So instead of working or sweating, I spent all day (literally the last nine hours!) compiling my diverse writings from the past half a year, creating what is now over a hundred pages of articles, rants, ramblings, and poems detailing my experiences and experiments with living in a magical world view, as Alberto keeps on asking me to print out my writings. Yet again it is surreal going back through my life and seeing how I've changed, what I've forgotten, what I finally learned. What is important enough to be included. Like I am downloading all the good bits of my life and burning the rest. I've drunk too much coffee and stared at this screen for so long that it has created an invisible and unbreachable wall between me and the rest of the world. I am sitting at the quiet storm but I could be on mars there's so much distance between me and those who walk a foot from the table. And I've got the shakes again, this slight tremor in my muscles as if they ae picking out all the subtle vibrations and amplifying them. No I don't think it's the caffeine, it's been like this all week, along with the head rushes where the world disintegrates around me. Eh, I hope I haven't broken myself with all the psychic breakthroughs. I can turn streetlamps and computers and other electronic devices on and off psychicly but I feel like I am a nervous wreck.
while reading through this file I found myself in one of the most intense cases of deja vu I've had in a long time. I was reading these words and then I saw Alberto reading them and sharing them with Sarah, and knew that I had had that vision shortly after I met her, here in this very spot. And that the people who are at the next table are there, from the vision, and then that person comes in and that one... It is passing now, but I feel like if I could stand it I could have followed that train of visions inward, moment after moment unfolding dreamlike, the future and past and present of this writing and its effects on the world, and those effects' effects and onward. Like a stone causing ripples and I am looking down and seeing all of them colliding in the waters of time. I could let myself go into that right now, but I would probably faint in the process and scare the shit out of everyone here, but it would be so easy. And I think I see where that place is to get back to it. Brrr, I'm giving myself chills. It's like when I located the sciptorum (the record of all things) and realized I could conceivably know all of it if that revelation didn't kill me first. Or when I first realized the connection to all at the back of our heads but wasn't ready to let myself go into it as my ego was still too strong and it would drive me insane. But I learned to do it, and can now and still come back without fear. But here I know I am still not yet ready, or the world isn't ready. Standing on the brink of all this power, looking over the edge at infinity, wondering if I should jump...
It feels like the Universe is holding a knife to my chest and threatening to throw me in if I don't do it myself.
So long...
4.27.2005
dream yoga and social yoga
I woke up for the first time in a long time today full of energy and ready to face the world. So I put on Squarepusher and did some intense yoga to get my body moving with my soul. Last night [info]kritusi_vuki and I had another of our intense conversations, the ones where we have intense psychic connections that invariably lead to peculiar instences of telepathy and remote viewing (and that in itself beyond being overwhelmingly enjoyable, points to the potential for using the internet to reach some sort of cybergnosis, a topic I may soon have to explore further). At some point while we talked the question was jokingly raised as to whether we could have flat dreams. So I decided to take on that challenge and intended to dream myself to flatland as I was drifting off to sleep. The night before I had a peculiar dream in which each scene appeared as if it had been filmed and then animated over, much like the movie waking life, except done in multicolored scribbled spirals (based off fibonacci's sequence of course, as it is very deep in my consciousness right now). Last night I returned to that place, but now it was not just animated over the appearences; the dream presented itself as if the world was divided into infinitely thin layers like paper that could each be written on or folded in order to arrive at the multidimensional mode that reality normally presents itself in. The spirals were still there of course, but now seemed much more coherently meaningful as they detailed the manner in which the sheets or planes furled and unfurled around each other.
My words probably don't do so much justice to the experience, but it was quite intense, and reminded me of a certain dream I had a year and a half ago. This was around the time when I kept dreaming that all the radicals I know, including myself, were locked up in concentration style camps by the Bush administration, and coincided with one of my worse downspells of mental instability and apocalyptic anxiety. In this dream I was rotting in a prison cell when it occured to me that I was dreaming and that it would be possible to get out in a very different manner then I got in. I felt like some force was trying to teach me this manner, and suggested that if I folded myself along my main axis and then rolled along it I could move through extra dimensions of space. Now this reminded me of several things, various techniques Castaneda talks about for accessing the astral plane, the teseract method of astral travel in "a wrinkle in time", the scene in Donnie Darko where Donnie discovers he can see his will/ intention and follow it through space-time, and of course yoga, which is all about folding the body in peculiar ways. This dream was actually one of the main reasons I learned yoga in the first place, and have tried to practice it daily. Not that I have yet learned how to project myself astrally, but doing yoga has changed my life drastically for the better and points to a host of "secret powers" that humans can be capable of accessing if they take the practice to change their perceptions of what is possible. And I stopped having the prison dreams, so perhaps I did learn how to escape after all.
