurring."

Put another way... the dreaming self who had just hit a royal flush was only one of those infinite possibilities, and yet I can honestly say it was more than "just a dream", because I could have made the decision to open my eyes inside of THAT possibility and forced it to go throught he motions of actually occurring.

It.

Was.

A.

Choice.

For reasons which are not possible to put into words, I chose to open my eyes inside of my observer self, and so I found myself back in my bed in my meditation position, with the weenie dog at my feet and the swamp cooler struggling to keep the heat at bay. For a moment, I experienced a strange disappointment. "Did I allow fear to stop me from making that leap?" I asked myself.

I heard my double laugh gently. "There's no right or wrong decision. You opened your eyes here, so that was the proper choice for that possibility, yes?"

Well, that's one way of looking at it.

And yet, I am wholly aware that what Orlando wanted me to see was that these possibilities are actually very real, while at the same time having some quality of a character walking through a video game. But no matter... that's a whole other can o' worms for some other meditation on some other dark night.

Point being - the implications of this experience are actually quite profound. Huge, in fact. Sure, I could dismiss it as a particularly profound meditation, or I could drop the comforting platitudes, and see it for what it really is.

We are beings of immense ability, yet we have so neatly programmed ourselves and so carefully categorized our experiences that we run the high risk of remaining trapped in the matrix even while Knowing it is all around us.

What if I had chosen to open my eyes inside that dreaming self? My sense of it was not that of some Hollywood drama or a monkey's paw scenario. It wouldn't automatically mean opening my eyes into some alter-self where, just for example, I had never met Wendy, so I was alone and miserable; it wouldn't mean discovering I was someone with gambling debts and the mob looking to break my legs. It would simply mean, perhaps, that I had made a different decision as to THAT night's entertainment. Went to the casino for some video poker with friends instead of staying home to watch a movie. Just that simple.

Or is it? When one starts exploring the quantum possibilities of the matrix, it quickly becomes obvious that these parallel or alternate realities are all around us, but we TEND to think of them as 'unreal' because we are not experiencing them directly with the awareness of the ordinary self. IOW, I automatically consider my della-self to be the "real" one, but there is nothing to say 'she/I' am any more 'real' than the dreamer at the casino. From her point of view, I would be the parallel reality, after all.

So what does all of this indicate? Simply that we are beings of infinite possibility - and my real sense of what happened last night was that these infinite possibilities CAN be "forced to go through the motions of actually occurring", based entirely on where we CHOOSE to open our eyes. And, beyond the 'simple' choices, it could well be *seen* that an ability to open our eyes inside of other 'realities' could be the key to transmogrification itself - i.e., opening our eyes inside the energy body, beyond the threshold of our own 'death'. Positions of the assemblage point, in other words. Is there a limit to what we can do? Or do we create those limits through our fears and pre-programmed expectations?

I am inclined to say there is no way to predict what would have happened had I chosen to open my eyes inside that 'other' reality, and yet that's not entirely true. If we know ourselves intimately, if we have gatered the cohesion which makes us warriors or sorcerers or wo/men of Knowledge, then we are not really leaping into some unknown scary alter-self... but we are, instead, "assembling other worlds", an art which has been discussed throughout Toltec and many other shamanic traditions for centuries. What I always wonder is why even the most adept warriors may sometimes perceive this ability to belong solely to the don Juans and the don Genaros. "I could never do something like that," is a phrase I often hear. Well... if that's what you believe, then that will be the reality which you force to go through the motions of actually occurring. You will never be able to do something like that.

Argue for your limitations and they will be yours. Absolutely factual statement.

The trick seems to lie in our ability to DO the jump with full conscious awareness, as opposed to simply following the default mechanism. Sure, someone is bound to say we make these choices all the time, and that would be a true statement as well. What I'm getting at, however, goes far beyond that, and gets into the realm of not only making our daily choices with conscious awareness, but potentially using our abilities to EXPERIENCE with conscious awareness more than just a single possibility at any given moment. Reminds me of some of Carlos's tales - when he was pushed through a door in one place, and suddenly found himself in another place altogether... or, the most famous, when he jumped off the cliff in Mexico, and woke up in his apartment in Los Angeles.

Metaphor? Or reality? What are we REALLY capable of when we remove that barrier which is, in essence, the matrix of the consensus?

Words cannot describe the indescribable, of course. To anyone who has experienced this type of thing, no explanation is necessary. To anyone who hasn't, no explanation is possible. And yet... there is the odd compulsion to try - which, in itself, may be one way in which we shatter the confines of the matrix and create some of those infinite doorways which lead to infinite possibility.

A Special Hell

Fri, 15 May 2009 23:19:50 GMT

"You will go to the Special Hell, which is reserved for child molestors and people who talk at the theater." (Shepherd Book, FIREFLY)

One of my favorite quotes, particularly in light of an experience yesterday afternoon. Wendy and I had taken a rare afternoon off and went to see STATE OF PLAY - the new Russell Crowe flick, which had been touted as an "edge of your seat thriller." Cool. My kind of movie. So I snuggled down with my popcorn in the comfort of the air conditioned theater, prepared to be transported into some otherworld of political intrigue, murder, mystery and just a bit of mayhem. Cool.

When the previews started, I thought at first there was a hisssss in the soundtrack. Intermittent. "Sssss. Ss. Ssss. Ssssssssss."

Annoying. But, hey, it's an older theater. Just part of the experience, I figured at first.

"Ssss. Ss. Sssssssssss. Ss."

By the time the second preview splashed up on the screen, however, the hissing had become louder, more distinct, and now there could be no mistaking its origins. Two rows back and to the left, two women in their 40s were carrying on a gabfest. Now the Ssss ss ssssss had turned to "He'ssssssssss a real piesssssssssssse of work and sssssssssssheeeeeeeee had to know about his misssstressssss, sssssssoooo...blada blada yada yada."

No attempt to be quiet. But I figured, okay, it's just the previews, so certainly these two old friends will have the good sense to shut it once the main feature starts. So I snuggled down further into my seat and munched a bit louder on my popcorn - turning occasionally to give them a stern look of the type I normally reserve for my weenie dog when she's just peed on the rug. The house lights were still on. Our eyes met. There was no mistaking the message.

So now the feature starts.

"How come she's standing so close to the edge?" one of the women asks the other, in a conversational tone.

"Oh, I think she's going to jump," the other replies.

By now, other patrons in the theater have made the usual shushing sounds, the loud clearing of the male throat - the silverback asserting his dominance from the back row.

A few minutes of silence. Ben Affleck is getting choked up 'cuz his mistress got whacked. Real tears. Cool. I love to see a strong man cry.

"You think he'ssssss behind it?"

"Oh, I'm sssssssssssure of it!"

By this time, another patron has gone to Home Depot for some duct tape, and even Russell Crowe is getting pissed off. Management has seemingly refused to get involved (?????) and while it would be an option to get up and leave, get a rain check and call it quits... there is the matter of the air conditioned theater (it was 105 outside), the popcorn, and the refreshing soda, which required only a small second mortgage to procure the medium size.

Can't really say if the movie was any good or not. By the time it ended, I found myself rising from my seat as if possessed by the spirit of Someone Else, walking up to the two ladies, and saying to the primary instigator, "Next time you want to narrate an entire movie, why not stay home and do it from your own living room?"

I was calm. Never raised my voice. Wendy giggled a bit. Other patrons made the usual grunts of agreement, but were too 'polite' to harpoon the culprits.

The woman with her nicely pedicured toes and her face stretched too tight from one too many Palm Springs plastic surgeries, had the audacity to appear shocked. Maybe even fearful. She drew back. Batted her eyes. Clutched her Gucci bag to her chest.

It was the only time she was silent - while the end credits were rolling and the other patrons were filing out of the theater grumbling under their breath.

Okay... what this brings me to is the subject of The World At Large. Entitlement. Inefficiency. And, in another manner of speaking, The Tolerance We Are Required To Possess For Idjits and Princesses.

Heh.

At the risk of sounding old, this kind of behaviour wouldn't have been tolerated just a few short years ago. An usher would have been called in (and I do know that at least one patron went and complained about the two hissing whisperers), and they would have been told to shut it or shown the exit. Simple. Now? Everybody's so terrified of everybody else that they 'don't want to get involved'. We put up with the screaming toddler in the grocery store, when it's obvious that the mother is just too busy to be bothered to discipline her little Chuck Manson clone. Wouldn't want to squelch his creativity, after all, for he might have a future as a heavy metal star and that screaming is just practice for his career. And aside from that, Mama may have an AK 47 in her purse and PMS to go with it. Don't want to get involved in that, so let the kid scream and throw peanut butter jars on the floor until it looks like a herd of Rottweilers crept in and crapped all up and down the snack aisle.

Gotta say... I don't get it.

I picked up the phone this morning to place an order with one of our suppliers. Got the voice mail of my "representative". Tried the operator. Was routed to a different rep. Got her voice mail, too. Back to the operator. Routed to a third rep. Yup, you guessed it. Voice mail. This happened a total of 6 times before I finally hung up after making a point to tell the operator that I wouldn't be ordering from their company in the future, because this isn't a fluke. It is the norm. "Can I have someone call you back?" she asked. When I told her I had left 4 messages in the past month and not once had anyone called me back. she replied with the usual rhetoric, "Have a nice day." The program defaulting into itself when the organism does not possess the skills to forward think or even improvise.

Now, I'd love to think all these lovely folks are really busy, or on the phone with other customers, but the reality of it is that they're usually out on the back docks smoking a joint or shooting the shit. Work? What's that?

Used to be I could log in to my Yahoo account, just to pick on those folks as an example which would include just about any and all internet sites these days, and after a simple username and password entry, go on with my business. Now, it seems I am being asked for the launch codes to Norad and the secret password for Mr. Obama's private bathroom every time I go on the internet. There are viruses out to get me, I'm told, yet when I stop to think about it, the ONLY people who would benefit from these evil 'viruses' are the folks who sell the 'cure', so it stands to reason that the virus companies are writing the viruses and the pharmaceutical companies are heavily invested in keeping us sick as opposed to making us better, for when you really REALLY stop to think about it, most of these pills-for-yer-ills aren't short-term agreements any longer, but something you are expected to take for the rest of your life. Cars exist which can run efficiently on water, yet they will never be manufactured and sold for as long as the oil companies are running the show. We go to work to make money to pay for the car to drive to work...

And sure, I've said all of this before in one manner or another, but from time to time when things are particularly screwy, I like to stop and remind myself that the world really is a nuthouse and the lunatics really are running the asylum. I have some vague notion that it wasn't always like that. Or at the very least, it wasn't always that bad. When I was a kid, if you disrespected a teacher in school, you weren't dragged off to the doctor, diagnosed with ADHD, and put on meds for the rest of your life. You got a lecture from the principal, a good solid spanking from your parents, and instead of being rewarded with special attention for your special needs, you were shipped off to school again the next day, knowing that if you did it again, the consequences would be even more unpleasant and your ass would be stinging for 3 days instead of the usual 1.5.

Consequences.

Interesting concept.

Maybe that's what's wrong with this world. There are seemingly less and less consequences to the stupid actions of stupid humans. Corporations run themselves into the ground by paying multi-million dollar bonuses to their CEOs, then when they get bailed out by Big Daddy, they turn right around and start it all over again, having learned nothing. Someone is always there holding the net, it seems. Reminds me of some old friends of mine - never had to work a day in their lives, because someone was always there to pick them up when they fell. Crash the car in a drunken stupor, daddy will always buy you a new one. Can't pay your rent? Call daddy. No food in the house? Mooch off of friends until Daddy gets back from the Bahamas and sends another check.

Makes me wonder whatever happened to the idea of responsibility vs. consequences. When I left home at the age of 17, it was with the knowledge that there was no net, and no one to pick me up and dust me off if I took a header. If I couldn't pay the rent, I'd have to live in my car. And if I didn't make the car payment, I'd be on the street. Strong incentive. For that, I thank my mom, who had the good sense to tell me, "When you leave the nest, the road rolls up behind you and there's no coming home except for Christmas, Thanksgiving and Mother's Day." Heh. And she meant it - with love.

Ah well... suffice it to say I look at the world of today from time to time, at the actions and inactions of phantoms, and I really have to wonder where it's all headed. To my perception, it's no wonder the economy is in the shitter. Just in my small corner of the world, it seems that when I try to place an order, everyone is either "on a break", or "out of the office" or "busy helping other customers"... and then the boss wonders why there's no $$$ coming in, no orders going out, and a bunch of freeloaders hanging out on the back dock cashing a pay check. No different at that level than at the highest levels of corporate. Everybody seems to think they're entitled to be paid for work they don't do, bailed out of their own shit by the kindness of strangers, and handsomly compensated for irreparable incompetence.

What to do?

I'd love to say, "Not my problem," but the reality is that it becomes my problem when the buck stops here. This morning alone, I had to personally call the owner of the company I was trying to order from, just to inform him that out of 6 "sales reps", it seems to be impossible to place an order. Had to call a major internet provider to find out why "your password and user name are invalid", when they are the same password & user name I've been using for over 10 years. Turns out it was "a glitch" - otherwise known as human incompetence, which almost always gets blamed on "a glitch" in some computer somewhere. It's always 'computer error' or 'a server is down' or 'there has been an electronic malfunction'.

Computers don't make mistakes. Humans make mistakes. Computers only do what they are told to do, unless they are a Hal 9000, in which case we are all irreparably fucked and will be flushed out the airlock at any moment... but somehow I don't think that's the case.

Human error.

Human incompetence.

The folly of phantoms.

Sure, someone will certainly throw out the old cliche, "Well, Della, we ALL make mistakes." Absolutely true! We all make mistakes. But the difference between an impeccable warrior and a phantom is that warriors will USUALLY take responsibility for the consequences of their errors, because that really IS the learning process. If we just keep making the same mistakes, it's no longer "a glitch", but has become a habit and a way of life... in which case, there will be consequences.

Which brings me right back to the beginning...

"You will go to the Special Hell, which is reserved for child molestors and people who talk at the theater." (Shepherd Book, FIREFLY)

Have a nice day.

Self, Spirit & Power

Tue, 12 May 2009 15:58:31 GMT

Quote:

We stretch ourselves forth, out of our containment, out of our constant self-obsession - all the hurts and pleasures, the emotional treadmill, the resistance to 'stand beside ourselves', the clasping to our regrets, concerns, resentments, and our self-congratulations, approval seeking, self-admirations. We see ourselves as eternal, and thus beyond the preoccupations of movie characters we waste our time adoring.

This is the calm center at the heart of the equation. Seems obvious, yet I wonder at times if even most "advanced warriors" really 'get it' because it is the treasure hiding in plain sight. The reason it hides in plain sight is because, when all is said and done, it goes against our consensus-reality-programming. It reminds us that we alone are the creator of our reality, and with that realization comes the further understanding that there really are no limitations on what we can do. The only limitations are those we bring with us, in the form of our beliefs, expectations, doubts and fears.

In a recent conversation with some other warriors who've been on this path for a long time, the subject of power came up, and the bottom line was that no one seemed to be able to adequately define what power really is. Some of the comments made had to do with 'spirit', but when asked what 'spirit' really is, it was often defined as a force "outside" of oneself which may be called upon to __________ (fill in the blank). That's not how I've experienced spirit, for that kind of definition is just an alteration of the existing 'god' programs. And as such, it implies that spirit may or may not cooperate with our wishes (prayers), and that goes on to imply an extant force deciding our fate, and if one believes that even to the smallest bit of minutiae, the end result is that it disempowers the self and places the warrior at the mercy of 'spirit'.

Thou art god. Create yourself accordingly.

I can't stress enough the truth in those words. To say we are god is to understand that we ARE spirit - not separate from it, but comprised of the same starstuff and antimatter as spirit itself. Therefore, we are not just "part" of that living force, we are the WHOLE of that living force whenever we drop our belief systems and expectations and fears and distractions sufficiently to simply BE what we ARE instead of what we are constantly trying to achieve.

When we ARE the living force, there are no limits to what we can do. The hard part - if there is one - is maintaining the awareness that we are not 'poor wretches' at the mercy of a predatory universe, but we ARE the universe in its entirety, simply manifested as awareness in a humanform which may appear finite, but is actually as infinite as we can allow ourselves to imagine and to experience.

Whenever this subject comes up, the question I'm most often asked - in essence - is, "Okay, Della, so what? If our perceptions tell us we're stuck in the tonal, humanform experience, how do we experience our infinite awareness while still in humanform?"

A profound movement of the assemblage point is one way. Or a gentle shift of awareness is another - in particular, stopping the world, and then allowing that umbilical between the finite self and the Whole self to open to *seeing* oneself as one really is: not with our flaws and foibles and dis-eases and shortcomings, but from the position of our power and our limitless ability.

These are not just words. This is an actual possibility which I'm sure many here have already experienced.

The problem (if it is one) is that we tend to fall back into our humanform limitations because that is how we are hardwired. Who's to say why? It probably doesn't matter. What DOES matter is the commitment to allow the impossible, shed the barrier between belief and knowledge and, in doing so, embrace the power which lies beyond all those limitations we feed ourselves on a daily basis.

In a crisis, a 90 pound woman can lift a 4-ton pick-up off an infant. From the assemblage point of being in love, a man with terminal cancer may go into instant and permanent remission.

These are not miracles. They are just aspects of who we are when our will supercedes our programming and takes action.

That Feeling

Fri, 24 Apr 2009 16:02:53 GMT

Sometimes it happens when I look up at the sky. The clouds are 3-D paintings, airbrushed on a canvas of royal blue, with just a threat of thunder, some mild promise of rain hiding somewhere in the mix. Maybe the air is hot, like a distant forgotten summer day, and I am transported back to a time when I was a little girl running wild and free through the Florida brambles and courting the nagual at the edge of the black lake which nestled up close to the house on the land where I grew up.

It's a feeling that's occasionally evoked when storms are traveling outside of time. Or when I am driving through farm country surrounded by endless groves of oranges or almonds or walnuts. Groves where the trees grow together at the top to form a canopy of shadows, an unmarked doorway to the nagual, a conduit to some past self. For a moment, I am 7 again, gazing deep into those groves to imagine what strange and wondrous beings might be hiding there... waiting for the little girl to come kicking her way through fallen leaves and the sweet scent of orange blossoms. Not waiting to cause her harm - it was a different world back then, when children could run through groves or forests with their imagination unfurled like some crazy banner of undefined but infinitely potent intent. No fear, but wonder. No worries, but simply an unbridled love affair with the unknown. Tangible. Like a drumbeat felt in the soles of the feet. Far more real than stuffy textbooks or Sunday School teachers, it was a genuine mind meld with the sensuous fabric of the sentient universe.

It was a time when anything could happen. One might turn the corner at the unmarked intersection of Mystery and Imagination to find oneself in a world of fairy lords or the elfin kingdom, or even on board some wayward starship passing through the neighborhood of a Dream.

Sometimes I was gone for years, though only moments had passed in the mortal world.

At least that's how it seemed.

Magick was all around, there for the harvesting, like the ripe fruit of early summer, the bounty spawned by a personal relationship with the ineffable, and nurtured by a hardcore Knowing that literally anything was possible if one could simply believe it enough to call it into being out of a desperate love/hope/need for it to simply Be. Yet, it is that simple. Yes, it is that complicated. No, it is not difficult. Yet, it is the hardest thing you will ever do.

Some would say it's where invisible friends come from. Others might say it's a position of the assemblage point where the child can simply see and experience things which adults will no longer permit themselves to see and experience because of their agreement with the Agreement. It is the place where muses are spawned and courted - with the unshakable Knowledge that muses choose their mates for life and death and all places beyond or in between. It is the place where the double is created out of unsoken wishes and the unspeakable Knowing that the only way out of the matrix will, at some level, involve the ingredients of unconditional love, altogether irrational beliefs, and the spark of a lustful passion for life to jumpstart its heart so that, in turn, it may turn and jumpstart your own.