Now, I'm not so sure what exactly I could learn from this dream of breaking the world down to its constituent planes, besides the fact that it looks really cool and it is nececssary to pay attention to the planes when spinning a staff or poi or dancing. I suspect though that one could follow their curves like waves and learn how to read the future from its movements. I've had some experiences of that in the past, and perhaps it's time to experiment with them further. The only limits are in our imaginations. Nothing is true, everything is permitted. I did have dreams of being able to disintegrate my consciousness into that of all things long before I acquired the skills and mental stability required to actually do it.
While eating breakfast, Grace showed up to talk about the new radical mental health collective that is forming, which seems a good deal more organized than when Eleena and I tried to start one a couple years ago. Grace is mostly concerned with identifying issues that are prevelent in the community and then determining what the social factors are that might cause them, which seems a good approach to the whole subject, especially if it is addressed through drawing and roleplaying to balance out the more linguistically oriented therapy techniques. Madness is a social disease after all. At this point I am mostly concerned with how mental, physical and emotional health are tied in to our spiritual well-being. If people do not find their lives to be fulfilling and meaningful they are less likely to be healthy. I haven't given much thought to how this issue can be positively addressed, but I imagine encouraging yoga could help. As well as hosting social situations that do not revolve around drinking or listening to music so that we can actually get honest and positive feedback from each other in the community. The next meeting is on the 6th at yardsale books, so I've got over a week to get some clearer ideas together as to what I intend to bring to the group.
My words probably don't do so much justice to the experience, but it was quite intense, and reminded me of a certain dream I had a year and a half ago. This was around the time when I kept dreaming that all the radicals I know, including myself, were locked up in concentration style camps by the Bush administration, and coincided with one of my worse downspells of mental instability and apocalyptic anxiety. In this dream I was rotting in a prison cell when it occured to me that I was dreaming and that it would be possible to get out in a very different manner then I got in. I felt like some force was trying to teach me this manner, and suggested that if I folded myself along my main axis and then rolled along it I could move through extra dimensions of space. Now this reminded me of several things, various techniques Castaneda talks about for accessing the astral plane, the teseract method of astral travel in "a wrinkle in time", the scene in Donnie Darko where Donnie discovers he can see his will/ intention and follow it through space-time, and of course yoga, which is all about folding the body in peculiar ways. This dream was actually one of the main reasons I learned yoga in the first place, and have tried to practice it daily. Not that I have yet learned how to project myself astrally, but doing yoga has changed my life drastically for the better and points to a host of "secret powers" that humans can be capable of accessing if they take the practice to change their perceptions of what is possible. And I stopped having the prison dreams, so perhaps I did learn how to escape after all.
Now, I'm not so sure what exactly I could learn from this dream of breaking the world down to its constituent planes, besides the fact that it looks really cool and it is nececssary to pay attention to the planes when spinning a staff or poi or dancing. I suspect though that one could follow their curves like waves and learn how to read the future from its movements. I've had some experiences of that in the past, and perhaps it's time to experiment with them further. The only limits are in our imaginations. Nothing is true, everything is permitted. I did have dreams of being able to disintegrate my consciousness into that of all things long before I acquired the skills and mental stability required to actually do it.
While eating breakfast, Grace showed up to talk about the new radical mental health collective that is forming, which seems a good deal more organized than when Eleena and I tried to start one a couple years ago. Grace is mostly concerned with identifying issues that are prevelent in the community and then determining what the social factors are that might cause them, which seems a good approach to the whole subject, especially if it is addressed through drawing and roleplaying to balance out the more linguistically oriented therapy techniques. Madness is a social disease after all. At this point I am mostly concerned with how mental, physical and emotional health are tied in to our spiritual well-being. If people do not find their lives to be fulfilling and meaningful they are less likely to be healthy. I haven't given much thought to how this issue can be positively addressed, but I imagine encouraging yoga could help. As well as hosting social situations that do not revolve around drinking or listening to music so that we can actually get honest and positive feedback from each other in the community. The next meeting is on the 6th at yardsale books, so I've got over a week to get some clearer ideas together as to what I intend to bring to the group.
4.26.2005
shifting soul states
[salvaged from Key23]
A question that keeps coming up in my magical practice is how we represent different states on an energetic level. Not just basic physical, mental, and emotional states, but all the subtleties in between that make up the vast range of human experience. What are these states, how can we access them, and what are they good for?
The ancient Chinese system of the I Ching maps out a host of states through the binary interplay of heaven (yang) and earth (yin), from which arise the rest of the hexagrams. But these states are not static positions, they represent process, the movements of one state changing into the next. Likewise I imagine that our internal states are not static but are in a continual flux, feeding back on each other and adapting to wherever our attention lies. And also like the I Ching, though these states can be expressed through a smaller set of basic states (yin/ yang, the four elements, the eight gua) they are only the more recognizable positions in the grand transition of states within us and the world. And yet if we are going to map them out in any usable way breaking them down to a few simple positions will make it easier, since these can be located in the subtle energy centers of the body. Functioning somewhere in the range between black holes and point attractors these “rings of power” assert some sort of pull on the greater flow that we can notice and then exercise into use.
Many cultures and mystical traditions have attempted to map out these layers of being that somehow lay between our physical forms and the godhead within each of us, like a shield of veils or onion peels. And all have come up with their own number of primary states, locations in the body, and methods of use; none of which are wrong, but like all maps were drawn up from the limited information of any subjective experience and subject to revision as other maps come into comparison. The six latifah of the Sufi, the seven chakras of Hindi yoga, the eight trigrams of the I Ching, the ten sephiroth of qabalah, Leary and R. A. Wilson’s eight circuits or dimensions of consciousness. All these systems represent previous attempts at creating a formalized version of this map, but none of them accurately express the territory and can only offer signposts for us to follow in our own explorations of our internal states.
A few years ago I decided to start paying more attention to my internal states from the physiological level up, in order to reach some sort of metaprogrammatic control over myself and my worlds. Assuming of course that handy magical axiom that our worlds do indeed become what we choose to pay attention to. One of the first things I noticed is that everything changes us, the food we eat, the conversations we have, the cultures we live in, even the weather and the movements of the stars. We are so inextricably tied to our environments that it is hard to tell just where we end and the rest of the world begins, much less where each internal state stands in relation to the rest in their constant shifting. To this end I started using yoga and the magical idea of gnosis to create controlled situations where I could be open to awareness of the states unhampered by external influences that would only tangle the processes further. Of course gnosis, like eating or talking, changes our internal states, is in fact intended to do so, altering our perceptions of reality until we can look past it to its more subtle workings. Yoga, entheogens, meditation, sleep and sensory deprivation, sex and ecstatic dancing, there are many techniques towards this end. But while granting us more control for exploration also distance us from learning to utilize the states of the soul on an everyday level. I have found myself in some extreme and powerful places while under the influence of psychotropics, but is it possible to put myself back in those states in full consciousness? I would argue yes, it is in fact precisely what I am attempting to learn to do in one way or another. We’re talking ultimate god-mode here people, the psybernetics of the soul. Now if someone could find the perfect ratio between power and responsibility…
After a few particularly enlightening peak experiences which utterly pushed the boundaries of what I thought was possible I decided to start working with my subtle energy centers while in the state in which the world is perceived as vibrations or wavefronts of energy. I had already done much work in learning to recognize where my chakras are located, and from there it was a matter of determining their vibratory frequencies. Of course like the various maps of the layers themselves several conflicting ideas exist as to just where they each fluctuate, as in the petal arrangements of the chakras or Gurdjieff’s vibration numbers. Being a musician, I decided to use tonal harmonics to vibrate the centers manually, experimenting with mapping each one to a note in the diatonic scale starting the physical center on low C. After several months I had succeeded in being able to move my consciousness from one state to the next by intoning its note, even subsonically, while in deep meditation (and even noticed later that I am now able to sing any given note by placing my awareness on the appropriate energy center and humming). An interesting thing in using vibrations to access the layers is that it points to them being harmonics of each other, or deeper level interpretations of the same vibratory signals. Just as in music where playing one note also resounds with overtones, so to do the lower frequency states resonate with hints of the higher states, like fractals or holograms. The physical layer contains the frequencies of the emotions, identities, sociality, all the way up to the godhead, becoming much subtler unless vibrated directly, but still allowing us to recognize the sublimity of existence while in a baser state.