Some would say it cannot be reasoned out.

That's okay.

It's a feeling. That feeling.

So easy and natural when we were children, but a feeling we tend to become distanced from as we grow older. Silly, but the old song, Puff the Magic Dragon always makes me cry, and I do not cry easily. Puff still waits by the sea, but the little boy has grown up, grown older, and no longer has time for the silliness of youth.

We grow up, and yet in doing so, we grow apart from our own magic, it seems, until one day we find ourselves staring deeply into the mirror, wondering who we are, who we were, and how we might find our way back to something that holds just a tad more meaning than corporate mission statements or what brand of diapers to buy, or what we need to remember to ask our doctors this week, because clearly we are sick to the soul, unable to maintain an erection, unable to digest our food, plagued by the fungi on our toenails and the cellulite on our thighs and the fact that the guy next door has a bigger car than ours and... and...

By the time we realize we're running in place, we've been going nowhere for so long that it's hard to remember a time when we thought we were headed toward some grand destination of... what? Success? Achievement? What does that look like? Is it an island somewhere in the Caribbean or a mansion in the Hamptons? And, even if we were to achieve those things, at some point along the way, it begins to occur to us that we can't really take any of it with us, and so we either will it to ungrateful children who will grow up, grow old and make the same mistakes we made, or it passes to the State, who will sell it to line the pockets of stuffy officials smoking cigars in dark hallways while swapping slobber with lobbyists and cronies.

It's all for naught. No exceptions.

If we're lucky, we wake up one day and realize that, and then we set off on this strange and wondrous quest for knowledge... until we smack our heads squarely on the realization that it was something we possessed quite naturally when we were children.

Aha.

That feeling. Now think about this, and ask yourself a couple of questions. When you encounter one of those "memory triggers" - whatever it is that evokes something from your childhood that is bitter and sweet and alluring and terrifying and perfect - do you find yourself leaning toward it, or do you somewhat instinctively shy away from it?

Most of the folks I've talked to about this recently readily admit they will shy away from it. When asked why, most will mumble something about "resposibility" or "obligations" or whatever it is that keeps them rooted in the (dis)comfort zones of their mundane tonal existence. "It's too painful," is one thing I hear repeatedly.

Too painful? Hmmm.

When I hear this, something in me rises up, rebels, tilts its head sideways like a confused puppy, and says, "What the hell is the matter with you?" And this includes myself - because, at times, I realize I have also shied away from "that feeling" - until I began to realize that the shying away is little more than a preprogrammed response handed to us by our parents, teachers and other well-meaning folks who encouraged us to "Grow up!" and "Get with the program!"

So... I began experimenting with this feeling again. Instead of automatically listening to The Voice of Reason - which touts such things as, "No time to dally with the impossible when there is work to be done in the real world!" - I essentially gave it the middle finger salute and gave myself permission to go against all the rules and see the world again through the eyes of that little girl who not only believed in magic, but who held the power to actually manifest it (as all children can).

Instead of turning away from that nostalgic feeling, I have decided to visit Puff whenever possible, to lure the sleeping dragon out of his cave, to court the shadows of the nagual with the fierce heart of a lover, and to dive head-first into those dark groves with the same fervor and passion I held as a child. Even making the decision to do that is fraught with voices from the past. My mother: "You're only setting yourself up for disappointment. The only thing in that orange grove is oranges!" My 10th grade physics teacher: "Everything can be explained rationally and logically, through mathematics."

Bah.

So much of this path is learning to unlearn the crap we have learned from those who have sought to teach us responsibility within an agreement which is as insane as any street person mumbling the beatitudes to themselves while standing ankle-deep in their own urine.

Today I will be irresponsible.

Today I will believe in magick and throw my arms around the nagual even if it devours me.

Today I will tell "the real world" to go fuck itself and hand it an instruction manual if necessary.

Today I will believe in fairies and elves and trolls and dragons and immortal vampires and Vulcans and Jack Sparrow and whatever else is considered to be altogether impossible and foolish.

Today I will embrace that feeling and no longer run from it.

*******

Puff, the magic dragon lived by the sea
  And frolicked in the autumn mist in a land called Honah Lee

Little Jackie Paper loved that rascal Puff,
and brought him strings and sealing wax and other fancy stuff. Oh

  Puff, the magic dragon lived by the sea
  And frolicked in the autumn mist in a land called Honah Lee
  Puff, the magic dragon lived by the sea
  And frolicked in the autumn mist in a land called Honah Lee

Together they would travel on a boat with billowed sail
Jackie kept a lookout perched on Puff's gigantic tail,
Noble kings and princes would bow whene'er they came,
Pirate ships would lower their flags when Puff roared out his name. Oh

  Puff, the magic dragon lived by the sea
  And frolicked in the autumn mist in a land called Honah Lee
  Puff, the magic dragon lived by the sea
  And frolicked in the autumn mist in a land called Honah Lee

A dragon lives forever but not so little boys
Painted wings and giant rings make way for other toys.
One grey night it happened, Jackie Paper came no more
And Puff that mighty dragon, he ceased his fearless roar.

His head was bent in sorrow, green scales fell like rain,
Puff no longer went to play along the cherry lane.
Without his life-long friend, Puff could not be brave,
So Puff that mighty dragon sadly slipped into his cave. Oh

  Puff, the magic dragon lived by the sea
  And frolicked in the autumn mist in a land called Honah Lee
  Puff, the magic dragon lived by the sea
  And frolicked in the autumn mist in a land called Honah Lee

Song Lyrics: "Puff, the Magic Dragon"
Recorded by: "Peter, Paul, and Mary"
Written by: (Leonard Lipton, Peter Yarrow)
Album: "Moving" - 1962
Hear Peter, Paul, and Mary at nuTsie.com

The Solitary Journey

Tue, 07 Apr 2009 21:07:21 GMT

When I talk about this being a solitary journey, I mean it is precisely that when push comes to shove, when thinking turns to do-ing. While it's possible to work in groups for learning techniques or honing practices, the part of the journey that will lead to real freedom really isn't anything that any extant teacher is going to be able to show us - because, ultimately, what leads to real freedom is the wholeness of the authentic self - i.e., the integrated, self-aware being who has amassed her cohesion above and beyond any and all external teachers, friends, family, etc. And let's face it - teachers can be a good thing, but they can also become dependencies, and that is especially true in spiritual circles. So, it seems to me that when we turn and face the ultimate truth, it tends to read in big red letters, "You are alone." (And in smaller letters: "And that's okay!")

I realize this may not be what many want to hear - and, frankly, I'm pretty sure most will disagree. That's okay - I completely understand the need for a sense of unity and the draw of what Castaneda referred to as "the warrior's party". Nothing wrong with that. A lot of good can come of it.

Where I find myself questioning is when it is put forth that we must have an extant teacher, or we must work as a group if we are to achieve freedom. On the one hand, it sounds good. But on the other hand, what does that really look like? Seriously... what can you do for me, or what can I do for you that will bring you one step closer to your freedom? Not a question requiring an answer - just food for thought. Is there some knowledge I possess that might advance your journey? If so, you have only to ask and I will attempt to impart it. Is there some bit of magic or gem of experience you hold that might help me to unlock the secret to transmogrification? If so, please contact me so that we might put our heads together.

Thing is... sometimes I see the idea of groups not unlike the old biblical tale of the tower of Babel. You have a bunch of people working together to build a stairway to heaven, but it's thwarted because all of them end up speaking different languages, and so the project gets scrapped because suddenly nobody can understand one another. Words get in the way - but so do egos, agendas and personalities. Sure, we can work with awareness to overcome some of those elements, but do we really ever overcome them, or do we just mask them for a time until they figure out some other way to resurface?

Many times, those on a path of spiritual awakening experience deep shifts into the left-side awareness - sometimes to such an extent that it may manifest as bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, or a variety of other labels which we'll acknowledge and then dismiss. When these shifts occur in otherwise normal, stable individuals, the result is that we may begin to feel pulled by spirit in a way that says... "Do something, girl! Take charge! Take action! Run run run for your life!" And please believe me when I tell you I've felt that down to the core of my existence... more than once, more than twice... and yet...

And yet...

No amount of shouting it from the rafters or rattling of swords is going to make one bit of difference with anyone else. Others may hear you and may even agree with you, but ultimately the "visions" we are given during these experiences are entirely our own. Solitary. Sure, I hear you. And I even agree with a lot of what you're saying. But what I've had to internalize and integrate in my own journey is the knowledge/awareness that no matter HOW much I may *see* "the path", no matter HOW much I may understand the double, no matter HOW much knowledge/information I may have amassed in my journey... its relevance is almost 100% to myself alone. There we go again... the solitary journey. Sure, maybe something I post may help someone else clarify something, or maybe it only befuddles them all the more. Who's to say?

The only reason to do ANY of this is for our own assimilation. Period. We go through phases where we want to share our knowledge with others, because we do genuinely want others to feel that grand love affair with the nagual - that incredible, heart-bursting, phenomenally life-altering union we share with our own double. We want others to share in our joy and our wonder and our bliss.

And yet...

We have to be careful not to become evangelical. *LOL* Nothing more offputting than some newly-saved born-againer trying to sell us his Jesus and scare us out of his hell. Even in Toltec circles, the same kind of thing can happen if we're not careful - particularly when it's love and joy we find ourselves wanting to share with others. That's where that sense of "something missing" comes from at times - we know how clearly WE see something, and if only the rest of the world could see it, too, then everything would be right and good.

Alas... it's the individual in our nature that makes that virtually impossible, and so keeps the muse always at arms' length - which is as it must be, as it needs to be. If we ever caught the muse and were able to share him with our neighbor, the magical part of the journey would be over, and we would no longer feel the need to struggle toward that elusive state which we call "freedom."

So... just some rambling thoughts here, but it seems to me that we can benefit intellectually, emotionally and even as a sense of physical well-being from our work with groups and/or teachers; but the real spiritual quest for freedom is where we find ourselves alone with just our double and our intent. We go off into the unknown to gain experience, then come together to share tales of power by the cyberfire. And from that, we gain the inspiration and strength to venture again into the unknown... alone.

Freedom is attained when we no longer have any need to return to the fire, when we become the flame that lights our own path.

Assimilation, Synthesis, Knowledge

Sat, 04 Apr 2009 22:47:51 GMT

In the course of reading some recent posts elsewhere, it occurs to me that most people essentially "follow" a line of teaching - whether that is Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, or Toltec, just for example. Meaning, folks tend to do a lot of reading, research and information gathering the the course of their spiritual journey... and yet I really wonder how many of those folks actually synthesize that information (and accompanying experience) into a workable system of Knowledge.

I remember reading the Castaneda books back in the 90s, and feeling a deep sense of validation, wonder, even a sense of familiarity - as if I had momentarily become the character in the book, on some grand adventure through the rabbit hole of life and into the strange lands which lie beyond our imagination. And yet... it never really occurred to me to try to repeat Castaneda's journey. Even if I were to bury myself in the earth or suspend myself from a tree, what would that really accomplish for me? If I were to get really radical (as some xtians are known to do) and have myself literally crucified, what would I really learn? Clearly, Castaneda's journey wouldn't make me don Juan, and hanging myself up to a makeshift cross (getting that last nail in is a bitch) wouldn't make me the son of god, so... what would one really gain by becoming a follower of... well... anything? What is there to gain by attempting to "repeat" someone else's journey, copy someone else's path?

I can honestly say I've been on my own individual path all my life. It has taken several twists and turns, and more than one "manifestation". But when I became completely committed to the journey around 1994 (a turning point, at least), I worked directly with my double, Orlando, for several years, and it was he who instructed me in what I have come to call "the art of assimiliation", or - put another way - the process of personal synthesis.

What it boils down to is actually very simple. It's all fine and good to read the collected works of this author or the teachings of that guru or the unabridged diaries of Buddha, Christ or Mohammed... and there is no doubt that if one is diligent, there is potentially much to be learned from such reading. However...

All too often, "religious" people will stop there, whereas anyone on a deeply spiritual journey realizes the need to take it one step further - and that step is where the process of assimilation really begins. It's not how much we have read or even what we have learned from our sutdies. It's not about comparing inventories to determine who is the most capable of reciting Castaneda or Buddha or Lord Vader chapter and verse.

It's about how we assimilate that information and - through direct personal experience - process that information into a workable system of individual knowledge. Castsaneda's journey was uniquely his own, and while we mjight learn from reading about his encounters with don Juan, or the techniques he used to induce certain altered states, ultimately all of that is only "information" until it is assimilated through experience within our own lives.

Ditto with Buddha, Christ, Mohammed, et al. Studying their journey may bring us lots of information and maybe even some wisdom along the way, but attempting to copy their lives or somehow repeat their journey is... well... basic human foolishness. It's why churches are full of people who have no more idea about spirituality than a bug squashed on the windshield of life. It's why people will say, "Have a nice day," and then steal your car or kick their dog. They know all the right words, but have none of the substance.

Where does the substance come from? Assimilation, synthesis. It comes from going beyond the words and into the do-ing. It comes from being willing to really examine what works for you and what doesn't - and it comes from building a raven's nest of the things that work for you, validated and manifested by direct personal experience. Buddha sat under the Bodhi tree because that was what worked for him. Christ went into the mountains for 40 days and nights because that was where his heart led him. Sure, you and I can sit under a tree or wander around in the desert, but unless it is with the INTENT to actually move our assemblage point out of its traditional resting place, then we are still trapped inside the matrix, just going through the motions of someone else's motions.

During the process of my own "initiation" or "awakening" or whatever word one wants to put to it, I read a lot of books, studied a lot of different things... and ultimately threw them all out the window and began to listen and observe my own silent knowing - the part of the self that is directly connected to the infinite, to spirit. And it is from that assemblage point that we really begin to realize our assimilation - because it is a position of the AP that is already outside the matrix and therefore not easily manipulated by the forces at work inside the matrix. Put another way, it is the assemblage point of the authentic self; and it is only from that assemblage point that the warrior really begins to assimilate the information and experience s/he has gained, into that individual system of workable knowledge.

Obviously this is a large topic which won't be covered in a single post. It's about forward thinking and shifting beyond what we've read or what we believe, and into the actual process of "validation and rejection" - i.e., assimilation.

For now just wanted to open the door onto this topic, see where it might lead. Of all the things you've read or studied or believed on 'faith', what have you actually brought into your own synthesis, and what have you left behind? And, more importantly, on what criteria have you based your decisions? No right or wrong answers. Just an exercise that forces us to look at our own assimilation process.

There is only one true Buddhist.

There is only one true Christian.

There is only one true god.

Not-Doing: Assembling Otherworlds

Mon, 30 Mar 2009 16:50:05 GMT

Sometimes when my mind is sufficiently occupied with some meaningless chore, I will realize somewhat as just a matter of fact, that my assemblage point is busily engaging in the act of assembling other worlds. Not the bizarre and alien "otherworlds" DJM spoke of to Carlos, but simply other places and times right here on the tonal level of awareness. This has occurred to often that I finally decided to write a bit about it - partially to see if others out there experience similar occurrences, and also to try to capture some essence of the experience itself.

...

I find myself at a small Mexican cafe somewhere in Victorville, California. No place I've ever been. No place I would ever really need or want to go in real life (whatever that may be). It's just a little roadside restaurant, clean but old, and I am sitting in a booth with green vinyl seats which have cracked in a couple of places from long-term use. There is a sense of waiting for someone to arrive, and as I wait in the booth, the scent of carnitas and beer is as real as if I were there in physical manifestation.

What am I doing here? I wonder - both as the person in the booth, and as "della" observing this experience from the sidelines of reality, sitting at my desk in Yucca Valley. It seems I am "myself", yet the workings of the assemblage point are such that even if I were to manifest in some ancient history inside the body of Alexander or Hephastion, I would undoubtedly still feel l ike 'myself', because that would be the position of the assemblage point into which I had opened my eyes at that moment.

The self dreams the double. Once it has learned to dream the double, the self arrives at this weird crossroad and a moment comes when one realizes that it is the double who dreams the self. Your double is dreaming you. No one knows how it happens. We only know that it does happen. That's the mystery of us as luminous beings. You can awaken in either one. (Don Juan, TALES OF POWER)

What's interesting, however, is that even when opening my eyes inside the assemblage point of the woman in the roadside cafe somewhere outside of Victorville, there is the dual perception of the self-as-observer, and so the question which comes to me is... what might happen if one migrated one's total awareness into the woman in the restaurant? Would that become, then, the reality I would inhabit, and "this" position of the assemblage point which I now recognize as 'della' would be essentially lost? No way to know except to do it, and of course, the 'do-ing' would be far easier said than done for many reasons (not the least of which is the first enemy: fear itself).

And yet...

I am left wondering what these things are really all about. Sure, easy enough to dismiss them as "your mind wandering", or "daydreaming", but what does THAT really mean? When we say our mind has wandered in such a manner, is that just the comfort zone terminology we use to force the assemblage point back into its familiar location?

Not really expecting hard core answers here. Just asking some questions with the hope of looking outside the box, beyond the matrix for a moment. Who is the woman in the Mexican cafe who wears my younger face and yet I cannot say I am her. Are the other worlds we assemble perhaps parallel realities - manifestations of our energy in a milieu where perhaps we turned left instead of right, and our lives turned out altogether differently?

Quantum theory postulates that for every choice we make - even the most minute ones, such as whether to have ice tea or lemonade - leads to an infinite number of alternate possibilities, each one splintering off from that decision like thousands of little roads breaking off from a more major highway. We are all of those possibilities, according to quantum, and yet our perception remains stubbornly fixed in our "identity" in what we think of as the "here and now"...

And yet...

Is it possible that any of those quantum other roads are available to us by a shift of the asemblage point that would allow us to "open our eyes" inside of one of those alter-selves? Would it even be desirable to do so? Would it be playing Russian Roulette with our own well-being, or is that just a fear placed onto us in our early childhood when we are cautioned by well-meaning adults to "Keep your thoughts focused. Don't let your mind wander. Pay attention."

It often seems to me that we are so programmed as a result of our so-called "enculturation into society" that we lose touch with abilities which might otherwise bring us into direct contact with that mystical aspect of ourselves which is always peeking out from around corners like a mischievous muse - the aspect of ourselves that has the ability to move not only through space, but through time and even through the quantum structure of eternity and infinity - not as some metamagickal journey into the unknown, but in accordance with our own human nature which has perhaps become so 'warped' by the demands placed upon us to conform that, ultimately, we have no idea of our own potential, our own untapped ability.

And so I ask myself... Why did DJM think it was so important for CC to have the ability to "assemble other worlds"? Where can that take us if we can "open our eyes" inside of some quantum other-self? Is this simply a description of the spirit's journey through the infinite, or is it perhaps the key to our own infinite awareness - transcending not only the matrix, but even the meaning of death itself?

As I said... it's not the answers that are important. It's the question. At least for me.

So when I find my mind wandering to some lonely cafe where I've never been, when some otherworld assembles itself as a result of my not-doings, I may have the wherewithal, the awareness, and the courage (the hardest part of the recipe) to simply "open my eyes" inside of that reality as a way to potentially discover why it assembled itself in the first place. Are these the worm holes into our 'immortality' - not in any linear manner of living forever in a single humanform body, but as a means to move our awareness into our otherselves throughout the space/time continuum, like a force of awareness always in motion.

To those who have never experienced this kind of thing, perhaps I will sound like a raving madwoman. Perhaps I am. *shrugs* That's also one of those infinite possibilities. And that's okay, too. Just part of the ride. To those who HAVE experienced this kind of assembling of otherworlds, maybe you have some insights into the mystery which you would like to share.