The other thing peculiar to using a diatonic scale is that its octave form suggests eight distinct layers (or seven layers and the higher octave of the first layer) as if the notes of RAW’s 8-dimension model were hung on the I Ching gua. I’ve always considered eight a sensible number, so that’s what I’m basing my recent maps off of. It’s in no way arbitrary, but it fits my experiences. Or perhaps they fit it, I am trying to shape my reality after all. Though at this point I am much more interested in trying to learn what we can do and how to reliably control it before putting any untrained skills to the test. So for those of you with more time on your hands (or who know how to stop it), here are some ideas for potential uses of each soul-state.
1- physiological – regulating and fulfilling bio-survival needs, physical coordination, general health
2- emotive - regulate and fulfill emotional responses (impulses), balance movements (center of gravity), awareness of reactions to external stimuli (tensions, and their release).
3- conceptual – ease of interpreting (boundaries defined), determine drive to goal states (direction/ intention), relational identity and map making
4- social – balance body community (host of selves), greater external connectivity and compassion, networking and true love
5- resonant – awareness of neurosomatic feedback / vibrational waves, heightened input/ output cycles and communication, breathing and subtle physiological control
6- psychic – awareness and manipulation of energy (electricity, auras, spirits), subtle receptivity, heightened creativity/ visualization, metaprograming, telepathy, telekinesis, and other forms of “mind control”
7- matric – morphogenetic cellular/ DNA control (healing, prevent aging), access akashic records (learning any skill, idea, etc), archetypal role playing/ storytelling
8- quantum – dissolution of self (being atoms of universe), connection to all as one, fractal consciousness, samadhi
Of course, the names and numbers are all flexible, and the uses barely suggestive of all that we are capable of. Perhaps you know more.
A question that keeps coming up in my magical practice is how we represent different states on an energetic level. Not just basic physical, mental, and emotional states, but all the subtleties in between that make up the vast range of human experience. What are these states, how can we access them, and what are they good for?
The ancient Chinese system of the I Ching maps out a host of states through the binary interplay of heaven (yang) and earth (yin), from which arise the rest of the hexagrams. But these states are not static positions, they represent process, the movements of one state changing into the next. Likewise I imagine that our internal states are not static but are in a continual flux, feeding back on each other and adapting to wherever our attention lies. And also like the I Ching, though these states can be expressed through a smaller set of basic states (yin/ yang, the four elements, the eight gua) they are only the more recognizable positions in the grand transition of states within us and the world. And yet if we are going to map them out in any usable way breaking them down to a few simple positions will make it easier, since these can be located in the subtle energy centers of the body. Functioning somewhere in the range between black holes and point attractors these “rings of power” assert some sort of pull on the greater flow that we can notice and then exercise into use.
Many cultures and mystical traditions have attempted to map out these layers of being that somehow lay between our physical forms and the godhead within each of us, like a shield of veils or onion peels. And all have come up with their own number of primary states, locations in the body, and methods of use; none of which are wrong, but like all maps were drawn up from the limited information of any subjective experience and subject to revision as other maps come into comparison. The six latifah of the Sufi, the seven chakras of Hindi yoga, the eight trigrams of the I Ching, the ten sephiroth of qabalah, Leary and R. A. Wilson’s eight circuits or dimensions of consciousness. All these systems represent previous attempts at creating a formalized version of this map, but none of them accurately express the territory and can only offer signposts for us to follow in our own explorations of our internal states.