Either way... thanks for listening.

You Will See the World Change

Thu, 19 Feb 2009 18:00:46 GMT

"You will see the world change."

Words that keep coming to me lately - the voice of gnosis, always accompanied by a download of information in one form or another. Sometimes the information correlates with things in my own life. Other times, it's like picking up a book at random in the library, and not really having any clue what it's about. There's no cover and no synopsis, and the pages are out of order. But it's all there... just a matter of putting the pieces together. That's how it feels. Sometimes that's even how it works.

I've talked about it before - this long and winding road that stretches out across the desert. Route 66. Kelbaker Road. Nipton Road. Cima Road. Depends on what broken segment of it one is traveling what it's called. In the course of our business, we have occasion to be on that road a couple of times every year... and every time we pass along that way, I find myself thinking of how it seems nothing ever changes out there, except in the seasonal manifestations of summer blistering asphalt with dancing heat monkeys, and a glittering icing of snow on the mountains in winter. This time, ice crystals glittered like diamonds on the road to remind us of the storm that had passed through the night before, but other than these transient reminders of the changing seasons, the land remained exactly as it was the last time we were through there... and the time before that... and the time before that.

Impossible to describe the sense of timelessness that exists out there. Far moreso than almost anywhere else I have been - more than even in the isolation of the mountains when one is all alone. It is a sense that the world might even be laughing at us in our transient hurry to be always rushing from one location to another, moving our fragile bodies from point A to point B in search of... what? Out there in the stillness, that's what the All of it seemed to be asking as we sat in our car, pushed along by exploding gases in the engine, propelled along a road that is patches on top of patches on top of potholes deep enough to swallow a Volkswagen.

"Where are you going? What are you hoping to find over there that you would not find right here? What is your mission, little ant? Where oh where are you going?"

Oh, there's a rational tonal answer. Simple enough. Going to Las Vegas for a trade show. But that wasn't what the All of it was asking as it stood there all around me, hiding in plain sight with its shivering chapparal bushes and its sea of dry grass and its stalwart Joshua trees. "Where are you going and what are you hoping to find?"

Impossible to put to words, but it often feels to me as if we live in a completely insane, made-up world. The All of it out there in the desert knows it, too. It sees what we humans try to hide from ourselves. It sees our transient nature, and it sees the madness we have built around ourselves in some vain attempt to deny that nature. It sees that the fashion runways at the trade show are just another manifestation of the road to death. One way street, then turn around and go back the way you came, such a short time on the stage, glittering one moment, gone the next. It sees the ruins built along that road to nowhere, and perhaps it even converses with the spirits of those who once inhabited those now-crumbling walls.

"You will see the world change."

The voice of gnosis - different in certain regards from the voice of the All. The place of silent knowing. The heart of the double. For a moment, it's as if the All is on the right, the east; and the double is on the left, the west. Not in any literal sense. Just how I interpreted it for the sake of being able to listen to both sides of this rather profound yet utterly silent conversation which had begun to take on elements of a debate.

The All:

"You pass along this road to nowhere a few times in the course of your mortal life, and then you are swept from the stage, just so much dust at the mercy of the wind, the broom, the hand of time. If asked where you are going, you will say you are going to meet your death so that you might break his hold on you through this state you call freedom, and yet not a single one of you has ever returned from that appointment to report your victory. Therefore, I maintain there is no destination and that the road which you call the path is just a dead end where humans, like lemmings, leap into the ocean to be drowned forever in the Nothing.

"You build monuments to the madness of your species - tall buildings stretching toward the sky like bony fingers reaching out of the earth in defiance of their illusory existence. You attach yourselves to cultures and morals and ideas designed to obfuscate the madness which has overtaken your species as a direct result of the knowledge instilled within you that you ARE transient, mortal, impermanent beings. You dispense intangibles to one another in the hopes of defeating the illusion you yourselves have created, but at the end of the day you are still mortal and still human and one day closer to death. You chase the illusion of fortune or fame or whatever it is among you humans that is called 'success', and you pray to your manmade gods to help your team win the SuperBowl, or your team to win whatever war you have manifested, never stopping for a single moment to understand that your prayers fall on the deaf ears of an impersonal universe, and you are therefore only enforcing your own impotence while walking along this road, each step bringing you closer and closer to your death."

Grim little bastard. But not incorrect. That's the hell of it. Somewhere inside of ourselves, we know all of these things. But the madness of our agreement will not allow us to turn and face that awareness. So we sweep it all under the rug and go right on pretending things are going to change. "They" are going to find some magical elixir that will make us all immortal. "They" are going to solve the economic crisis so "we" can go back to our petty indulgences and not have to be reminded of the mess we have made of the world.

And yet... outside the car window, there is only the snow-covered mountain, looking more like some free-form sculpture carved by the unwavering hand of eternity than any sort of natural occurrence. Just an etching on the big blue marble, hand painted with soft vanilla frosting.

It mocks me, with its illusion of permanence.

The Double:

"You will see the world change. This is something you know inside yourself, though at times it is difficult to simply Be what you know because of the chatter and clatter of all those places you have been and all those things you are doing and all those roads you have yet to travel. But in your heart, you know it to be true when I tell you that you will see the world change.

"Within the hologram of your totality, you are no different than the All, no different than myself. What are we? Simply this: perceptions of the infinite. We are the experience of eternity - the creator of it and the creation itself. This is the way of the warrior, the task of the mortal self and the immortal other as we dream toward one another in the infinite sea of awareness. At this moment inside of time, you perceive the experience from the assemblage point of your humanform existence - the dreamer in the process of creating the dream. As your immortal awareness, I perceive the experience from some other position on the map of time, or off the map altogether. Such is the dance we dance together. Such is the fire that forges the Dream and breathes life into itself: phoenix of its own ashes, the quantum conundrum of the creator breathing life into herself so that she might exist to breathe life into herself.

"You may perceive the crumbling ruins scattered alongside this strange road to Nowhere, while I may perceive those same ruins as a memory of a place I once lived in some otherwhen existence that is no less real than this moment. In a thousand years, perhaps you will walk this same road, or another one that has been built in its place, or perhaps you will walk the silence that lingers long after Man is gone, and you will see this same ruin, only dust now, and you will remember when you passed this way in your mortal manifestation and saw it for the first time. You will see civilizations rise and fall. You will taste the dust of all that has ever been, and at the same time you will Dream the substance of the All, bringing All things into being because that is the nature of creation and the process of evolution.

"You are the dreamer and the dream. And in that manifestation, surely you can see how it is that I tell you... You will see the world change."

Naked in the Dark With Your Death

Thu, 12 Feb 2009 02:06:30 GMT

A predilection isn't the same thing as a compulsion. I have a predilection to be a moody prick but if I indulge that compulsion then all I am is a moody prick, a slave to the dictates of my biological bent. The main point don Juan wanted to make about predilections is that they exist. Don Juan's predilection was to laugh, so there was no particular harm in indulging that one. But he knew Carlos's predilection was to be maudlin & melancholy, so he was always cautioning Carlos NOT to indulge that predilection because to do so was unhealthy for Carlos and everybody around him. Predilections are to be recognized and accepted, yes, but to indulge them is to admit one isn't strong enough to make a choice that goes against their animal leanings. Indulgence is just another form of slavery no matter how you label it. (Dan)
It's important to recognize our predilections - to have an awareness. But if we stop there and just live down to our lowest common denominator animal instincts, we have failed our commitment to our own impeccability. Some kids have a predilection to be lazy, but if the parents just accept that and do nothing to change it, then the predilection is enforced and the kid grows up to be a lazy adult. Where's the growth or evolution in that? Some people have a predilection to be angry or cruel or even perverse, but the question is whether we choose to act on our predilections or use our awareness to make a more impeccable choice. To just blindly accept our predilections is to live down to the lowest common denominator of hormones & programming and all the ingredients that make us human. Rising above our predilections is one of the first steps toward becoming other-than-human. (Della)

A good friend posted the quotes above from a private chat, but I'm afraid it will fall on deaf ears - as most stuff online tends to do. What I've observed over the past 8 years of hosting forums is that most folks have already pre-determined what they are going to believe, what they are going to do, and whether or not they have any intention of changing (i.e., evolving beyond their base-biological urges). Most are, unfortunately, stuck in habitual patterns of behaviour which are determined either by their gonads, their addictions, or both. Ouch. Ugly truth. I'll get hate mail for that one. They will use their predilections, their gonads, their addictions and their anger-management problems to justify almost any sort of lowest common demoninator thinking and lowest common denominator behaviour. They will tell you things like, "I'm just predisposed to be an asshole, and don Juan said it's okay." The reality, of course, is that don Juan said no such thing, but they would never consider allowing reason to sway them from their beliefs, because those beliefs validate their existing comfort zones and give them a good excuse to go right on being an asshole. *LOL*

It starts to remind me of Bible thumpers - using all manner of "scripture" to back up their belief systems. They might thump on the works of Castaneda or Jed McKenna or their own personal guru to justify whatever it is they want to justify - just as many xtians thump on the Bible and use it to validate their belief that God wants them to hate gays, for example, or that women should be kept barefoot & pregnant. Reason never enters into it. Not for a single moment.

So when I look at the tirades and the scripture thumping that goes on, all I can do is stand aside and be sadly amazed at the utter lack of understanding these folks have about their (so-called) spirituality. Spirituality on ANY level isn't about using your predilections to hammer or hurt someone else. It isn't about pointing the finger at your guru and blaming him for your failure, when the only one who can fail or succeed is the one in your mirror.

There's a big hooplah these days from people who are FINALLY figuring out that their greatest teacher is themselves - but in the meantime, they are quick to blame and demonize their former teachers (who have been telling them from the start that their greatest teacher is themselves). Amazing, frankly. I've had that fickle finger of blame pointed at myself a few times in the past year, and it always comes down to one thing. I can honestly say from my own heart that I have NEVER sought followers - too high maintenance and frankly, what purpose would they serve? And, in fact, when a few have TRIED to attach themselves to me, I have very directly told them I'm no guru, I don't have their answers, and all I can do is share my path with them. If they learn from that, great. If not, they are quite free to go seek their OWN way, which is what I have encouraged them to do from the beginning. I think hearing aids should be standard issue for anyone on a warrior's path, but that's just me exercising my predilection to be sarcastic.

It just seems to me that the blame game is a very efficient way of transferring responsibility from self to someone else. ANYONE else! It's a way of saying, "You were holding me back!" when the blatant and obvious reality is that the only one who can hold you back is YOU! I've said it from the start. I've repeated it... oh... a few thousand times over the years. If you need a guru, if you worship any particular teacher, if you are dependent on "What would Michael or Dick or Jesus do?", then you are sadly attached to comfort zones, and like any addict, will do whatever it takes to go on feeding your addiction. If that means convincing yourself that your former teachers are actually blood-sucking vampires from the 9th level of Hell, that's what you'll do. If it means putting some "new" guru on a pedastal and worshipping his every word, then you have done nothing to break out of your attachments - you have only transferred them from one guru to another, and it is inevitable that you will turn on THAT guru in time as well.

Only when you can stand alone in the dark night of the soul, just you and your Death, will you finally be free. Until then - for as long as attachment to earthly teachers, or the validation of your peers remains of importance to you - you are just one more wayward crusader, rattling your saber for the right to go on being a wayward crusader. Chances are, you dont' even know what you're fighting for! You're just fighting because you've decided that's the way of the warrior, even though a TRUE warrior carries no weapon.

Being a warrior isn't about brandishing your sword at demons you've imagined or created. It isn't about thumping CC's books as some sort of warped validation to what you want to believe. It isn't about convincing yourself that you're already perfect, so therefore your work is finished. Instead, it's about standing alone in the world, in yourself, in the infinite. No one can do it for you. No teacher can take you there. No teacher can stop you from going there. You'll either do it or you won't. It will not make you popular. It will not earn you friends. It may even destroy you...

But that's the rub, isn't it? I've always loved that scene in STAR WARS, where Darth Vader and Obi Wan Kenobi stand face to face, light sabers crossing, after a long battle. When Obi Wan lowers his sword and surrenders to his death, his final words are, "You can't win, Darth. If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine."

So the way I see it is simply this. If we have surrendered to our death, with the Knowledge that we have reached our totality, then the meager strikes of light sabers are insignificant, utterly inconsequential - just the sad battle fought by angry children who still believe there is something to 'win'.

A Candid Dialogue - Part 2

Mon, 19 Jan 2009 17:53:16 GMT

A CANDID DIALOG - PART TWO

Mel: When I used to frequent chat rooms one of the criticisms I often encountered is that you have a bad temper and that that therefore disqualifies you to be a teacher or a nagual. The other criticism making the rounds is that you labeled yourself a 'Nagual' out of the blue. What's your thoughts on that?

Della: *LOL* Let's talk about a bad temper first. For the most part, I only have a bad temper if someone provokes me over a period of time. I've used the analogy before that if you poke at a dog long enough, eventually it will bite you. You may then blame the dog and wail to anyone who will listen that you were bitten by a mean dog and it should be put to sleep immediately; or you can take responsibility for your own actions - i.e., you provoked the "attack", which is really a matter of self-defense. Don't want to get bit? Don't poke the bitch. Simple logic. *heh* I think 99.9% of the people I know and work with on these forums would say I'm pretty patient even if not entirely tolerant of bullshit. And normally those who complain the loudest about someone else's "bad temper" are the leading CAUSE of it in the first place.

Now, in a more general sense and to answer your question directly, does that disqualify me as a teacher? That's not really for me to decide. I've said often on my website that you may easily discredit the messenger, but the message will remain. In my opinion, focussing attention on personality flaws in a situation such as this is rather like fighting in a burning building. I have what many consider to be valuable knowledge that I'm willing to share. To me, THAT is where we need to be focussed - on what we can do for one another, what we can learn from one another, what each of us brings to the table. Fact is, a LOT of so-called "shamans" or "naguals" or "seers" are mad as hatters, but that doesn't alter the fact that they ALSO have valuable knowledge. It isn't required that you like them or even that you believe them. But trying to shift the focus from the message onto the messenger is pretty self-defeating, and generally tends to reveal the agenda of those doing the shifting.

Mel: What about don Juan? Wasn't he a pretty level-headed guy?

Della: Don Juan is a character in a book. Maybe he existed "in the flesh," but I seriously doubt that. Doesn't mean he didn't exist - simply means that he was either a composite of many people Castaneda met in his journeys; or (my personal read on it), don Juan was Carlos's double, whether Carlos ever knew it or not. My guess is that he DID know it but only somewhat "later in the game", long after DJM had burned with the fire from within. Anyway, point is that whether DJM was a man or a myth, he is a CHARACTER in a book. He is written in a certain way to appear how the writer WANTED him to appear. And even he lost his temper a time or two, as I recall. *LOL* Now we would dismiss all of his teachings because he lost his temper a few times, but why would we want to do that? Throw the baby out with the bath water. And if you want to get into myth, there was that little tantrum Jesus threw when he tossed the money changers out of the temple. So, I guess Jesus has a bad temper, too, and everything he ever said should therefore be dismissed.

Thing is... it's easy to discredit any messenger. And I make a point of giving people sufficient ammunition to "discredit" me if that is their goal. I'm no saint, and I'm no paragon of sweetness & light. It always amazes me when people want to talk about ME instead of the far more pertinent stuff we could be discussing. Then again, for as long as people can divert their attention from the work, they have succeeded in disabling themselves - and with what they would even consider to be a Righteous Cause! Amazing. And sad as well. While they're off rattling their swords at imagined demons, time is slipping past them. And the eagle just waits with a smile.

Mel: Okay - what about the nagual thing. What's all the hooplah about that?

Della: Damned if I know! *LOL* The title of my book is QUANTUM SHAMAN: Diary of a Nagual Woman. I'm not the first person to apply that title to myself, either. I resisted it for years because of the baggage it carries - labels are like programs, and tend to invite trouble - but when I decided to write the book, I finally gave in and decided to accept what I had known for years. Now, with that said, being a 'Nagual' is no big deal in the grand scheme of things. What it really means is that a nagual has the four energetic compartments instead of the traditional two. The reason for this, as I've found in my own experiences & research, is that it has to do with the double being more or less "born" at the same time the humanform self is born. I've talked about this quite a bit in other places. But ultimately, it's just like being born with green eyes or blonde hair - it's just an "attribute", meaning nothing in and of itself. So to say I'm a 'Nagual' is not very different than saying I'm a female. You're either born with that attribute or you're not. What you do with it is what matters.

[NOTE from Melancholy Man: After our conversation ended, I was able to track down several links to these threads. After re-reading them, it really dawned on me how silly all of this other stuff really is. There's so much more we could be doing here. So I am going to encourage you to read these posts too.]

The Double vs. Double Beings

Why Do Double Beings Exist?

The Dual Assemblage Point

Continuing the dialogue...

Mel: So what I'm hearing is that you're not attached to the label?

Della: Not at all. The label was attached to me and I guess it threatens a lot of people. Not my problem, except that while they're trying to discredit me, the clock is ticking.

Mel: Why do you think your critics are so adamant about this?

Della: Well, it's mainly three or four people who have formed their own little consensus - based largely on the ramblings of one of those 'enlightened' drunks. That's how factions get started and they're altogether ridiculous in spiritual arenas, because the bottom line is that if you don't like what a teacher or a nagual or a passing hermit has to say, so what? Go your own way and walk your own path and get over yourself. Trying to tear someone else down reminds me of the Crusades - where a bunch of overgrown boys ride off into the unknown to lob off the heads of infidels. Translated, kill anybody who doesn't agree with you. Problem is... with forums AND with crusaders, most of them don't even know WHAT they believe. They only know that they feel threatened, and so they react with violence. Nothing new there.

Mel: What seems kinda wonky to me where forums are concerned is that the threads that have some potentially eye-opening content are virtually ignored in favor of troll threads.

Della: You noticed that, too, didja? *LOL* It's easier to fight than to learn. Bottom line, human nature. That's why I'm more or less done with these forums for the time being.

Mel: You don't feel you're learning anything from them anymore?

Della: Not lately - probably not in a few years.

Mel: That surprises me.

Della: Why? Forming the foundation of ourselves may be a lifelong process in one way, but in another way it only takes a few years at most to strip away the programming and face ourselves in the mirror. That's what the process of assimilation is all about. Once we've built our foundation through the work of the journey (however that manifests will be different for everyone), we come to that point where we test our knowledge, see if what we have learned is viable of not. For me, that process occurred largely at the old Delphi forum, and only marginally here at TSW.

Mel: This intrigues me. Are you saying there's nothing more to learn?

Della: No, not at all! I'm saying that I've tested the foundation of my knowledge, and the foundation holds. It's always expanding, always revising itself - that's the process of living, and hopefully living as impeccably as I can. Orlando pointed out something of interest recently - basically that you know your assimilation is complete when people stop challenging your knowledge and begin challenging you as a person, making it personal, in other words. That probably should have been obvious a long time ago, but like I said... I'm slow. *LOL*

Mel: You said recently that you felt TSW has become a "dead zone." What are you planning to do about it?

Della: Nothing. It's there if people want to use it, and if they don't, it'll just quietly dissipate and that'll be that. No great loss - it's completely unimportant in the scheme of things. I figured out a long time ago that things have their "time" and when that time is up, it's just up. If TSW's "time" has passed, no big deal. It depends on the people who use the forum - it's really not up to me at this point.

Mel: What about your own journey? I mean, what are you doing these days outside of cyberspace?

Della: You mean there's life outside of cyberspace? *LOL* Actually, I'm working on the idea of transmogrification, rather heavily. A couple of other very sharp warriors on my private list have contributed a lot to that effort, and it's one of those ongoing projects, one of those things we struggle to wrap our minds around, because often it's when we UNDERSTAND something that we enable ourselves to DO it. Easy enough to just dismiss it and say, "Oh, but that's impossible, Della!" But it's only when we can allow the impossible that we really tap our personal power and find the will to do all sorts of things once believed to be impossible. Every day I turn on this computer and talk to people all over the world, I'm reminded of my old days as a Star Trek writer when all of this was considered "science fiction." Well, the future has manifested because a few people out there were willing to allow the impossible and went to the bother of creating it.

Mel: Are you talking about transmogrification in the sense of stepping into your double, becoming an inorganic being?

Della: In a manner of speaking, yes. But it's a complex subject. Last night when I was meditating, I received this huge "download" of information through gnosis having to do with transmogrification. *heh* I call it a zip file - meaning that the file downloads instantly, but it can take months or even years to completely unzip all the data and apply it in one's own life. That's where The Future is for me - working with gnosis and my own personal zip files.

Mel: Out of curiosity, is gnosis something that can be taught? What I mean is that I hear you talk about it often but I get the sense that a lot of people either don't understand what you're saying or else they have no reference point.

Della: I dunno. I can only go on my own experience. Once I finally isolated "the place of silent knowing" it became relatively easy to shift my AP into that position and even hold it there most of the time. To me, that's the natural way of things. But if somebody has never found that AP in the first place, they might not even believe it exists. The internal dialogue is a master of convincing us that we're impotent slobs at the mercy of fate. But we are really the most powerful beings in the universe - once we get beyond the idea that we are the most powerful beings in the universe.

Mel: Okay girl, it's 3 am and I'm going to turn into a pumpkin.

Della: We are all one pumpkin?

___________________

NOTE from Melancholy Man: In hindsight as I was preparing this chat transcript to be posted, it really struck me that when we can talk about the path as we were doing toward the end of this chat, the whole energy changes and shifts the assemblage point to a more outward cone of energy, it expands our awareness in other words. So here's the thing... we have all of this knowledge at our fingertips, in the form of one another and our personal journeys. A good friend of mine (I would dare to call him a Nagual) once said, "Hey Mel, you can focus on the sky or you can walk along with your head down 'cause you're worried about stepping in dog shit." Maybe I'm just an incurable optimist but I wonder what we could do here if we all started focusing on the sky instead of looking for dog shit.

A Candid Conversation

Sat, 17 Jan 2009 18:14:06 GMT

The following is an "interview" that began as a private chat between myself & a good friend - "Melancholy Man." It was never intended to become a matter of public record, however after some further conversations with Mel, I relented and allowed him to post it to my forum, The Sorcerer's World - since it was his contention that this is the stuff people NEED to hear but don't WANT to hear. Not sure I agree with that, not sure it matters. But since he was so adamant about it, I figured... what the hell.

Too many people think spiritual enlightenment or spiritual evolution is about sitting in a dark cave contemplating the navels of sages, but that hasn't been my experience. It's about getting real with ourselves and taking responsibility for our own lives. It's about not blaming your teacher if you fail, and most of all it's about the cold, stark realization that no one CAN do this for you. So, with that said, this "interview" follows in the wake of some recent turmoil stemming from my own personal run-ins with The Boozer & The Loser - my own personal devils, my personal detractors. *LOL* Thanks to Mel for pushing me to "speak out even when you're cussin' like a sailor." Something to be said for that.

Mel: You've made some major changes to the forum. Think it'll make any difference?

Della: Probably not. Doesn't matter, of course. The forum is just something I created for my own use in the beginning - a way to work through my own assimilation. Later it evolved into whatever phases it has gone through. It will either sink or swim entirely on its own merit at this point. And that's perfectly okay.

I'm not sure when these forums went from being a learning tool to being some sort of warped substitute for living one's life! And that's not the half of it! When you really start examining the dynamics of what's going on, you'll discover in most cases that a lot of folks aren't the least bit interested in any sort of spiritual evolution or learning or sharing their path.

Mel: So then what do you think their motive is for being here??

Different motives for different people, I imagine. My biggest detractors have always been what I've come to call The Boozers and The Losers. Over time, they have become a paradigm for a much bigger picture. Bottom line - the boozers are troublemakers and rabble rousers. Call them trolls if you want. Call them Agent Smith - a living belief system, mouthpiece for the consensus reality whether they realize it or not - upholders of the status quo, preachers of the program, or conduits for whatever they happen to be reading at the time. Google gurus, in other words. I've often joked that it's Underwater Sunshine Enlightenment this week, and Astral Entanglements for the Sexually Dysfynctional next week. Lots of them like to claim they are Toltec practitioners and may quote don Juan by chapter and verse, but they appear to know only the intellectual applications and none of the experiential. Armchair warriors are a dime a dozen.

Mel: I remember a discussion from a while back when it was hinted that this kind of behavior may be even more sinister than that. What's your thoughts on that?

Della: Well, in a way it IS sinister - there are people who hang out on forums not really to promote spiritual evolution, but to make sure that nobody ELSE can do so either. They're the ones constantly asking questions like, "Have you stopped beating your wife yet?" Everything to the boozer is a potential argument - because that's what boozers do, and that's their currency. They thrive on anger, hate & discontent. Their goal is distraction, dissipation & diversion (the 3 D's). They go to a bar (forum), they get drunk (literally), and then they start throwing bar stools just to bring attention to themselves. They may try to disguise their rabble-rousing as a "challenge" to others on the forum (usually the admin or moderators), but even after the admin/mods have answered their questions, they just keep hammering with the same questions - until eventually the forum deteriorates into some sort of weird Romper Room for the Terminally Stupefied. No answer is good enough, and so it becomes a circular, downward spiral into pointless minutiae which is the trademark of the "enlightened drunk".

One thing I learned was not to take myself too seriously when I'm drunk, stoned or under the influence. Another thing that seems patently obvious to me is that if someone can't get through the day without being drunk, they clearly have no respect for themselves, so their 'spiritual' opinions become suspect. But just to be perfectly clear on this: it's not the person I dismiss here. It is the conclusions and the "opinions" they form as a RESULT of their drunken stupor or drug-induced haze. Everybody is certifiably brilliant when they're stoned. Just ask 'em! And yet, above all else a warrior has sobriety. Now you can cut that and dice it any way you like. You can say, "Don Juan didn't mean that literally!" But... if not, why say it? Doesn't mean you can't have a drink once in awhile. But if ANYTHING interferes with your natural sobriety as a matter of course on a daily basis, chances are you assemblage point is so skewed that you need to be on an AA forum rather than a forum about spiritual enlightenment. Another ugly truth. Sobriety first, THEN enlightenment. Seems to be the general order of priorities.

Mel: Does anybody ever really 'lose' if they are seeking so-called spiritual enlightenment?

Della: There are seekers, and then there are PROFESSIONAL seekers - those who like to pretend they are looking for enlightenment, when they are really only looking for cheap entertainment. These are the losers - who are more or less just the mouthpieces for the boozers - i.e., they are the yesmen & women who get dragged into the drama and what ends up happening is a choosing up of sides - as if spiritual evolution is all about who's right and who's wrong, as if it's a battlefield like something out of the ancient Crusades. "If you don't believe what I WANT you to believe, I'll lob off your naughty bits!" How childish! That's part of what this whole "battle" has been about that's invaded The Sorcerer's World from time to time. A certain group would be a lot more comfortable if I were to say I'm not a teacher, not a nagual, not a seer, not a sorcerer, and so on. Why it MATTERS to them so much is an issue that might bear some examination, but obviously that's not where their interests lie. They're still functioning under the delusion that stalking is about stalking others instead of stalking oneself. *shrugs* No cure for that, except time. And even then, most who are of that mindset never overcome it.

Mel: Okay, let's be honest here. Going back to the Romper Room analogy... it could be argued that you yourself allowed that to go on for a long time.

Della: True. I'm slow!Took me a long time to realize that there is truly no hope for hopeless individuals. Ugly truth. Very nasty ugly truth. One I don't want to acknowledge. But there it is, staring me in the face. I've been a teacher in other areas of my life - taught women's self-defense, writing classes, Tarot reading, achieving gnosis, and several other things. When I would see somebody struggling or frustrated or angry, I always felt that if I could just explain myself a bit better, they might grasp what was being put forth. So my nature is to nurture - though I have to admit that these forums have more or less disabused me of any such notions where trolls, boozers & losers are concerned! *gotta laugh* Bottom line, I kept thinking that a couple of the "losers" were genuinely struggling to understand something, but that was never the case at all. Their primary interest was to discredit the messenger in the hopes of discrediting the message. Smoke and mirrors - divert attention from what matters onto trivial personality wars. Oldest trick in the loser's book.

Della: Lot of history here that would take more time to get into than it's worth. Suffice it to say that my Numero Uno Critic used to be a follower who ran around calling me his guru, despite repeated attempts on my part to disabuse him of that idea. One day he got pissed off at me when I questioned him about something, and quite abruptly I became the devil incarnate. He makes a lot of noise saying I didn't live up to his expectations, but that's the funny thing - all of that comes AFTER-the-fact that this person got pissed and suddenly needed to dredge up a lot of excuses as to why this was MY fault rather than perhaps his own previously unrecognized attachments. Typical manifestation of humanform denial. When you fail in your journey, by all means blame the teacher! Blame ANY teacher! Blame ALL teachers! Blame, blame, blame! One only needs to ask, "How's that werkin' fer ya?"

Mel: Don't we all have expectations of one another?

Della: Not if we're truly on a spiritual journey toward evolution. I can't evolve for you; you can't evolve for me. Maybe we can't even help one another in the process - jury's still out on that one. I'm not here to live up to anyone's expectations and I believe I've made that quite clear. Someones doesn't like my teachings or my opinions or my ideas, you're under no obligation to remain. You ARE free to question, even to challenge - but once your questions & challenges have been met, it's over. Move on. Either you will accept the answers to your questions or not. If so, take it to the next level. If not, there's the door, with no hard feelings. But continuing to hammer the same questions just reveals the agenda of the questioner. The end result, if it is allowed to continue, is that the forum becomes crippled - which, unfortunately, I allowed to happen a couple of times around here. And it's one of the primary reasons I asked you to moderate the public aspects of TSW, since I know you are a bit more ruthless with would-be trolls than I have been.

Mel: So why do you think trolls seek out spiritual forums?

Della: Who's to say? Maybe they start out sincere and lose their way. Maybe they need someone to blame when they get lost. What's funny is that losers seem to NEED to try to discredit those whom they themselves decided were their "teachers" - even if no such arrangement ever existed. People have made comments to me like, 'I thought So-and-so was an apprentice of yours! That's what he said!" Well, people say all sorts of shit. I can't be responsible for their delusions or their anger when they suddenly get smacked upside the head with the realization that this really isn't some role playing game. I'm not don Juan. Never said otherwise. I feel I have quite a bit to offer in the way of experience, and maybe that makes me a teacher. If that bothers you, or threatens you or in some way disturbs you... obviously there is no obligation for you to remain here. Period. That's the part I've never fully understood. Why do these folk want to hang out and keep battering away with the same old shit? Reminds me of a kid in a store who keeps throwing the same tantrum over and over. "I want that toy and if you don't buy it for me, I'll hate you!" Translated to forum lingo, "I want enlightenment and if you don't give it to me I'm going to beat the shit out of you with words!"

Jeezus Harold Christ! When did spiritual pursuits turn into who's going to kick who's ass??? Last I heard, spiritual evolution & enlightenment are not really arrived at via violence - whether emotional or physical. Enlightenment is a process, and evolution is a movement of will over a period of time. The rest is pretty much tonal bullshit - stuff we wade through because we are human and cling to the status quo of that label. One of the most difficult traps to climb out of is the one that tries to tell us, "We are already perfect. We are already enlightened. We are already buddhas." Anyone with two brain cells to rub together knows better! Anyone who has been on a path of spiritual evolution for long enough to have learned to *see* not only knows better, but *sees* the trap inherent in that line of thinking. We all have potential. Some of us use it. Others never will. But believing we are already "there" is nothing more than abdicating responsibility. It's like saying, "We are all doctors! So I'm going to go out and start practicing medicine even though I never spent a single day in medical school." Same logic - and the results speak for themselves.

Mel: At the risk of sounding like a critic, don't you think some of what you're saying here is negative?

Della: *LOL* Of course some of it is negative! Life isn't a parade of rainbows and sunshine despite what the bliss ninnies would have you believe! That's one thing about the Toltec path that I value, though. It never tries to pretend it's anything other than what it is. To anyone who truly *sees*, things exist in balance. But in the HUMAN world, that balance is kicked out of whack by agendas, dark motives and role playing games - the favorite turf of boozers & losers. When I first started hosting a forum back in 2000, I was a lot more naive, so maybe it would have seemed I was a lot more forgiving or positive or "fluffy". In reality, how I see it from my perspective now is that I've learned a lot about people as a result of these forums. And I've learned a lot about myself. My patience is long, but not infinite. And my tolerance for gamesters & self-appointed gunslingers is zero.

Mel: Let's talk about bliss ninnies. Aren't they harmless? And if they're harmless, why would you care what they think or say or do?

Well, for starters, I don't see them as harmless. Quite the opposite. When the building is on fire and the rafters are crumbling all around, a bliss ninnie will stand in the middle of it all and say, "Yes, but it's a dry heat! And aren't the flames lovely!" Am I being facetious? Maybe to a point, but not by much. I think that someone who sees the world as sweetness and light is every bit as deluded as someone who only sees darkness & despair. But my personal beef with bliss ninnies is that they want everyone to see the world through the same rose-colored glasses they're wearing - and may the gods help you if you don't! But no matter. Let's just say that I think bliss ninnies are all fine and good but they really don't belong on a forum about spiritual EVOLUTION - because evolution is a difficult task requiring impeccability, commitment and - most of all - clarity. We won't evolve by shoving sugar up our nose or blowing smoke up one another's ass. We will evolve only by seeing the world and ourselves for what we are - and that simply cannot be done while wearing rose colored glasses.

Mel: So where do forums play into that?

Della: To be honest, I'm not sure they do. At least not anymore. There was a time when I had my old forum back on Delphi that I think things were a bit different. People actually seemed interested in sharing tales of power and learning from one another's experiences, instead of just playing the game of who's the better warrior.

Mel: Who's the better warrior? I've heard you use that before. What - exactly - do you mean by that?

Della: Oh - you know. It's the game the boozers & losers play when they run out of any other sort of ammo. If they can't win an argument, they put on their warrior mask and point the finger at everyone but themselves. "You're self-important!" Or, "You're just indulging!" Some of them create entire costumes for themselves - like a couple of the self-proclaimed "Della-bashers" out there. Gimme a break! While they're worrying about ME, they are completely ignoring their own path. Who cares what Della thinks? Hell, even *I* don't care half the time, so it always amazes me when some idiot starts running in circles trying to rally others to hate this teacher or disregard that guru or dismantle the teachings of some other guy who perhaps has a website about enlightenment. In their ruthless pursuit of "false teachers" they are doing nothing more than rattling their sabres for... ??? What? Truth, Justice & the American Way? A Unified Field Theory? Don Juan's left testicle? What?

Most times, they will claim they are afraid of being seduced into a cult or some such - which, of course, is a hysterical manifestation of that very self-importance they are railing against. Let's face it. Most cults don't really go out recruiting because they don't really NEED to. In most cases, someone who gets suckered in by a cult is LOOKING for a cult to get suckered into. Who's to say why? Loneliness, low self-esteem, lack of self-confidence. Hell, I've been accused recently of being a "cult leader" - which always makes me laugh. Yeah... right. Show me my cult. Show me the throngs of adoring followers. *LOL* Show me my Rolls Royce and my bankroll of hundred dollar bills and my assembled band of handsome young men gathered at my feet ready to peel me a grape and fan me with palm fronds. Yup. I'd like to see that cult!

You want to see a cult, go look at the Catholic Church or the Mormons or any other organized religion. Just because they are larger doesn't make them exempt. THERE is where you will find the real cults - and far more dangerous than anything you are likely to uncover on the internet. You want to talk about minds being wiped and lives destroyed? Look at any Christian in the throes of his or her religious experience. And then take a look at the prejudice, bigotry and hatred that is touted "in God's name" by any and all of these major religions. There's your cult.

Mel: What about Castaneda's cult? Amy Wallace's book claims he had quite a harem at one time.

Della: Oh, I have no doubt of it. But like I said - people who get suckered into cults are usually looking to get suckered into cults. These weren't "innocent" young women just looking for true love. They knew who CC was, and if they had two brain cells to rub together, they knew EXACTLY what kind of man he was. If they didn't, well they probably found out pretty quickly. At that point, they can either stay or leave. He certainly wasn't holding anyone prisoner. Again, look at churches if you want to see people held prisoner! As a kid, I was blasted with the program that said if I didn't believe in the xtian god, I was going to hell. If I didn't go to church, I was going to hell. If I didn't proselytize, I was going to hell. It was madness - the fear-based religions that steal not only our mind, but potentially our soul. Sure, cults can be a danger - but far LESS dangerous than organized religion.

And, bottom line, if you are worried about being suckered into a cult, use a bit more of your common sense and a bit less of your self-importance and ask yourself why a cult would want you in the first place. *LOL* Are you all that? Do you have tons of money to donate to the leader? Sure, we would talk about Heaven's Gate and their comet starship fantasies, but the bottom line is that nobody forced them into that cult. It was their choice to join on and their choice not to leave when they saw the inner workings of the madhouse. Why did they stay? Why did they eat the pudding? Who's to say? Maybe they believed in their great cause or maybe they just desperately wanted to belong, even if it meant dying to do it. Personally, I think people who fall into that kind of cult are somehow "damaged" in the first place. Yes, it's sad. No, it's not my fault. And neither you nor I can save people from themselves. So - worrying about getting suckered into a cult is rather like worrying about getting hit by falling debris from the space shuttle. Either could happen, but neither is likely - particularly if you don't choose to be standing at ground zero.

Mel: Maybe some parents are afraid their kids might get influenced by some of the stuff you've published on your website, or some of the things in CC's books, or whatever. Isn't that a legitimate concern? Kids can take things too literally for their own good.

They might just as easily mistake the works of Stephen King or Anne Rice for reality, and start running around acting like vampires or zombies. They might put on Star Trek uniforms and try to beam themselves up to the Enterprise, too. Can't censor the whole world out of fear of somebody believing they can fly after reading a Superman comic.

I don't have kids because I CHOSE not to have kids. Not saying my choice has to hold for anyone else, but it seems to me that if I DID decide to have kids, it would be up to ME to police them, and not to expect the whole world to watch out for them. Be that as it may, it just seems that we can't "protect the children" except through educating them. If you're afraid of your child getting caught up in a cult, by all means educate the child about the nature of cults - and don't then follow-up by taking them to church on Sunday, because in doing so you are just dismantling the very thing you are trying to teach them. Take responsibility for your own kids - and that means opening your own eyes in order to do that. I know a lot of xtian parents who home school their kids these days, and it's really kinda frightening when that kid gets turned loose in the real world. They simply are not prepared for the harsh reality that exists outside of their narrow cult - and that is WHOLLY and ENTIRELY and 100% the fault of the parents, who have indoctrinated them into THEIR cult because of their own crazy belief systems.

Harsh? Maybe, but it is what it is. Frankly, I'm tired of being asked to look out for everybody else's feelings and cultural taboos and belief systems, when it is patently obvious that those taboos and belief systems are PRECISELY what is responsible for all the crap going on in the world today. Rid the world of organized religion and you would see people forced to begin formulating their OWN ideas about spirituality - looking INSIDE themselves instead of hooking their intent into the cult-du-jour. Without the required agreements that stem from organized religion (and politics, for that matter), the mind is freed to find its own balance, to seek its own level. And this is especially true of children. So if people are afraid their kids might be suckered into a cult, they need to look at their own lives and determine to what extent they are programming their children to do just that...