A few years ago I decided to start paying more attention to my internal states from the physiological level up, in order to reach some sort of metaprogrammatic control over myself and my worlds. Assuming of course that handy magical axiom that our worlds do indeed become what we choose to pay attention to. One of the first things I noticed is that everything changes us, the food we eat, the conversations we have, the cultures we live in, even the weather and the movements of the stars. We are so inextricably tied to our environments that it is hard to tell just where we end and the rest of the world begins, much less where each internal state stands in relation to the rest in their constant shifting. To this end I started using yoga and the magical idea of gnosis to create controlled situations where I could be open to awareness of the states unhampered by external influences that would only tangle the processes further. Of course gnosis, like eating or talking, changes our internal states, is in fact intended to do so, altering our perceptions of reality until we can look past it to its more subtle workings. Yoga, entheogens, meditation, sleep and sensory deprivation, sex and ecstatic dancing, there are many techniques towards this end. But while granting us more control for exploration also distance us from learning to utilize the states of the soul on an everyday level. I have found myself in some extreme and powerful places while under the influence of psychotropics, but is it possible to put myself back in those states in full consciousness? I would argue yes, it is in fact precisely what I am attempting to learn to do in one way or another. We’re talking ultimate god-mode here people, the psybernetics of the soul. Now if someone could find the perfect ratio between power and responsibility…
After a few particularly enlightening peak experiences which utterly pushed the boundaries of what I thought was possible I decided to start working with my subtle energy centers while in the state in which the world is perceived as vibrations or wavefronts of energy. I had already done much work in learning to recognize where my chakras are located, and from there it was a matter of determining their vibratory frequencies. Of course like the various maps of the layers themselves several conflicting ideas exist as to just where they each fluctuate, as in the petal arrangements of the chakras or Gurdjieff’s vibration numbers. Being a musician, I decided to use tonal harmonics to vibrate the centers manually, experimenting with mapping each one to a note in the diatonic scale starting the physical center on low C. After several months I had succeeded in being able to move my consciousness from one state to the next by intoning its note, even subsonically, while in deep meditation (and even noticed later that I am now able to sing any given note by placing my awareness on the appropriate energy center and humming). An interesting thing in using vibrations to access the layers is that it points to them being harmonics of each other, or deeper level interpretations of the same vibratory signals. Just as in music where playing one note also resounds with overtones, so to do the lower frequency states resonate with hints of the higher states, like fractals or holograms. The physical layer contains the frequencies of the emotions, identities, sociality, all the way up to the godhead, becoming much subtler unless vibrated directly, but still allowing us to recognize the sublimity of existence while in a baser state.
The other thing peculiar to using a diatonic scale is that its octave form suggests eight distinct layers (or seven layers and the higher octave of the first layer) as if the notes of RAW’s 8-dimension model were hung on the I Ching gua. I’ve always considered eight a sensible number, so that’s what I’m basing my recent maps off of. It’s in no way arbitrary, but it fits my experiences. Or perhaps they fit it, I am trying to shape my reality after all. Though at this point I am much more interested in trying to learn what we can do and how to reliably control it before putting any untrained skills to the test. So for those of you with more time on your hands (or who know how to stop it), here are some ideas for potential uses of each soul-state.
1- physiological – regulating and fulfilling bio-survival needs, physical coordination, general health
2- emotive - regulate and fulfill emotional responses (impulses), balance movements (center of gravity), awareness of reactions to external stimuli (tensions, and their release).
3- conceptual – ease of interpreting (boundaries defined), determine drive to goal states (direction/ intention), relational identity and map making
4- social – balance body community (host of selves), greater external connectivity and compassion, networking and true love
5- resonant – awareness of neurosomatic feedback / vibrational waves, heightened input/ output cycles and communication, breathing and subtle physiological control
6- psychic – awareness and manipulation of energy (electricity, auras, spirits), subtle receptivity, heightened creativity/ visualization, metaprograming, telepathy, telekinesis, and other forms of “mind control”
7- matric – morphogenetic cellular/ DNA control (healing, prevent aging), access akashic records (learning any skill, idea, etc), archetypal role playing/ storytelling
8- quantum – dissolution of self (being atoms of universe), connection to all as one, fractal consciousness, samadhi
Of course, the names and numbers are all flexible, and the uses barely suggestive of all that we are capable of. Perhaps you know more.
4.24.2005
tripping in the 21st century
Is Taking a Psychedelic an Act of Sedition?
[via nerdshit.com]
"So long as such stormings of heaven are outlawed and dismissed, the greater the likelihood for relapse from the cosmic consciousness they engender to the coarse materialist outlook that is consensus reality. With religion-inspired hatred on the loose, many see religion itself as a culprit for the Sept. 11 troubles, and point to psychedelics — or entheogens, divine-generating agents — as a means of bypassing religion to get to the wellspring of spirituality. Because they produce the primary experience on which faith is inspired, "entheogens prove that no intermediary is necessary," states Clark Heinrich, author of God Without Religion (yet unpublished) and Strange Fruit (Inner Traditions), a speculative history about the role of the Amanita muscaria mushroom in several world religions. After his own drug-induced awakening, the late British Ecstasy advocate, Nicholas Saunders (see www.ecstasy.org), surmised that religions may very well have been invented to explain entheogenic experiences.
"Still another nondenominational yet transcendental usage seen for psychedelics is as a tool of hyper-ratiocinative perception, a means to deconstruct media charades and help the intellect to cope with ambiguity and uncertainty, according to Erik Davis, author of Techgnosis: Myth, Magic & Mysticism in the Age of Information (Three Rivers Press). "I wouldn't necessarily want to trip in the aftermath of Sept. 11," concedes Davis, "but I can now use my psychedelic training for coping with the epistemological cyclone of a cataclysm such as this. I grew up in the cushiest reality in the history of the planet. Now I see demons pouring over the lip of my existence, but I've learned through psychedelics how to breathe through it and not believe its story."
[via nerdshit.com]
"So long as such stormings of heaven are outlawed and dismissed, the greater the likelihood for relapse from the cosmic consciousness they engender to the coarse materialist outlook that is consensus reality. With religion-inspired hatred on the loose, many see religion itself as a culprit for the Sept. 11 troubles, and point to psychedelics — or entheogens, divine-generating agents — as a means of bypassing religion to get to the wellspring of spirituality. Because they produce the primary experience on which faith is inspired, "entheogens prove that no intermediary is necessary," states Clark Heinrich, author of God Without Religion (yet unpublished) and Strange Fruit (Inner Traditions), a speculative history about the role of the Amanita muscaria mushroom in several world religions. After his own drug-induced awakening, the late British Ecstasy advocate, Nicholas Saunders (see www.ecstasy.org), surmised that religions may very well have been invented to explain entheogenic experiences.
"Still another nondenominational yet transcendental usage seen for psychedelics is as a tool of hyper-ratiocinative perception, a means to deconstruct media charades and help the intellect to cope with ambiguity and uncertainty, according to Erik Davis, author of Techgnosis: Myth, Magic & Mysticism in the Age of Information (Three Rivers Press). "I wouldn't necessarily want to trip in the aftermath of Sept. 11," concedes Davis, "but I can now use my psychedelic training for coping with the epistemological cyclone of a cataclysm such as this. I grew up in the cushiest reality in the history of the planet. Now I see demons pouring over the lip of my existence, but I've learned through psychedelics how to breathe through it and not believe its story."
an assassin staring at the sufi stars
While doing some research on the spiritual beliefs of the Hashshashin I stumbled upon this in the wiki's sufi entry.
"Although there is no consensus with regard to Sufi cosmology, one can disentangle various threads that led to the crystallization of more or less coherent mythic cosmological doctrines. The first is based on purely Quranic notions of the Afterworld (Ahiret), the Hidden (Ghayb- sometimes associated with “hidden” or “invisible” dimensions of human existence, but, more frequently with the state of God before creation or Unmanifest Absolute. Another term for the latter is “Amma”, ie. Divine Darkness) and seven-storeyed Universe explicitly referenced in the Qur’an (and cherished in Prophet Mohammad’s “Miraj” or ascent to the God’s face -- the powerful spiritual motif that inspired generations of later Sufis and ordinary believers). However, these relatively simple Quranic concepts that gave basic structure to Islamic worldview had soon become exposed to Neoplatonist and Gnostic influences, as well as Zoroastrian religious imagery. As a consequence, Sufism developed a welter of frequently contradictory cosmological doctrines."