Mel: What do you mean?

**********

This is more or less where my first dialogue with Mel ended for the evening. He is encouraging me to allow him to post two additional "interviews," but I have not yet decided whether there is any reason whatsoever to do so. Even our opinions and our speeches are, in the end, dust in the wind. That being the case, I think I'll go for a walk today and work a bit on my screenplay, and sit with my weenie dog on my lap. The rest takes care of itself.

Peering into the Magic Kingdom

Mon, 22 Dec 2008 21:14:09 GMT

A lot has happened over the last several weeks here on this forum, and on other forums & lists to which I belong. We've talked about enlightenment, the matrix, Plato's cave, transmogrification, vampires, empires, con jobs, snow jobs, hand jobs, and the meaning of life. Sometimes our talks have been pleasant and reasonable. Other times, not so. And at times of late, I find myself asking... Where are we going with this? What do we hope to accomplish here? Or on any forum or list or group, for that matter. Even if we were all to come to a single agreeement - God is a giant potato and we will all be freedom fries in the afterlife which is promised to us by The Great Spud - so what? Really. So what? Where does the agreement get us? What does it do for us? Does it advance us, or does it actually limit us? Are we here seeking freedom, or just arguing for our limitations?

When I initially opened my first forum - "The Quantum Forum" - it was largely for my own assimilation... a place where I could bounce my ideas off of others on a similar journey; challenge my beliefs to the core through direct interaction with other warriors who were wrestling with the same concepts; and essentially form a foundation of my own Knowledge. Not for any great purpose. Just to see if I know, even remotely, who I am. *shrugs* What I found over the years was that the foundation not only held - though it went through several modifications & structural changes, which I see as an ongoing evolution - but it gave me a far deeper understanding of the workings of "life" than I ever would have believed possible. Understanding "the double" led to a much broader understanding of how the energy of consciousness functions, for example, and with that understanding, I was able to formulate what amounts to a personal "plan" for burning with the fire from within, slipping past the eagle, and all those other tired old cliches which have run the high risk of becoming "just words" due to overexposure. But no matter. We all know what we're talking about... Experience>Assimilation>Knowledge>New Experience>Deeper Assimilation>Evolving Knowledge. And so the cycle goes. And all plans are subject to last minute revisions. *heh*

Lately, however, I've found myself facing some rather serious dilemmas in this whole thing. Nowhere to start except in the middle. I get about 20-50 emails per day on an average, most coming through the Quantum Shaman website. While most are "simple" in the sense that they may be someone just looking for a word of encouragement, or some acknowledgement from a stranger on the internet that they aren't alone in their experiences, there are some that are of a far more serious nature. Over the past month, I've gotten emails from one person who is at the brink of despair with health issues; another from a young man who has lost everything - home, family, career - and wants to know how he may apply his path to regaining his balance; another from someone having what she herself described as "a crisis of faith regarding the Toltec path"; another from someone wanting to come live at my house and be my "apprentice"; and dozens more from people with issues that may appear far less serious to me, but are obviously every bit as serious to them.

Aside from ascertaining that these folks had exhausted all "normal" channels first (doctors, psychologists, or what-have-you), I used to ask myself what I could do to "help" these people. Now, I just write to them and hope that spirit/gnosis/nagual will open whatever "connection" is required so that my words might point them in the direction of whatever tool or understanding they are seeking. I never know, of course. All I can do is share my knowledge, share whatever tools I've found, and make sure the person I'm talking to knows that whatever "path" they are on is THEIR path - not mine. "Here - take these tools, do what you Will with them - just don't try to recreate my path (or anyone else's) because then all you're doing is building sets on the stage of the play." Frustrating thing is, even when I have said to some of them, "I can't help you - I don't have the knowledge you're looking for," many will come back with something along the lines of, "Then help me to get to the place where you CAN help me. Do I need to take a workshop? Do I need to read any particular books, attend any particular seminars?"

No. No. And no.

Sure, I have workshops available on my website. They may even be helpful in overcoming some programs, or gaining some new techniques for stalking oneself, but ultimately no workshop or seminar is going to instill in anybody any real Knowledge. These are just tools. Take all the workshops you like. Go to all the seminars you want. But at the end of the day, if it doesn't ASSIMILATE into your "life" - if it isn't who YOU are - then it's all just fingerpainting on the deck of Titanic while the boat is going down fast. Amusement. Entertainment. A do-ing that cannot substitute for simply BE-ING present in one's life from moment to moment - aware, awake, filled with simply the love of being alive.

And yet... "So how do I wake myself up?" many ask. "How do I stay awake? How can I do with MY double what you've done with yours?"

Maybe you can't. That's MY journey. Maybe it isn't your destiny at all. If it were, I suspect you'd be do-ing it - manifesting it, creating it, experiencing it - instead of LOOKING for it. So all I can say in that regard is the same thing that's been oft-repeated here over the years. There is no path to FOLLOW. There are no "gurus" who can show you the way to enlightenment. All you really need to do is ask yourself one question: What does your heart want to do? I'm not talking about the frilly emotional baggage that often gets associated with the phrase "path of heart". I'm talking about the nitty-gritty confrontation one does in one's own mirror. Do you want to be a stock broker or do you want to be a rock star? If you DO want to be a rock star - now here's where it gets tricky - do you have the ability, the commitment, and a sufficient presence of Will to actually bring this into being?

Ain't easy.

So what does that mean in the big picture? If our heart wants to be a rock star, but we have a voice like Alvin the Chipmunk, what to do? How do we apply the path of heart to our day to day lives? Do we work as a stock broker in the day and sing karaoke in the local pub at night? Maybe. If that's what satisfies your heart, then why not?

I always wanted to be a writer. Never was able to make a reasonable living at it for many reasons, but because it is the path of my heart, I write anyway. Too much for some to handle, I'm told. But ya know what? I ain't writing ANY of it for you. This is MY journey and MY path... get it? I started writing when I was about 11, on an old Royal typewriter that would cut your fingers to the bone if they slipped between the keys and down into the inner gazurkis. And in so many ways, THAT is how I created my double. THAT is how I summoned my own muse, and breathed him into being over the years. I don't expect anyone to understand that - and I certainly don't expect anyone to try to do it in the same way. Wouldn't work anyway, because it would be a recreation of someone else's path, rather than a crying out of the human heart into the void. If you want to meet your double - if that is TRULY the path of your heart - then you will DO what it takes to manifest that reality. For me, it was Star Trek and sci-fi and going out into the night and shaking my fist at the sky, saying to the empty place in my spirit, "If I can't come to you, I'll bring you to me!"

Shake your fist at the sky. Howl and dance. Do whatever it takes to manifest YOUR dream, but for the love of life, don't try to manifest someone else's! Castaneda didn't hold the patent on awakening. It's been going on for thousands of years and has taken as many forms. And I dare say that those who DO awaken will do it on their own terms, and not at the hands of any extant guru, yogi, swami, holyman or the like. Sure, those folk have some great tools to offer, but there comes that critical point when you have to hear the beat of YOUR heart and no one else's. Then, and only then, will you have the ability to BE the journey, instead of seeing yourself as some being ON a journey.

At least several times a month, via email, I have someone essentially say they want to "walk the magical path" - but ultimately I have found that really isn't so. Not really. What they usually want is to sit at the gates and peer in at whatever magical kingdom they BELIEVE they want, but most simply are not willing to take even the first step toward manifesting the desires of their own heart. Why? Many reasons. Too many to list, but just to name the most prominent, I would say the foreign installation itself stops them at the threshhold just by saying to them, "That's crazy! It's okay to dream it, but if you ever try to BE it, they'll lock you up & throw away the key!"

Fear, in other words. Fear of losing one's sanity. Fear of a permanent displacement of the assemblage point. Fear of loneliness. Whatever it is... it is fear. The internal dialogue. The consensus reality. The agreement. All of it. The checks & balances that hold us in stasis unless and until we simply DECIDE to wake up.

And here's the thing. For those people who DO only want to sit at the gates... That's okay. But if you TRULY want to live in what we've come to call "The Sorcerer's World" - you WILL. Nothing and no one will be able to stop you, for THAT is the path of your heart. That is where your world will come alive and fill every aspect of your life - no longer any "division" between your "spirituality" and your "real life persona." They will become one and the same - or that hollow, empty place will remain and you will continue to be just an actor in your own drama. And that, too, is okay... if it's what you choose.

But IF you want to find that wholeness, that "awakening" or shifting the AP into "the sorcerer's world", you will risk everything. Maybe you will even lose everything. When I first started this journey, Orlando warned that it would cost me my friends, my family, and any sense of "belonging" to the so-called "real world", and that has certainly turned out to be the case. Not because he said it would be so, but because that is where the journey has led over many years of experience and, at times, exhaustive effort on my part to prove him wrong! But, in the end, it is what it is.

Eyebrows raise, perhaps. "Is Della saying we should leave our families and join a cult?"

No. No. And no. If you think that, you need to clean out your ears.

What I AM saying is that in MY OWN PERSONAL EXPERIENCE, I have not found it possible (nor desirable) to attempt to maintain the polite facades required for "a normal life" - and that includes interaction with those who have tried to say to me over the years, "Can't you just be more positive? Can't you just be my friend and, by the way, here's the script for what I want you to say on any given occasion. Can't you just nod politely and pretend you agree with me? Can't you just be one of the guys? Can't you be this way or that way? Can't you be who **I** want you to be instead of who you are?"

No.

That's the price. And for most, it is too high. "Well, I want freedom, but if it means having to give up my family and friends, then I have to find some other way." Good - do so. Find another way! By all means! You have to do the path of YOUR heart! When Orlando said this journey would cost me everything, what he meant was that it would become a CHOICE for me - because, ultimately, the journey itself holds far more value to me than family gatherings and polite dinners with old friends to discuss who's fucking whom and the proper care & feeding of rugrats. Don't get me wrong - those things are of ultimate value to some. Maybe to most. But to ME, I just keep finding too many "Smiths" taking on the mantra of the consensus reality, striving as always to drag us back into the programs. Phantoms on the road to Ixtlan, we call them in Toltec terms. Rest assured - they are very real, and the lure is a phenomenal force. A sense of belonging. Even love. "Just let go of all of this silly stuff you write about, Della, and you can be one of us. We'll love you and warm you and give you milk & cookies before you go to bed, and we'll all be together like a big, happy family."

Anybody here ever seen a happy family? I haven't. Oh, I've seen a lot of pageants and pretenses, but in my neck of the woods, most families aren't really "happy" nearly as much as they are stuck with one another by default. But no matter. That's MY experience. It doesn't have to be yours.

I've had a strange and wonderful life. Hope it continues for a long, long time to come. Over the years, I've had some friends who have gazed in at my strange life, and wanted to be a part of it in some deeper way (whatever that means). They want to have the experinces I've had. Or they want me to "produce" Orlando for their amusement. Or they want to be "along for the ride" when I side-step this "reality" and enter a world where time goes missing and inorganic beings hold tea parties at the edge of the abyss. Yes, I've done these things. Yes, some of them are even documented. And yet... so what? They are, quite simply, MY experiences. Yes, I DO believe others can have similar experiences, but those experiences have to be the ones YOU create - not anything that has been created for you in books, or tales by the fires of eternity. Your experiences. Yours alone.

And, yes, I will tell you that the price is high.

And yet...

If it is who you ARE, no force in the universe can stop you. If it is who you ARE, there is no price at all. You will follow your heart even if it leads you into hell, because what you will find is that you are perhaps happiest when battling the forces of hell, rather than sitting around the fire toasting marshmallows with all your personal demons.

Find YOUR voice. Even if you sing like Alvin, it will be YOUR song. Maybe nobody will love you for it. Maybe nobody will hate you for it. Doesn't matter. It's still your song, and there is not another one like it in all the universe.

Be the journey.

5 Feet

Thu, 18 Dec 2008 17:38:43 GMT

We occasionally get a bit of snow here in the high desert, but it is rather rare, and never in the quantities we have seen over the past 72 hours. Snowed 3 days ago. Stopped for a day. Then started up again yesterday morning. A cool treat for us, so of course Wendy and I decided to go out on a couple of errands just to see how the neighborhood was faring. At that time, the roads were still passable (now not at all), and since we drive one of those big American gas-guzzling SUVs with traction assist & the like, we weren't too concerned about road conditions at that point.

Finished up our errands, and on coming back into the driveway, saw that the snow was indeed getting thick. We normally park next to the gate, and undoubtedly would have done so, except for two things. First, there is a minor incline in the driveway - nothing one would even notice really - and it was there that the car began to just slide backward. Funny thing about it was that there really wasn't enough snow YET to account for that, yet the car would go no further, as if stopped by some invisible force field. It actually slid backward about 5 feet and that was simply that. Second, I said to Wendy, somewhat as a joke, "Let's just leave it here and walk up. That big tree will fall by morning."

I had no REAL reason to believe that at that point, yet the words fell out of my mouth as a statement of fact. One of those peculiar moments when I have to stop and really look at the underpinnings of reality and ask myself what I'm *seeing* that I am not really aware of on any conscious level at all. Yes, it was snowing, but hardly enough to snap trees or bend reality.

So, of course, it stands to reason that I got up this morning, and looked out to the giant pine... only to find myself looking at where the pine USED to be. It had fallen in the night, missing the car by approximately 5 feet.

The fates were kind. This time. Tree could have fallen in another direction, and would have taken out either a large fence, or the corner of the house. Tree could have fallen last night when Wendy and I were out taking pictures in the snow, and I would be writing this from the morgue.

In the aftermath, all that remains is the snow... and a hole in the sky where the tree had stood for so many years.

Got chainsaw?

Approx. 16" of powder. Skiing, anyone?

Not your typical desert landscape

Happy Winterland... and to all a good night.

Creativity & Imagination

Wed, 10 Dec 2008 01:54:02 GMT

In light of recent conversations, it occurs to me yet again that there are seemingly many different paths that lead to the same destination - or at least address the same goal. We cannot really know where our path leads until we reach the destination - and as I've come to see over the years, the journey really isn't about the destination at all, but the way in which we travel.

Awhile back, I wrote a bit called "The Toltec Religion" which has definite relevance to what I'm going to say here. Bottom line being... I don't believe that ANY path has ALL the answers, and that includes Toltec. Because I have used a lot of the Toltec terminology in the past, people assume I adhere strictly to some sort of Castaneda-esque journey. Not so. I have simply found that the Toltec terminology allows for a syntax which many can relate to, and so it has been a convenient tool for me in the past, though I've been moving away from that terminology in favor of "a new syntax" - which has also come close to resulting in some witch burning along the way. *LOL*

Thing is... as our experiences grow and evolve, it becomes necessary for our language to grow and evolve as well. That's not really the point of this ramble, but knowing it may shed some light on where I'm coming from.

In the Toltec practices, we hear a lot about detachment, unconcern, etc., and pretty soon those terms can get stuck in broad misconceptions. One person starts to belive that "unconcern" means thus-and-so, and the word unconcern becomes synonymous with "detachment" and pretty soon WAY too many people are hearing the word "blue" but seeing the color purple without ever stopping to ask if that was the original intent of the speaker (in this case, don Juan), or if it it just the meaning they themselves have attached to the word as a result of hearing it for so long. Any doubt of this, think of the word "tree" and what comes to mind? Chances are, it is a standard, almost cartoon-like idea of a tree bearing little or no resemblance to any real tree whatsoever. It is your own IDEA about the tree, but to what extent is it actually a tree at all?

So, my point here is that sometimes of late I have started to feel that the whole Toltec "syntax" may be running the high risk of turning into just "IDEAS" about a concept, with little or no resemblance to the thing the idea is attempting to describe. We say the word "dreaming" and though we all know what it MEANS, those who have been hearing it for years probably instantly form a mental picture of what dreaming is, but have little or no meta-physical reaction at all. And, frankly, I'm not sure that's a good thing. Not sure it's a bad thing either. But when we begin to lose touch with the POWER of the thing, we may run the risk of losing touch with the MAGIC of the thing as well.

Now, there are plenty of more traditional Toltecs who would say that we need to dispense with magic altogether. We need to be only rational, straightforward thinkers. Some have even gone so far as to say Dreaming itself is a waste of time, and Stalking is the only real tool for a warrior's arsenal. Rest assured, I'm not one of them. Nor would I want to be.

Sometimes I've wondered if the difference may be a gender thaaang. Most of the hard-core intellectual stalkers I know are male. Most of the witchy dreamers are female. Both would call themselves "Toltec", yet their approach to the path is virtually night and day. I'm not going to label it as a gender issue, however, because there is plenty of crossover.

In a recent conversation with a friend, I was asked to define what I would consider to be the most important aspect of (so-called) "spiritual teaching". After a bit of thought, I said that the most important thing to ME about teaching is finding something that INSPIRES someone to rise up and meet their own path head-on. I can talk all day about recapitulation and stalking and dreaming and losing self importance and stopping the internal dialogue, but if the person isn't INSPIRED, I'd might as well be whistling Dixie in Atlanta. In one ear and out the other. Old hat. Who cares?

Creativity and imagination. I realize these concepts have been frowned upon by a lot of "hard-core Toltecs", but it seems to me that they are part of our humanness, and to dismiss them as "fanciful" or "playthings of the unreal" is rather like cutting off our ability to forward think. Creativity and imagination are part of us for a reason - and after about 8 years now of functioning in the capacity of (so-called) "teacher", I have to say that the people I have seen make the greatest leaps in awareness and really come into their own authenticity are those who aren't afraid to engage creativity, imagination, even outright fantasy from time to time. It INSPIRES the spirit at a level which (in my opinion) intellectual comprehension alone simply cannot do.

Now, with that said, please don't say, "Della said imagination & creativity are better than intellect." No, Della didn't say that. What she did say is that it takes a bit of all three to really come into alignment with what I PERSONALLY believe DJM meant when he spoke of "the path with heart." That's where the wonder comes from - when we can allow ourselves to imagine, to dream-awake, to step outside of our ideas about things and experience the thing itself - even if only in our imagination. If it weren't for creative thinking, we'd all be tilling the fields with wooden hoes, never having invented the wheel.

Point being - I think it's when we are using ALL of the tools at our disposal that we are most likely to create or unearth our personal "path with heart". DJM wasn't talking about some flowery, frilly, sunshine and rainbows walk through the woods. He was talking about finding the thing that inspires you, the thing that moves you to your limit, the thing that causes you to rush out into the night, shake your fist at the sky, and say to the universe, "I am alive, and I am a magical being, and I am going to travel beyond the limitations of my humanness!" No one can tell you what that path is going to look like, because it's yours to create, yours to imagine, and - also - yours to understand at an intellectual level as well as a fanciful level.

That's why I chose the name "quantum shaman" for my website - because it speaks to the shamanic side (the magical side) as well as to the more rational/scientific side (the quantum). For me, frilly little spells of magic are little more than rituals to entertain the mind. But the REAL magic is when we can push the envelope of our human understanding (go beyond the limits "nature" set for us), and really start to comprehend at a quantum level how our shamanic abilities function. Don Juan said it was impossible to reason out the double, for example, but I have not found that to be true. The double CAN be understood if one is willing to delve even slightly into the quantum nature of this energetic universe. Through quantum IMAGINATION, we begin to see that our energy bodies are truly infinite, and so terms such as "the superposition of the assemblage point" arise as a means to express a broader/quantum understanding of our shamanic experience. To me, THAT is when it all starts to make a tremendous kind of sense - when we can look at he magic, see it working in a quantum state as well as in a shamanic state. Very empowering! Life-altering!

The thing is... we have to give ourselves permission to go beyond our paradigms, beyond even what we think of as "toltec" or "buddhism" or whatever system we have wrapped around ourselves. We have to be willing to use ALL of our tools - creativity, imagination, intellect, intuition, seeing - to create a TAPESTRY of experience, rather than just settling for a linear plodding along a well-worn trail.

The path isn't about doing what someone else did, no matter how well they did it. Castaneda's path was HIS path. He left us with a map of sorts and a syntax that has been very beneficial, but we cannot really follow his path (or anyone else's) if we want to achieve the totality of ourselves. So, for what it's worth, I'm finding that moving beyond some of the toltec terminology is ultimately freeing, and precisely what is required for moving beyond the limits of any "system".

So, even though creativity and imagination are not often spoken of in Toltec circles, I just felt it important to remind myself that when this becomes some sterile path of following the rules & regs of "toltec", I'm outta here, and on the first train to freedom. Even if I have to imagine the train and create the tracks.

Come to think of it... maybe I'll just walk. Otherwise, too easy for those tracks to become... well... tracks. Here's to getting OFF the tracks and into the heart of whatever inspires us toward our totality.

No rules. No regs.

Just open road.

How Deep Does the Rabbit Hole Go?

Tue, 25 Nov 2008 19:10:42 GMT

In another group I belong to, the following quote was posted:

By believing passionately in something that still does not exist, we create it. The nonexistent is whatever we have not sufficiently desired. ~ Nikos Kazantzakis

...followed by the question: to what extent do you think this is a true statement? To what extent DO we create our own reality? What follows here is a condensed commentary that came forth from the discussion - just some points I feel might have relevance to anyone on a path of personal evolution.

How Deep Does the Rabbit Hole Go?

What's that famous quantum tenet I'm always quoting? Oh, yeah - "All things exist within the realm of possibility, but only some things will be forced to go through the motions of actually occurring."

So... another question that arises might be... Upon what do we base our criteria for those things we truly WANT to go through the motions of actually occurring? What makes the desire sufficient to serve as a force of creation (to harken back to the original quote that started this thread)? I've been spending a lot of effort on the idea of transmogrification - not because it is some idle "wish list", but because it would rewrite the paradigm of what we think of as "life and death". And instantly, spines stiffen. *heh* Who are YOU to fly in the face of the oldest paradigm of all - life and death? No one special. Just me. Just someone who has stripped away all the belief systems she can, and stands face to face with the abyss of death, humbly admitting she doesn't have one clue as to what lies beyond that veil. Sure, as warriors, sorcerers & wo/men of knowledge, we have some pretty good theories based on a lifetime of exploration, but no one really Knows. And that's the hell of it. So our programming is such that we tell ourselves all of those nice little fairy tales by the fire - we transcend, we transform, we evolve, we shift our assemblage point to the infinite, we merge with the eternal...

All just yada if we are brutally honest with ourselves. We know only what we are Now. And this is funny for me to be saying, because I feel utterly blessed to have Orlando's guiding presence from "outside of time" and beyond that very veil to which I am referring. However, I cannot deny (and he has never tried to convince me otherwise) that ALL of this is directly attached to some manner of what we call "life". Near death experience? We can easily agree that those who come back to tell the tale are not really dead. That's why it's called a NEAR death experience. *heh* Journeys with allies? We are still connected to a corporeal form, and though I would perhaps argue vehemently that the things I have experienced on such journeys are quantifiable, the fact remains that we are STILL connected to that corporeal form. Brain. Synapse. Experience. Conclusion. Belief. Program.

Now I'm picking on myself. 'Cuz that's what warriors and sorcerers and wo/men of knowledge DO when they are struggling to move beyond some old paradigm.

Ultimately, I am challenging the very NATURE of our existence - right down to the core molecular level of what we are. We live, and as creatures who have been programmed to have a dualistic nature, we accept automatically that we will therefore die. We accept the reality with which we are presented, challenging it only so far as we are WILLING to challenge it. And what I have found is that even most warriors are usually not willing to delve into what they might consider to be "intrinsically human" issues - specifically, the whole notion of just how much of life is a belief system, and just how much of what we believe about death is a program which has sunk its hooks so deep into our awareness that we accept it even without questioning it.

Don Juan said, "We are beings who are going to die." Funny, since if you read CC's works carefully, two things are fairly certain: 1) DJM himself never "died" in the sense that most humans would define death; and 2) DJM never "lived" in the sense that most humans would consider life. Sure, it could be argued that this is just Della's opinion, and therefore dismissed, but what would be served by doing so? Point being - why does it make us uncomfortable to challenge the idea of death? And why would we accept even don Juan's word for it - "We are beings who are going to die!" - when those words wer allegedly spoken by a man who "left this earth in the manner of a sorcerer." Well, personally, I think it disturbs us for the same reason computers start to get twitchy if a new program is uploaded that comes into conflict with an old one. The whole system becomes unstable, and may even crash. And... then what? What next? Rut roh! If we're NOT beings who are going to die, or at the very least, if we are beings who don't HAVE to accept that programming, then what the hell are we going to do with ourselves to force THAT possibility to go through the motions of actually occurring? Well, that's the next question.

My main point here is that warriors, sorcerers and wo/men of knowledge have to be open to challenging and destroying even their most deeply-held programs - up to and ESPECIALLY those of which they are entirely unaware. Have we accepted death as a species for so long that it has become ingrained into our nature? Does your automatic programming kick in and protest that "death is just a transition!" just at reading these words? Is the program so deep within us that we will not ALLOW ourselves to see it because we already believe we cannot alter it?

Just asking the questions. Just disturbing the status quo. Not important whether anyone agrees or disagrees. This is simply what I have to do. For myself.

Following through: an expansion of gnosis

Tue, 25 Nov 2008 19:06:16 GMT

Sometimes I work with gnosis as what amounts to an ongoing conversation over several days. After working with Orlando's comments here and reading what others had to say, I decided to return to this line of thinking. Over a period of perhaps 48 hours, moving fluidly in and out of gnosis, this is the conversation which occurred between myself & Orlando.

*********

Della: You say that when we think of ourselves as biological entities, we are already defeated. I agree with this from a philosophical vantage point, and yet I look in the mirror and see my body deteriorating. Another illusion, yes, but a powerful one. So my question is: what/where/how is the trigger mechanism that gives us the ability to EXPERIENCE ourselves as an energy being as opposed to a biological entity? Is there a process, a mechanism, a method?

Orlando: Ah, you want to be the man behind the curtain instead of playing the role of Dorothy looking on in wonder. The trick is simply this: what is involved in doing the impossible is to first ALLOW the impossible, and second to force a seemingly drastic shift of the assemblage pointt which is, in reality, only a minor nudge.

Della: Say more about 'the impossible'. What is meant by 'allow the impossible'.

Orlando: Examine your own belief matrix, and you will find (as all humans do) that certain things have been filed under the category of impossible, largely as a result of your programming. You would say it is impossible to fly, for example, yet you do it in Dreaming, and certain men of knowledge may levitate or even fly within their (seemingly) biological forms - which, of course, are not really biological at all. You may believe it is impossible to become transformed while in corporeal form, again because that is the programming with which you have been fitted within the consensus. Turn your mind around and look at it like this: it is commonly believed even among spiritual adepts that transformation occurs at death because most spiritual adepts accept that program and, in doing so, wait around to die. Yes, the transformation you seek may occur at death, because THEN there is no alternative, if it is to occur at all. And yet, it is a humanform belief/program that tells you it is necessary to die first. The most difficult death you will ever experience is the one while you are still alive, and that is the death of which Goethe spoke: "die and be transformed."

Della: So, then boiling all of that down, it's a shift of the assemblage point. Like the holymen who walk through fiery furnaces without being consumed, with no ill effects. Certainly that is some sort of movement of the assemblage point, too, right?

Orlando: Yes. What you are seeking, however - complete and lasting transformation - is a shift of the assemblage point that would not allow for a complete return to ordinary awareness. That is why fear and doubt stops most humans from ever making the attempt - and so, they follow the course of least resistance, accepting their transformation only after going through the humanform act of dying.

Della: You said that the belief that we are beings who are going to die is sufficient to kill us, yet don Juan said something to the effect that only when we realize we are beings who are going to die do we have sufficient motivation to create our path. Can you speak to that?

Orlando: It might be said that don Juan knew Carlos did not have sufficient personal power to force the movement of the assemblage point beyond certain limits, which Carlos had imposed upon himself. To accept that you are a being who is going to die is to place upon yourself a limitation. To believe 'all things die' is to live in a predeterminant reality, a limited one which does not allow the impossible. To accept that you are a being who is going to die is to accept the death sentence without ever trying to escape from the prison.

Della: You said that a complete and lasting transformation would not allow for a complete return to ordinary awareness. Can you be more specific?

Orlando: Those few who achieve this transformation at the level you are seeking it do not tend to return to their ordinary lives for the same reason that humans do not often choose to live in the jungle with the apes. Though there would remain some similarity of appearance, any commonality of language, vision, and state-of-being would no longer exist. And it is there that fear stops most humans from ever making the attempt - attachments to the trappings of their humanform lives.

***

It was here that I had to put the gnosis on hold to attend to those very trappings, and to contemplate what is being communicated. As I really allow my mind to wrap around some of this, I must confess that it brings me face to face with those attachments in ways that are both enlightening and perhaps disheartening. Nobody said this was going to be easy, which is why I only get into gnosis exercises with advanced warriors who are (hopefully) sufficiently fluid to flow with the punches.

When Orlando speaks about our fears, doubts and attachments, I find myself wanting to say, "But that's such an elitist and maybe even defeatist attitude!" and yet I wholly realize that he is 100% correct in his assessments. If we are honest with ourselves, we really don't want to live with the apes, and a massive shift of the assemblage point would have the immediate and profound effect of making us, essentially, "no longer human" - and far beyond what CC inferred when he spoke of "losing the human form."

I was also especially intrigued with Orlando's comments about "allow the impossible", as this is a subject I have been working with for a couple of months now - examining my own beliefs/comfort zones with regard to what I am willing to "allow". Case in point: if I were to engage this massive shift of the assemblage point and simply "die and be transformed", to what extent would it affect my ordinary life? Huge question - and anyone who says otherwise is most likely not being entirely honest with him/herself. Point being, our attachments are often the things we are not even aware of until we are faced with the possibility of losing them.

This is one of the byproducts of gnosis as well - by allowing ourselves to focus "outside the box", by permitting ourselves to experience our personal connection to the infinite, we expand our awareness outside of our existing comfort zones & belief systems, to the extent that we then find ourselves face to face with them.

Ask the next question, Orlando says. If there is any one thing that will stave off complacency and invite expansion, that is it: always ask the next question, even if the answer shakes your foundation to its core and destroys it, or even if there is no answer at all.

Opening to Gnosis

Wed, 12 Nov 2008 15:46:39 GMT

In a private group I belong to, we've been working with "opening to gnosis" - essentially asking a question of the sentient universe (double, higher self, wider awareness... whatever you want to use as your imagery-du-jour), as a means to strengthen our awareness.

My question was focused on the idea of examining JUST how deep our programming goes. I sat in a meditative state and focused on a "concept" more than any single question. What IS death? Is it really an inevitable occurrence? What about Castaneda's encounters with "the tenant"? Where do we really stand with regard to our bid for "freedom"? Is "freedom" another word for eternal life (continuity, singularity, whatever)? This is what came back...

***

Humans die not because they must, but because that is the nature of their communal belief - it is the dictate of the consensus, and so the program has become a biological imperative even though biology itself is only an illusory manifestation of energy, and is not truly organic at all if one is willing to *see* beyond the veil and peer deep into the scheme of the dream. To think of oneself as a biological entity is to enter the battle already defeated, no?

You ask about death as if it is a reality, and so you are accepting already some measure of your programmming, and it is sufficient to kill you because you already believe you are a being who is going to die.

Does it trouble you that I might challenge one of the very cornerstones of the human belief system? ARE you a being who is going to die? Are you a BEING at all, or is that, too, only a mode of perception from which you then attach meaning and define absolutes? And in defining absolutes (you are a being who is going to die, you say), do you then predetermine through the perception that you are ALIVE, that life must naturally have its opposite (death), and so you enter into the arena of the living already predeterminately being a being who is going to stop being?

The secret to living forever is Knowing you were never alive to begin with, because even the word 'alive' carries with it the baggage of centuries, the belief systems of an entire species. So to believe (an assumption) that you are alive (a concept, but an erroneous one) is to step into the battlefield not as a warrior but as a victim of the consensus.

What to do? Are you willing to have one more world yanked out from under you? Are you able to consider that everything you believe you know about death and life are only comfort zones intrinsic to the mindset of your ancestors, and so you carry them with you as cancers on your Dream even when you may think you have dispensed with them?

The secret to immortality is this: when you know you are already dead, you may transcend this prison which insists you are a being who is going to die. The immortals do not believe they will live forever. Neither do they know it. It is simply their nature to do so because the matrix of their knowing is based on the I-Am rather than the weight of any consensus. We cast no reflection because we are whole unto ourselves, and so what might be seen in the mirror is only what humans might choose to project, yet it is an image projected onto a transparent screen, and cannot reflect - for to reflect would be to enter again into the agreement, yes? We thrive on existence itself, taking sustenance from the pulsing heart of the sentient universe, knowing it is an endless river and can never be drained, for it stems from the self, and therefore can never die.

To live forever is to undo death, to be as legends speak of, undead - but also un-alive, yet in being "un-alive" we finally will ourselves to Unconditional Life. To be immortal is to have no opposite, for it is in the friction of opposition that deterioration begins.

Perhaps it may best understood like this: "Until you have grasped this: 'die and be transformed!' you will be nothing but a somber guest on the sorry earth."

And so I give you this task: examine those words from beyond the words and listen with your heart for what they might mean. It is more than any casual thesis I am asking you to write. Instead, it is the rewriting of your entire paradigm that will set you free, but only when you *see* the Dream from beyond even the lucidity of the Dream.

Orlando - November 11-12, 2008

***

For the record, the quote "Until you have grasped this: 'die and be transformed!' you will be nothing but a somber guest on the sorry earth," is attributed to Goethe.

Abandon Hope, Reclaim Freedom

Sun, 09 Nov 2008 17:52:53 GMT

ABANDON HOPE ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE

As a result of several different and ongoing conversations at various forums on the net, the subject of "hope" has arisen as a topic which I feel may bear closer examination. I'm going to present this as a series of dialogues between myself & several other posters. I'm not saying I'm right. But neither do I believe I am wrong.

Fair warning: if you are someone who needs your faith and your hope, read no further. It isn't my intent with this commentary to rob anyone of their comfort zones, but neither do I intend to go on smiling and nodding when it is clear to me as a *seer* that so much of what we BELIEVE about "hope" and "faith" are little more than programs placed onto us at some early moment in our childhood when our parents had no answers to those annoying little questions like - "Mommy, what happens when we die?" We are spoon-fed answers such as, "Well, honey, we have faith in god and hope he will take us into heaven." Or something equally as ludicrous. After awhile, maybe we are lucky enough to lose our notions of "god" and "heaven", but for some reason, we are left with the notions of "faith" and "hope" as some sort of extant forces into which we invest our belief and our energy.

So, abandon hope all ye who enter here. (It might scare you to death, but it an also make you free).

***

"Mary" writes (In response to my rant about Human Sacrifices):
Even you are not above being bitterly frustrated and pissed off, your eloquent rant was full of such emotions and that is perfectly as it should have been and baby you were preaching to the choir. It is ok to be mad - it makes you human - which you still are. [?]

Quantum Shaman: Well, I'm still in the meat suit, but as to being "human"? I rather doubt it. I was saying in another forum this morning that essentially there are at least 2 differnt "species" of "man-apes" on the planet at present - the "humans" and the "seekers" (sorry, don't have a better word for it). We may all look essentially the same on the surface, but the mental/spiritual/philosophical functioning of the two species is so different that essentially communication is not possible.

As for being pissed off and frustrated - you betcha! *LOL* I don't think I ever implied otherwise. I'm not one who believes that "enlightenment" comes with some angelic choir always playing in the background of a perfectly balanced and peaceful life. That's Hollywood. When we are aware, we find ourselves saddled with what amounts to a huge responsibility - evolution, staying awake, and at some level, "teaching" (though that is a concept that would require more explanatory yada than I am willing to manage at the moment). Anyway - point being that I have always found the following cliche to be very true:

If you're not outraged, you're not paying attention.

Mary writes:
But as long as you keep ranting I will keep pointing out that that portion of our society, that part that is filled with fear of "the other", that is "bitterly clinging to it's religion is dying. Literally dying off... slowly ever so slowly - admittedly far to slowly for those of us who care passionately about these issues.

Quantum Shaman: Hmmmm. I haven't seen much evidence of this - at least not in this part of the country. Not trying to be argumentative, just that I see more and more and MORE "young xtians" sending their spawn off to xtian schools, creating a whole new generation of the same old shit. *sighs heavily* When I was in my early 20s, I honestly thought I would see the world "change" in the sense that the crazy old Bible thumpers would die out and then maybe "sanity" would gain a foothold. But that really hasn't happened. Xtianity has become a huge commodity and a huge fad - it's popular to be a Jesus freak these days, whereas when I was a kid, it was considered the geekiest of the geekiest.

I wanna believe in hope. Honest, I do! But I also have to be true to what I honestly *see* - and a lot of it lately isn't so good. So the question I've been asking of folks really boils down to... where does our responsibility lie in this regard? Do we have a responsibility to "save the world"? Not trying to stir up trouble, for I realize how sensitive these questions may appear. But I do feel they are questions we must ask. Put simply: where does our responsibility lie? To the world? To the self? Where do we expend our energy? In the world? In pursuit of our own evolution? Some ask what Jesus would do. Others ask what don Juan would do. In either case, I don't think either of them would waste much energy on trying to "save the world". Jesus had his 12 disciples (apprentices), and don Juan had his warrior's party (apprentices). Beyond that, I think both pretty much saw the world as folly. One tried to change it (and got crucified). The other left the earth in the manner of a sorcerer (whatever that ultimately means). And the rest of us are left to contemplate the aftermath, becoming our own "sorcerer" or our own "savior", however we prefer to look at the parallel mythos.

I think what is troubling to me is that for as much as the elections have brought "hope" to a lot of people, it is inevitable that the pendulum will swing in the other direction. People are calling Obama "the savior" or "the messiah". He's just a man, and sooner or later, he is going to disappoint their expectations, and the cycle will repeat. Reason being - people here in this country (in particular) have not yet (and may never) wrapped their minds around the idea that it is THEMSELVES who must "change". Obama cannot bring "change". No politician can. A good leader can show us, perhaps, the changes we need to make in ourselves... but that tends to lead (historically speaking) to getting crucified or burned at the stake. :( People don't want to be reminded of THEIR responsibility to the equation. Believe me - I've stepped into that role a few times, and it ALWAYS leads to someone pointing out my self-importance and telling me what an asshole I am for DARING to point out change is a PERSONAL commitment that is going to require that ugly 4-letter- word: W O R K. *LOL* Tends to land you squarely in last place in any popularity contests, believe me.