The article goes on from there to describe several key notions of sufism and thethe six lataif in more detail, creating quite a similair map to the eight layered one I've been working with to chart a path through the subtleties between us and the divine. Mentions of Aalam-e-Misal (the Allegorical realm - reflection of knowledge of the preserved Scripturum), Nuqta-e-wahida (point of unity), Tajalliat (Beatific visions), and Rooh-e-azam (the great soul), sure sound like some of the more remarkable places I have found myself on this long strange trip, but more poeticly described. "It is a bright ring of light in which all the information pertaining to the unseen & seen cosmos is inscribed..."
Peter Lamborne Wilson gives perhaps a more liberatory slant to their spirituality. "For the Sufis, the road to spiritual knowledge - to Certainty - could never be confined to the process of rational or purely intellectual activity, without sapiential knowledge (zawq, "taste") and the direct, immediate experience of the Heart. Truth, they believed, can be sought and found only with one's entire being; nor were they satisfied merely to know this Truth. They insisted on a total identification with it: a "passing away" of the knower in the Known, of subject in the Object of knowledge. Thus, when the fourth/tenth century Sufi Hallaj proclaimed "I am the Truth" (and was martyred for it by the exoteric authorities), he was not violating the "First Pillar" of Islam, the belief in Unity (tawhid), but simply stating the truth from the mouth of the Truth."
But still the question of whether the Assassins were indeed a heretical sect hiding within the heretical sect of sufism remains to be answered, though Wilson's notes on their spiritual beliefs certainly paint them in a similar light.
"Although there is no consensus with regard to Sufi cosmology, one can disentangle various threads that led to the crystallization of more or less coherent mythic cosmological doctrines. The first is based on purely Quranic notions of the Afterworld (Ahiret), the Hidden (Ghayb- sometimes associated with “hidden” or “invisible” dimensions of human existence, but, more frequently with the state of God before creation or Unmanifest Absolute. Another term for the latter is “Amma”, ie. Divine Darkness) and seven-storeyed Universe explicitly referenced in the Qur’an (and cherished in Prophet Mohammad’s “Miraj” or ascent to the God’s face -- the powerful spiritual motif that inspired generations of later Sufis and ordinary believers). However, these relatively simple Quranic concepts that gave basic structure to Islamic worldview had soon become exposed to Neoplatonist and Gnostic influences, as well as Zoroastrian religious imagery. As a consequence, Sufism developed a welter of frequently contradictory cosmological doctrines."
The article goes on from there to describe several key notions of sufism and thethe six lataif in more detail, creating quite a similair map to the eight layered one I've been working with to chart a path through the subtleties between us and the divine. Mentions of Aalam-e-Misal (the Allegorical realm - reflection of knowledge of the preserved Scripturum), Nuqta-e-wahida (point of unity), Tajalliat (Beatific visions), and Rooh-e-azam (the great soul), sure sound like some of the more remarkable places I have found myself on this long strange trip, but more poeticly described. "It is a bright ring of light in which all the information pertaining to the unseen & seen cosmos is inscribed..."
Peter Lamborne Wilson gives perhaps a more liberatory slant to their spirituality. "For the Sufis, the road to spiritual knowledge - to Certainty - could never be confined to the process of rational or purely intellectual activity, without sapiential knowledge (zawq, "taste") and the direct, immediate experience of the Heart. Truth, they believed, can be sought and found only with one's entire being; nor were they satisfied merely to know this Truth. They insisted on a total identification with it: a "passing away" of the knower in the Known, of subject in the Object of knowledge. Thus, when the fourth/tenth century Sufi Hallaj proclaimed "I am the Truth" (and was martyred for it by the exoteric authorities), he was not violating the "First Pillar" of Islam, the belief in Unity (tawhid), but simply stating the truth from the mouth of the Truth."
But still the question of whether the Assassins were indeed a heretical sect hiding within the heretical sect of sufism remains to be answered, though Wilson's notes on their spiritual beliefs certainly paint them in a similar light.
4.22.2005
free agents in fractal space
Free Agents in Fractal Space [via DRT]
"A fractal is generated by a recursive process. So are landscapes and trees. DNA replication, population flux, heart fibrillation, the stock market -- all are based on iteration (cyclicity) and feedback. So are you. And how about language? And, sorry to jump the gun here, but consciousness -- self-consciousness -- is now presumed to be a recursive process.