So... ultimately, I may feel slightly encouraged by the results of the presidential election, but the results of nearly ALL of the "human rights" propositions across the nation just prove that humans are still the bigoted nitwits they have always been, thumping their Bibles and rattling their sabres for Jesus. Call me a cynic, but I don't really *see* any change there. Seems that every minority group has to fight for its "civil rights" - blacks, women, hispanics, jews, gays, lesbians, pagans, children, et al. When you really think about it, it's just abject madness. It's all just human rights - and having to FIGHT for that is rather like having to fight for the right to breathe. We live in a nuthouse and the lunatics are running the asylum. I'd love to believe they will all die out, but unfortunately, not soon enough. (Gee, was that bitchy?) *heh*

So, for me it's coming down to brass tacks lately. Life is short. I know in my heart that I cannot save the planet, cannot really save anything but myself, and even that is questionable ('cuz no one can really know with certainty what lies beyond our final breath). That being the case, I have begun focusing my energies much closer to home - essentially working with those who cross my path, rather than trying to "reach out" to the world at large. Again, not a popular approach, perhaps, but one I find to be honest for myself.

WHAT ARE WE LOOKING FOR??

Those who have known me for any length of time already know I am not particularly "sweetness and light" in my approach to this path. Quite the contrary, I have found it to be a path of "dark enlightenment" - in the sense that much of the Knowledge and experience we acquire isn't particularly "pleasant". We use the term "warriors" - but what are we at war with? Simple - our comfort zones, belief systems, our ego and the baggage of the consensus we bring with us from our "ordinary lives".

Are we willing to challenge those things? Or are we only looking for a feel-good agreement to our existing belief systems?

When Orlando first began working with the three of us, he challenged us right down to the core level of our thought processes - particularly when we would respond to one of his questions with a platitude. I remember once he asked me, "Della, how do you define 'the right way to live'?" I responded with some clever (or so I thought) quip about, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." Some bit of recycled shite floating around in my brain from my old programming. So easy to see in hindsight. So impossible to see when we are stuck in the program. Needless to say, his response was rather brutal, as I believe both Wendy and A____ would attest. It went something like this...

"Then how would you define doing unto others? What does that mean to you? Do you agree with them blindly in the hopes they will agree with you - even if and when you are wrong? Do you form unwritten and unholy alliances based on some notion of approval or reciprocal courtesies? And if that is the case, what do you then owe to that person, that you may not want or be able to give? Do you smile at their errors and hold your silence because that is how you would want to be treated, ignoring the fact that you will only go on repeating the same errors through ignorance? Do unto others... Is that REALLY how you would define the right way to live, or is that just some bit of garbage stuck on your hard drive that you recite when challenged by a question to which you have no answer?"

Got my attention. And it made me think.

And therein lies the rub. If we are going to be honest, if we are going to be true to our path (whatever it may be), can we afford those little consensuses that often occur even in warrior circles, wherin you agree with me and expect me to agree with you? Or, is it perhaps far more of an honor and a service to others to treat them with the dignity and respect that says, "I love you enough to challenge your thinking - and I BEG you to do the same for me!"

At any rate... The post below stems from a question relating to faith, trust, hope and love. I had asked the question (ultimately unpopular), "How do these things change the world?" One poster made the comment that she has "faith" in - "the universe, spirit, and power." Which, of course, leads to the inevitable discussion below.

STALKING OUR OWN ASSIMILATION
Forming A Workable Syntax

Quantum Shaman: In what do you base your faith, in what do you place your hope?

Anonymous responds: The universe, spirit, and power.

Quantum Shaman: Frankly, I don't think discussions such as this can be answered with one or two-word responses, but that's just me. In trying to understand where YOU are coming from, I offer my own reference points and attempt to make them clear. But, of course, in the bigger picture, even if you and I came to an understanding (formed a consensus), it really would make no difference whatsoever. So... in many ways, we have to acknowledge that most forum discussions are little more than exercises in stalking our own assimilation.

In talking to you or anyone else on a forum, my agenda isn't to change YOUR mind, but to thoroughly challenge and explore my own. That's what stalkers do. When I am in Dreaming mode, I "inhabit the experience in the Now", but the reason Toltec teaches that a warrior must learn both dreaming AND stalking is because there does come a time when we are required (by ourselves) to form a foundation of Knowledge that is both fluid and cohesive, at the same time. Dreaming (fluidity) and stalking (cohesion).

So, this question is posed from the point of view of a stalker: When you say you have faith in the universe, spirit and power... my question becomes... how would you define those things? What I'm getting at is that when people say they have faith in spirit or the universe, they are usually envisioning some manner of extant "power" - whether god, goddess, atman, or other - and at that point, there is still what amounts to an abdication of power and responsibility from the "self" to something "other". Maybe that's not what you mean. That's what I'm trying to get at here. What DO you mean? Without a further refernce point, they are just words hanging in a void. What is the universe? What is spirit? What is power? Just trying to point out that our definitions of these things, and our experience of them, is not going to be the same, so part of coming to an understanding involves building a common language (as much as is possible - which may be altogether impossible...

The bottom line is simply this: too many people I encounter fall into comfort zones of believing that if they wish for something or hope for something, it is going to come to them. That was part of the whole platform of the latest spiritual fad - "The Secret." The concepts may work at a core level, but unless combined with actual ACTION (dreaming and stalking working together - thought/idea becoming manifested through intent)) they tend to sit dormant in the back of the mind as a "comfort zone". We lose ourselves in "hoping" and put off the "do-ing".

My intent is only to challenge my own comfort zones - and that often comes in the form of presenting ideas that are not particularly popular. My contention is that if I am "disturbed" by something you say (or vice versa) the stalking exercise has been successful. Obviously (to me anyway) knowledge cannot be traded in the form of words alone. Anything you say to me, anything I say to you, must be filtered through our own processes - and hopefully somewhere in that do-ing, we not only understand ourselves better, but we also build a more cohesive "foundation" that welcomes challenge as an opportunity for growth, rather than automatically retreating from it as a threat to ego or existing comfort zones.

I do see a fine line between challenge and what I have referred to as hammering or badgering, but those are normally tactics employed by trolls and phantoms, so I will simply state that a challenge is something that forces you to think deeper about your own path, and badgering/hammering is an attempt to force a consensus when one does not, in fact, exist. But to the point...

So, since it seem to be an issue and a question, allow me to say that I'm not seeking an "argument." I'm trying to stimulate my own thinking by engaging with others. That is not going to involve joining any consensus and there will be times when it will not even be "politically correct." But, in the bigger picture, isn't that what the path is all about? Challenging our comfort zones? Abolishing all belief systems (including what we believe about words), until we stand face to face with the authentic self?

If we're just here to agree with one another, we're wasting our time.

BUT THAT'S NOT WHAT YOU SAID A MINUTE AGO!

Catherine writes:
While I agreed it was a harsh backlash in passing Prop 8, I was frankly surprised by the rant. For one thing, not only Xtians, but other religions are not tolerant of gay life for 1000s of years. Sure, there are a predominance of Xtians, but they are protecting their resources.

Quantum Shaman: First, *heh* the writer ofthe rant reserves the right to remain unpredictable and may vote, not vote, or rant about either side of the argument with equal vehemence at any given time. That's the nature of fluidity - being able to do what is required at any given moment. I had not PLANNED to vote, and ultimately I maintain my original standpoint. Voting is largely a futile exercise in self- importance. But no matter. I voted on the gay marriage thing because it affects me. No other reason.

Catherine writes: The other thing that surprised me about the rant was it was by a person who said several times (I may have the wording wrong) that voting was useless.

It is. Utterly. However, if you want to do it as your controlled folly, that's entirely up to you. Like I said in the rant, I decided literally at the last minute to indulge in the play, to nibbble at the edge of the drama. As previously *seen*, however, nothing has changed. Voting remains useless. Yes, an unpopular opinion - but I seem to be full of those this week. *LOL* And, for the record, it isn't "just" that I am pissed off. It's the result of a wicked clarity that tells me - sadly - people really do believe their little feel-goodisms and cling to their "old ways" out of fear and bigotry rather than any genuine desire to "protect" their children or the sanctity of their marriage.

Comfort Zones & Serpents in the Garden

As this topic has branched out into other discussions elsewhere, I wanted to bring some additional thoughts into the mix. A very eloquent post was made, wherin it was acknowledged that 1) to anyone on the path, hope is useless; and 2) hope and despair exist equally, and it is important to keep both in perspective.

I feel it is important to look at these topics closely, since a large part of an advanced warrior's path often centers around the question - "What next?" - and in my opinion, we are only able to move forward if/when we are willing to dispense with the illusions that hold us in the stasis of our existing ego & belief systems. So, if these words challenge you, that's good. That's something I've had to learn the hard way - that challenge in and of itself is not a bad thing (leaving badgering & hammering out of it).

I am using this dialogue to look at how deeply we (you, me, all of us) may cling to our "ideas" about hope, faith, etc., and how much of what we believe is true, as opposed to being nothing more than a potential attempt at a "buffer zone" against the darker enlightenment.

*****

To someone who is on the path, it is patently obvious, as one awake & aware poster stated, that "hope is useless." I also agree with his assessment about spreading hope and despair somewhat equally. In my own work, that is critical. We have to be willing to let our world(s) fall BEFORE we have much "hope" of building a new one - and lately, I've seen way too many people so high on the dope of "hope" that they are simply unwilling and (as a result) UNABLE to see beyond the narrow focus of that high. Rather like being stoned. Seems like it will last forever, until you crash, and then it's often a long, downward spiral into the darkness - which was always there, but was obscured by the "drug".

For what it's worth, I'm not "down" on hope or love and light. It is simply my "path" to be the serpent in the garden - MY OWN! *heh* And, occasionally, others are going to take the apple and then get bent out of shape because it opens their eyes to something they don't want to see. *shrugs* So I'm not sure what the answer is - seriously. Nod and smile in silent approval? I simply feel, in general, that some manner of "logical" thinking needs to be injected into the conversations that center around the notions of faith and hope. Because, frankly, ideas like "hope" and "faith" are not particularly logical, and particularly among those on the path. Sorry to be so "dark" here, but "hope and faith" are words that belong in a campaign speech or a pulpit.

Toltec is a brutal path in many ways. I don't label myself as Toltec, per se, but most of my practices & spirit-work parallel that line of thinking. Don Juan was not a man of "hope" or "faith". And there is a lot of wisdom in the old Biblical adage, "Abandon hope, all ye who enter here." And, yet, I also totally agree that we don't swing automatically to the other extreme - despair. To those who want/need to hear this, I will say there is a "balance" between hope and despair, and that centerpoint is, simply, sobriety - reason, clarity, fluidity. Those dwelling in "hope" cannot find that centerpoint anymore than those dwelling in despair may find it. The pendulum swings - but only if we allow it, only if we are willing to acknowledge that hope and despair are EQUALLY folly, and then find our personal centerpoint.

The "problem" as I see it is that so much new age clap trap has been injected into the world that even those who genuinely WANT to be on a path toward spiritual evolution are blinded by the "light" - e.g., the whole notion of "The Secret" is just new age feel-goodism as it was packaged (even though the core ideas may be effective, the manner in which it was sold was pure snake oil, yet gobbbled up by millions). I go into the book store and pick up books on the "metaphysical" shelf at random, and I'm appalled! "Enlightenment" is offered to us in the form of "love and light", completely ignoring the fact that "grief and darkness" are no less real - and every bit as powerful. Here in the US in particular, we are inundated with the xtian notion of some guy saving our souls so we may go to heaven, but in the same unspoken breath, this means, "Only if you are like us, only if you agree with us, only if you are a heterosexual middle-class American with 2.4 children and a willingness to turn a blind eye on all the EVIL the church does in the name of God. Hey, Brother, can you spare a thousand bucks, by the way"

So, on forums like The Sorcerer's World, I tend to think that the participants WANT to challenge their belief systems every bit as much as I do. As a result, a lot of my opinions are not particularly popular, nor would I expect them to be.

So, for what it's worth, that's where I'm coming from. I am very willing to commit to exploring the path with others, but not to blindly agreeing with them because it makes them "feel good". I consider that a huge disservice, and nothing more than an attempt to maintain some illusion of a "pleasant status quo." That's not what this path is about for me. We either commit to challenging down to the core level our belief systems, or we are utterly wasting our time. To me, that IS the centerpoint between hope and despair.

TAKING BACK OUR POWER

M wrote: Ask yourself this question. Are you able to push on regardless, when all hope is gone? Action does not come from hope, it comes from desire. Emotional desire is the source of all action, even when that desire is about avoidance of pain. Hope however is like a gateway. You may desire to do something, but if you see no possibility of succeeding, then your desire is blocked, and thus your action is blocked.

Quantum Shaman: One of the exercises I've done in my workshops is to pose the following question to folks: "If you woke up tomorrow and discovered you were the last living human on Earth, would you have any desire to continue your path toward spiritual evolution?" In short, this question forces folks to come face to face with the concept that every one of us really IS the last person on Earth, even though there may be 6 billion others all around us. What it also forces us to confront is to what extent we may be basing even our "desire" for evolution on some comparison/competition with others. If we are the last one, what are we evolving BEYOND? What are we evolving TO? I feel that questions of this nature are criticla as a means to jolt us out of our ordinary awareness thinking.

I've had warriors give answers running the extremes - everything from saying they would just continue on as usual, to saying they would "summon up some faith", to saying they would simply end their life through a movement of pure intent. Only once did I hear someone say what I thought was an actual Don Juan-esque answer. It was simply this: "I'd realize I had dreamed myself into that position for a reason, and I would seize the Dream and use lucid intent to create my heart's desire in my brave little private new world."

Now THAT would be a manifestation of "hope" in some people's eyes, but at the core reality of it, it would really be a movement of energy at the level of spirit - the ability to carry on when all passive "hoping" is gone.

M wrote: Where this is seen clearly, is when we are proceeding with hope of achieving. Then hope turns to hopelessness - what do we do? What do you do? Do you drop your bundle and give up? What is the point of carrying on along some road when it is patently pointless?

Again, this gets to the core of my own thinking. When we are looking for a "point to carrying on along some road when it is patently pointless" we are ESSENTIALLY seeking some sort of extant agreement, even if we don't realize it initially. A "point" is based on an agreement, and a warrior's centerpoint is solely herself - so no agreements are required, no validation sought (beyond a certain beginning-point of the path). The point to carrying on at that juncture would simply be our own impeccability - we play the game *as if* it matters, knowing all the while that it is our controlled folly. Abandoning hope can be a great exercise in losing self-importance and releasing our attachments to self-pity. When all hope is gone, we realize we are finally FREE, even of our own belief systems.

When you have lost all hope, you have nothing left to lose. And the keypoint is that this includes despair. When a warrior truly abandons hope, s/he also abandons despair - with the full awareness that both are arbitrary positions of the assemblage point based on the subtle agreeements we form when we are looking for a "point" to anything, or a "meaning." It's all arbitrary, and it's all inside of us. Not by default, but by an awakening of our awareness. Someone I know likes to say, "We are all Buddhas" - but I have never liked that statement, because it implies that we need do nothing in order to be "perfect." On one level, MAYBE that is true, but I don't personally see it. We all have the POTENTIAL to be Buddhas, but to MANIFEST that potential requires the work of losing our programming, diving into the abyss, and seeing what (if anything) of our "past life" survives that dark enlightenment.

M wrote: We should choose our road, our action, and not based on outcomes alone. This allows us the extra level to be able to keep pushing on, when all hope is gone, because we are not the servant of hope! It is absolutely critical we grasp this understanding.

Quantum Shaman: Just had to bring this forward, because it is so critical, and yet so often overlooked. We are not the servant of hope! Nor are we the slaves of despair. Either may be used as a tool, but the trick is to let go of the tool before it glues itself to our hand, to see it for what it is, and then go BEYOND its hooks.

M wrote: Hope is also meaning. We persevere because our actions have meaning - we see that they are right and meaningful for us. But when all of a sudden they become meaningless, wrong, futile - can you still persevere when your efforts are obviously pointless?

This is where we CAN begin to claim our own personal power and use it for something other than parlour tricks. When we truly wrap our minds around the idea that ALL "meaning" is what we assign to something (an event, an object, a life path), we have given ourselves permission to DRIVE the boat instead of just being on board for the ride. It's all arbitrary - which means all bets are off and all rules are out the window. We then begin to find meaning in our actions because we have become AWARE of our actions and have potentially begun to act with impeccability rather than some ambiguous "faith" that spirit or our allies are going to guide us in the right direction. When we finally grasp this, we have become Spirit, and we ARE the allies.

Human Sacrifices - A Rant

Wed, 05 Nov 2008 18:05:36 GMT

Well, it looks at this hour as if Prop 8 has passed here in California. What is prop 8? Well, it essentially says that only a "man and a woman" can be married. Everything else is an abomination in the eyes of god. If it passes (which it apparently has), it means that gay marriage is outlawed, and it will require a rewriting of the California constitution.

All in the name of God, of course. Praise be to the fear-mongering followers of the Nazi in the funny hat. Pffft.

WHAT THE FUCK EVER HAPPENED TO THE SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE?

Since when does the Catholic Church, under the guise of "The Knights of Columbus" fund a proposition that is clearly nothing more than a hate-mongering bit of drivel driven by fear, prejudice, bigotry, and anger? C'mon, people, open your goddamn eyes! I say "goddamned" because if you are that blind, then surely God must have blinded you in order to hold you in bondage - a slave to some rhetoric that is neither logical, nor even rational. What's amazing is that the State of California FELL for it! And we are allegedly a state of creative spirits, intellectuals, and philosophers. We are also, apparently, a state of fundy-dunderheads who have lost the ability to think progressively instead of regressively.

I alternate between a sense of outrage and total lack of concern. And yet...

The glaring and dangerous stupidity of the human race never ceases to amaze me! The lies told in this campaign were legion. The commercials wanting us to vote "against" gay marriage used all sorts of pseudo-religions, quasi-intellectual arguments, telling us essentially that we would be "saving the children" to vote against gay marriage. After all, the ads said, we wouldn't want gay marriage taught in schools!

Er... gays have been getting married in California and other states for quite some time now, and to my knowledge, it isn't taught in schools, one way or the other. Besides, most of those fear-mongering religious fanatics I know send their little brats to private xtian schools (where they may be assured of getting their daily dose of Jesus' body and his blood - cannibalism and vampirism, for the unenlightened), so there is little danger of Little Johnny being exposed to those dangerous faggots (unless, of course, he is friends w/ the priest, in which case, all bets are off, eh? Gives new meaning to, "On your knees, little boy, and prepare to receive the holy scepter.")

When did the human race get so stupid?
When did we become a nation of puppets and fearful religious imbeciles, sucking at the teat of the Virgin Mary and bending over to take it up the ass from every politicical group who uses the slogan, "God is on our side!"? Jeeesus, how can people be so god-fucking-damned D U M B???????

Guess you could say I've had it this morning. (Geee, ya think?) The gay marriage issue is not a religious issue. It is a civil rights issue. It is a HUMAN rights issue. Rather like telling the black population that they cannot vote because of the color of their skin - which, by the way, was not repealed until 1964. Fairly recent history! Women weren't allowed to vote until the 1920s. (Yet we were allowed to go to church - go figure). It took us THAT long to figure out that people are just people? How much LONGER is it going to take for us to figure out that gay people are just people? We don't molest your children (we leave that for the Catholic priests, the school bus drivers, and the evangelical preachers.)

So let's get real here. I realize that most reading this don't necessarily live in California. But civil rights are non-local. As long as one group is oppressed in the name of religion, we are nothing more than a bunch of fearful apes bowing and scraping before the sun or the moon, begging false gods for our crops to be spared, and - STILL OFFERING HUMAN SACRIFICES TO THOSE ANGRY GODS! Yes, human sacrifices. We are told that "our" issues are irrelevant. We are told to keep silent, but keep paying our taxes, keep upholding the American flag. We are told to shut up and bend over... in the name of God.

Human sacrifices.

Isn't that what it's all about? God will be on our side if we stop them thar faggots from gettin' married! Protect the sanctity of marriage! After all, Joe-Bob will tell us, marriage is fer makin' LITTLE dumb shits - procreation (though most of the idjits can't even read that word without relying on hooked on fonix). But I digress...

Jeezus-humpin'-the-ass-of-the-saints! WHAT KIND OF LOGIC IS THAT? What kind of "christian" is that, who apparently never got the memo about "Judge not, lest ye be judged"? What kind of god would favor one "group" over another if all men were allegedly created equal? What kind of god would create homosexuals and then rally his people to hatred of those same individuals whom HE had created? If THAT is your God, surely he is a schizophrenic psychopath rather than any sort of role model! And if you are FOLLOWING him, what does that say about YOU?

Does it occur to any of you good xtians out there that NONE of this makes one iota of sense? And don't give me that crap about God working in mysterious ways - the grand excuse that comes along whenver we stand at the funeral of an infant or the grave of a loved one. God doesn't work in mysterious ways. God doesn't work. Period. He is a defunt, out of work dictator who has become the icon for every impotent redneck turkey and every political group with an agenda to peddle.

THINK!

The illusion only works for those who agree to uphold it. And - sorry, folks - if you are choosing to uphold THAT particular illusion, I would seriously recommend some long-term therapy to break you out of that faith-based bullshit that has probably kept you in the dark all your life. Wake up. It won't hurt much, and not for very long. And the rewards are infinite in that you will find yourself suddenly to make YOUR decisions without having to pray over it, and agonize over "What would Jesus do?"

Do we CARE what Jesus would do? He didn't do too good while he was here, after all. Got himself crucified, and ended up with a bunch of zombie-eyed lunatics who essentially embody everything BUT what the man was trying to teach. If you wanna believe Jesus existed, that's fine! But when you start thinking he "saved" you and now you owe him some human sacrifices, you're way out on a limb of imbeciles, and have, in fact, become the very antithesis of what it means to be a "christian". But no matter. I know that's too hard for most folks. Wouldn't want to disturb that comfort zone, that precious status quo that seems to tell all christians they are right and good. In reality, they are self-righteous and - in the case of Prop 8 - the embodiment of "sin" and the manifestation of evil. Why? (I'll get to that in a moment).

For those who want to go on believing that God is on our side here in the US, I suggest they pull the shit out of their eyes and ears and take a look at the reality going on all around them. The economy is in the shitter, young men and women are dying in Iraq every day for a war the people don't want and don't support, priests are buggering little boys in the name of God, evangelical preachers are screaming hate and violence and ending their prayer "In Jesus' name"... and somehow this is all considered okay? There's your human sacrifice - and 99.999% of it occurs in the name of God. We fight wars in the name of God. We forgive sodomizing priests in the name of God. For as long as we allow one group to be discriminated against LEGALLY in the name of God, we do not have a nation founded on freedom. Instead, we have a religion-controlled nation of sheeple, being led around by the ring in their collective noses, who will believe any piece of propaganda their masters shove in front of them.

If there is "sin", it is simply this: to keep someone else from thriving.

And, let's face it, the whole Prop 8 thing is designed to do exactly what. What does it hurt YOU (or me or the Catholic church) if two men or two women LOVE one another enough to want to make a commitment that is lasting, and LEGAL????? Doesn't that same insane religion preach that "God is love?" It doesn't say man/woman love is God. It says, simply, God is love. But no matter - that would involve a bit of additional thinking, and as we've already determined, that probably isn't possible for anyone following a fundy-dunderhead way of living.

Wendy and I had hoped to get married next year to commemorate 30 years of togetherness - and I dare say most heterosexual xtian couples don't last that long, and if they do it is because one of them is buggering the other's best friend out of sheer boredom with the missionary position... but again I digress. Point being - where is the crime in love and commitment? Where is the fear in allowing a coupla old lesbians to make it legal so as to protect one another's rights in the event one of us dies (or is murdered by a hate-mongering religious fanatic). Where? Is? The? Harm?

It all resides in fear. And not even in REASONABLE fear. There are no lions coming to eat you or your children if you think for yourself. Allowing two old fairies to get married isn't going to threaten the sanctity of YOUR marriage? If it DOES, then your marriage and, especially, your God could bear some examination, doncha think? And far moreso, you need to take a long, hard look at whatever "ordained" asshole told you that in the first place. What is HIS agenda? I grew up in that fundy atmosphere of hate, violence and fear - where the preacher was fucking the head deacon's wife (literally), and all those god-fearing xtians were perched on bar stools at the local pub before noon - and believe me, when I started thinking for myself and asking too many questions, I was asked to leave and never return. And - THANK THE GODLESS! - I did precisely that, and have never regretted it. Religion is for idiots who are incapable of thinking for themselves. Religion is for the fearful. Religion is for politicians with agendas. Religion is for those who simply are too afraid to...

THINK!

Face it, folks... Your church is not a symbol of your faith. And if you need "faith" to get you through your day, you are a pathetic sack of yak shit who has not figured out that the ONLY god is the one in your mirror. Unfortunately for YOU, you probably have spent a lifetime having "faith" in some other god that some other numbnuts has shoved down your throat, and maybe it's too late for you to ever wake up. So you'll go on living in fear and selling it to others in the form of your "political" opinions. You'll go on thinking the earth is flat and that it was a "mistake" to allow women and blacks to vote, and without a doubt, you'll go on believing that all queers go to hell and maybe you'll never even question WHY you believe that drivel?

You believe it because you were programmed to believe it. Period.

Other cultures believe god is a woman. Other cultures believe all Americans are heretics who should be slaughtered. Geee... how does THAT feel? You should be slaughtered in the name of someone else's God? Makes you squirm, I suspect, when the shoe is on the other foot. What if you should be slaughtered because you are Jewish or Muslim or Christian or Buddhist, or, simply, "different" than the majority? (We've been down THAT road a few times - all in the name of someone's God). What then? Where is your god? Whose god is right in that case? Do the gods go to war to decide such things? Or do they sit back and laugh at the antics of the imbeciles who sit around dreaming this crap up? Or, if the gods are us, does there EVER come a time when we wake up and take control of our own lives, and stop handing our power off to some megalomaniac on an imaginary throne in some fanciful idea of "heaven"?

God doesn't love you. God doesn't give a damn.

And that's because you don't love yourself, and YOU don't give a damn about yourself. Get it. God is a reflection of YOU - so as long as you are acting like a hate-mongering, fear-driven, religion-controlled MORON, you are going to live in hate and fear and continue to be controlled. Geee - simple!

Get. Real.

Think.

If you honestly BELIEVE gay marriage threatens you, you really MUST stop and ask yourself WHY you believe that? If you track it (if you have the courage to dig deep) you will find that it stems from a program someone put onto you when you weren't looking, when you weren't paying attention, when you were out fucking your neighbor's wife and lying to your mother - you know, when you were off breaking all of those 10 commandments you pretend to uphold.

Thou shalt not kill. (How many have you killed by neglect, or through "human sacrifice"?)

Thou shalt not steal. (How many have you oppressed in the name of your god, robbing them of their right to thrive, their right to love?)

Thou shalt not bear false witness. (Don't lie - for the unenlightend). (How many lies have you passed along because you simply aren't thinking? How many times have you said, "Jesus loves you," to a bum on the street, instead of giving him a goddamn dollar to put food in his belly? How many times a day do you lie to YOURSELF to avoid having to...

THINK!

Thou shalt have no other gods before me. Now this is a biggie! God is a petty little dictator? If he is The Almighty, The Great I-Am... then it seems to me that he wouldn't need to sit around dictating that his followers have to be true only to him. Sounds more like an abusive husband with one hand on the belt and the other on his dick. Insecurity issues, perhaps? Or, far more likely, is this the writing of a man, using the image of "God" to control an unruly population at a time in earth's history when cooperation was required by all, even if it meant lying and fear-mongering to get it? We're no longer a global population of 500. We are 6 billion strong - and seemingly 5.5 billion "weak-minded". But let's face it... if your god is worried and jealous and fearful... he needs a shrink, not a bunch of zombie-eyed followers. God is starting to sound like Chuck Manson far more than any benevolent leader I would want to follow. But then again... I am one who prefers to...

THINK!

The other danger is that this whole issue is not only about "gay rights". It is about HUMAN rights. Sooner or later, someone will step on YOUR pecker, but by then it will be too late. Maybe you will even be dumb enough to believe "It's God's will." Depends on how deep your programming and comfort zones are imbedded. It's up to you. It always has been. (Ah, but there I just broke the first commandment and proclaimed myself as God... and undoubtedly that outrages you and fills you with fear because somewhere, deep down inside, you know it's true. You know YOU are God... but you're just too fucking scared to take responsibility for that, so you go on "believing" and having "faith" and "praying" and making human sacrifices).

How long before somebody tells you that you can't get married because you are pagan? Because you are an atheist? Because you don't intend to have children? How long before some religious cult (yes, the Catholic church is the largest cult on Earth) tells you that you MUST have children, and if you can't, you should be put to death? Where does it stop? Where does the tyranny of religion end? With YOU. No place else. Don't wait for someone else to do it for you. Just...

Think.

If YOU don't think, who is going to do it for you? Are you going to allow the church or the government to tell you who you are and what you believe? Are you going to rely on some quasi-religious notion of having your soul yanked out of your Lexus at the time of the rapture, so that you, too, will go to met God face to face? That makes LOTS of sense.

Christ. If you believe that, I feel sorry for you, because you have lost yourself to a cult. Think about it.

Just fucking THINK.

Only then will you stop contributing to the ultimate sin - keeping someone else from thriving (especially yourself!). Only then will you have some small hope of finding out who YOU are, instead of blindly following what others WANT you to be. Only then will you stop committing human sacrifice. And ONLY then will you be free of the tyranny of your god, your cult, and your programming.

THINK!

The destruction of faith is the beginning of evolution.

Don't take my word for it. Do it for yourself.

Thou art god: create yourself accordingly!

The Double & the Lighthouse (Rehashing Reincarnation...)

Thu, 30 Oct 2008 16:58:43 GMT

For the time being, I'm not going to go into my arguments "against" the traditional understanding of reincarnation. I'm going to present my own understanding just to toss an alternative into the mix.

It starts with a bit of understanding about what the double actually IS on a quantum level. In shamanic terms, it's been called the doppleganger, the Other, the higher self, the energy body, and lots of other terms. I no longer have a word for it other than "Orlando", because that is my experience of it. *shrugs* For the sorcerer who has created/manifested her double, no further explanation is necessary. For someone who has no experience with the double, it may well be that no other explanation is possible. But no matter...

If we view the double more from a quantum perspective for a moment (in addition to the shamanic definitions), it is possible to visualize the double as a quantum field of energy - non-local and ubiquitous. Put another way - once created, it is everywhere and nowhere. I've done several articles/essays on this over time, and they are most likely on this forum somewhere. If anyone is interested in a more thorough look at this, I suggest using the search function and look for keywords such as "outside of time", "ubiquitous", "singularity of consciousness" and "superposition of the assemblage point." Obviously, it would take too much time to go into the whole history of time here, so suffice it to say my explanation is going to have more meaning to those who are familiar with my work. Not that anyone should be. *LOL*

Okay, so if we view the double as a quantum field, and further allow that the field is infinite in all directions (time and space), and we FURTHER visualize that the double is a projection of the self from the here and now (the mortal self is the source), then what we come down to is an image rather like a lighthouse. The mortal self is the physical lighthouse, the double is the light. But the key element is that the lighthouse produces the light - not the other way around. The mortal self is the source.

So what? Well, maybe. But what is revealed by this analogy is that the light itself projects in all directions (space and time). The "field" touches "the realm of all possibility," in other words, and ALLOWS for what I have come to call "movements of awareness within the now." Put more simply, the double has access to all/space and all/time - i.e., the playing field of so-called "past lives", future lives, etc. Once that field is projected (in shamanic terms, once the double is created through dreaming - which is also infinite in all directions), it has access to all possibility. As a result, the "field" (double) may become "local" for a brief time in what most would call a "past life". But it is neither "past" nor is it really a "life" in the traditional sense. It is, simply, a movement of awareness within the now. It is a projected element of our totality - because a single linear humanform lifetime is not sufficient to gather all the knowledge, information & experience we need for our spiritual evolution. (Or so it would seem).

What is mis-understood is that there is no string of bodies strewn out behind us, no trail of bones. The lighthouse is the source, and when it falls into the sea, there is nothing left to project the light, the double. The only possibility at that point is that ALL of our awareness would enter the double (the projected field of "light"), and that would constitute "the totality of oneself"; or if the projected field is not sufficiently cohesive, it would eventually dissipate just like the rest of our molecules.

What difference does it make?

A huge difference. By the old paradigm of reincarnation, there is really no motivation to "get it right". We are provided with a prime opportunity to say, "Oh well, if I don't get it right this time, there's always my next life." A total abdication of responsibility and presence in the Now, in other words - and that's one of my big beefs against traditional misunderstanding of reincarnation. It gives us an out. And it requires "faith" in something we cannot really experience directly - the "past life" itself. Does ANYONE on this forum actually remember on a conscious level any "past lives"? Can anyone here point to a grave and say, "Ah, there I am"? And if we have no access to that information/Knowledge, does it really serve any purpose whatsoever? Or is it, instead, precisely what it appears to be: a comforting belief system not much different from xtianity, telling us we will "live again" or what we have "lived before"?

By the quantum paradigm, I believe we CAN participate in the so-called "past lives" - through the tool of gnosis. (I can go into that further in another post if anyone is interested). And I personally believe (yes, it is a belief which cannot YET be proven) that a more (potentially) scientific approach to the idea will eventually reveal that this is a mechanism of spiritual evolution, with which we are all hard-wired at birth. The problem is that the foreign installation essentially programs us to accept the old definitions (because ultimately they are harmless and therefore cannot really transform us, so we remain at the level of docile sheep). So until we break free of the FI (hopefully by seeing it for what it is, rather than as some sort of oogie-boogie-baddie), most humans will remain enslaved by "traditional belief systems" which allow them to abdicate responsibility in the now and, in doing so, thwart their own possibility for evolution. It's a flawless trap.

Sure, elements of what I am saying here are also based on "belief" - but not BLIND belief. I think it's vitally important for everyone on any sort of spiritual path to really work through these things for yourself. Find your own paradigm and test it to whatever extent you are able. As I was saying to Gonzo in skype yesterday, our instruments can only register the things they are programmed to register, so it may well be that science won't catch up to shamanism for another several hundred years. In the meantime, you have access to a phenomenon super-computer anytime you want. It is sitting on top of your shoulders. Use it!

Doesn't matter for the most part if you are "right" or "wrong" - because let's face it, there is no external barometer of what is possible, and only a vague consensus as to what is "real". If you want/need to see reincarnation as a line of bones stretching into the distant past, that's cool as long as you're comfortable with it. But I think it is far more LIKELY that we are individual units of awareness projecting entirely from the Now. No second chances. No past. No future. When the lighthouse falls into the sea, we will either enter the light (embrace our totality, inhabit the superposition of the assemblage point), or our componet elements will be recycled into the birds and the bees.

It's up to us.

Take back your power. You are the source of your own existence and the only possibility of your own continuity.

Thou art god: create yourself accordingly.

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Rehashing Reincarnation (again)

Thu, 30 Oct 2008 16:53:01 GMT

Quote:

Is reincarnation a phenomenon over time (the traditional theory), or is it a movement of awareness within the now (Della-world)?

I'd like to provide a bit of background on this recurring debate. Essentially, Gonz likes to say he holds to the old notions of reincarnation - the traditional concept that we are born into a series of humanform lives over a span of time (centuries, millenia), and that the goal is to "get it right" so as to escape the wheel of samsara - life, death, rebirth.

My contention is that there is no life-death-rebirth at that level whatsoever - only in the sense that our molecules are recycled. Our consciousnes/awarenesss is unique to the now. My own understanding of the phenomenon commonly called "reincarnation" is that it more accurately may be defined as "an infinite series of movements of awareness within the Now." Put another way, my own research & experience has led me to conclude (perhaps erroneously, but nonetheless not without considerable work and personal involvement in those conclusions - IOW, not just blind faith or willingness-to-believe) that our "consciousness" (for lack of a better word) is singular and rooted entirely in the now. Put still another way, Orlando has always maintained that "The mortal self is the source of all things."

At first, that was a huge stumbling block for those in our little group - me, Wendy, and another woman. Even though I was essentially an atheist or (at best) an agnostic at the time, I nonetheless had some vague notion of some manner of "oversoul" sitting "out there somewhere" essentially guiding my existence. Not a god, but simply an aspect of myself that existed "beyond" life or "between" lifetimes. Must say, however, that I didn't believe in reincarnation either, so in some ways I was (luckily) a blank slate where that was concerned.

Point being - it was nonetheless extremely difficult at first to accept the notion that "The mortal self is the source of all things," for the simple reason that it placed responsibility for life, death, experience & existence squarely onto MY shoulders right here and now. And THAT was something most folks (including myself at the time) find highly disturbing. Suddenly, there is no god to turn to for guidance, no saints to pray to for intervention (not that I ever prayed to saints), no guardian angels to protect us from ourselves. We are alone.

Now... the good news is that once we get past the momentary shock of that realization, it actually has an extremely unifying effect. We find ourselves face to face with The One - the only god, the only devil, the only angel. Me-myself-I. And the result is that it CAN have the effect of opening our eyes (and our third eye in particular) to such an extent that we become highly motivated to essentially "get our shit together" (or, in more politically-correct terms - "gather our cohesion.") *heh*

Over time, as a result of working with Orlando and coming to a better understanding of what the double actually IS on a quantum level (which I will attempt to explain momentarily), I began to realize that the commonly accepted definition of "reincarnation" is every bit as flawed as the commonly accepted definition of "god". In both cases, the CONCEPT is real, but has become watered down to the lowest common denominator - partially as a control mechanism imposed by "the church" (any church, all churches); but also because it is reminiscent of trying to teach children about sex. Parents tend to water it down to "the birds and the bees" in the hopes of "softening" the reality of it (though why we NEED to do that is another kettle of worms altogether), and this tends to explain why we have a lot of pregnant 12-year-olds who end up in extensive therapy. "But, Doc, my mom said babies come from storks, and bees come from a Queen, so I figured I was safe 'cuz we live in the desert where there are no storks, and the Queen is over in England!"

You get the picture. By watering down the reality of something, by turning it into something it isn't in an attempt (perhaps even a "noble" attempt) to make it presentable and palatable to "the masses", what we usually end up with is milk-toast so soggy it all falls apart. Useless.

That's what has happened with "god" and that's most certainly what has happened with "reincarnation." The COMMON understanding of reincarnation is that some smidgen of our awareness/consciousnesss moves in and out of corporeal/physical manifestation - i.e., we leave a trail of bones behind us, stretching back for centuries, and allegedly we learn something from all of this, even though we have no memory of it whatsoever, no linear awareness. We are told through many "religious" interpretations of reincarnation that this is the wheel of Samsara - and that it is, in a way, a "karmic" curve. We are working off our debts, while simultaneously trying to "get it right" (the latter being Gonzo's words).

The major problem with that is... oh... huge. Who/what would decide what is "right"? Where are the rules written down? Oh, we could say we decide and the rules are inside of us, but IF that is true (a big if), who is keeping score "between" lifetimes? The oversoul? Show me. But no matter... We are all well aware of the arguments for and against traditional reincarnation.

What I hope to do in this thread is take our "common" understanding a bit further, for anyone who is willing to invest just a small amount of time and effort into looking at it in a different light. This is a subject that got hashed out somewhat back at the old Delphi forum, but perhaps it's time to drag it out of moth balls again just for the heck of it.

(continuing in next post)