The butterfly effect is due to a small change in one cycle getting fed back into the process, amplifying itself each time until it is quite significant...
Power, like climate, is a dynamical system, and as such is subject to the forces of feedback and iteration. Male-dominance hierarchies tend to centralize power, to simplify the channels of feedback so that further iterations further centralize power. And they try to minimize the "noise" -- that pesky hiss of human freedom, like escaping steam...
The fractal is a symbol of freedom. It is inifinte within a finite space, sprouting Form as waves rise from the sea. It is the abstraction of Energy as it is enfolded by the material plane. It hints at realities previously reserved for mystical visions."
"A fractal is generated by a recursive process. So are landscapes and trees. DNA replication, population flux, heart fibrillation, the stock market -- all are based on iteration (cyclicity) and feedback. So are you. And how about language? And, sorry to jump the gun here, but consciousness -- self-consciousness -- is now presumed to be a recursive process.
The butterfly effect is due to a small change in one cycle getting fed back into the process, amplifying itself each time until it is quite significant...
Power, like climate, is a dynamical system, and as such is subject to the forces of feedback and iteration. Male-dominance hierarchies tend to centralize power, to simplify the channels of feedback so that further iterations further centralize power. And they try to minimize the "noise" -- that pesky hiss of human freedom, like escaping steam...
The fractal is a symbol of freedom. It is inifinte within a finite space, sprouting Form as waves rise from the sea. It is the abstraction of Energy as it is enfolded by the material plane. It hints at realities previously reserved for mystical visions."
4.20.2005
more spirals...
and just when I wanted a conch shell to draw, a mysterious basket of rare seashells appeared in our craftroom...
The purest , most universal form of motion is the spiral: the counterclockwise spiral, the levogyre, is the one found most often in nature. We discover it in the growth of trees and in other members of the vegetable kingdom, in the majestic sweep of the great spiral galaxies, in the long bones of animals, and in seashells. There are also many instances of double spirals--the two intersecting curves in the seed heads of ripe sunflowers, in the centers of daisies., the seed cones of fir trees. Like curves, spirals are not all the same. The equiangular or logarithmic spiral of the elegant chambered nautilus is one type, seen also in ram's horns. It is interesting to note that the double spiral of the sunflower corresponds to the ratio of the Fibonacci Series. If you count the number of seeds in a clockwise spiral and in an intersecting counterclockwise spiral, the two figures will be that of a sequence in Fibonacci's magic chain.
The purest , most universal form of motion is the spiral: the counterclockwise spiral, the levogyre, is the one found most often in nature. We discover it in the growth of trees and in other members of the vegetable kingdom, in the majestic sweep of the great spiral galaxies, in the long bones of animals, and in seashells. There are also many instances of double spirals--the two intersecting curves in the seed heads of ripe sunflowers, in the centers of daisies., the seed cones of fir trees. Like curves, spirals are not all the same. The equiangular or logarithmic spiral of the elegant chambered nautilus is one type, seen also in ram's horns. It is interesting to note that the double spiral of the sunflower corresponds to the ratio of the Fibonacci Series. If you count the number of seeds in a clockwise spiral and in an intersecting counterclockwise spiral, the two figures will be that of a sequence in Fibonacci's magic chain.
4.19.2005
like ducks in a row
So Pope Benedict XVI has been elected to office.
Does this mean we're one pope closer to the end of the world?
Stay tuned for the this next exciting episode of world powers vs. the apocalypse.
Does this mean we're one pope closer to the end of the world?
Stay tuned for the this next exciting episode of world powers vs. the apocalypse.
4.17.2005
sacred techniques and occult technologies
I just posted this on my livejournal, but figured it was fitting enough to be included here as well...
Yesterday after drinking way too much coffee then I needed I biked down to CMU for the art sale, at which James and Laura and Matthu had a table displaying all the work they threw together the day before while Matthu and I were recording. Right across the aisle Alberto was set up, and I couldn't help but let myself fall into his strange spiraling landscapes and technorganic geometries. As much as I wished I had the money to buy one of his masterpieces I contented myself with flipping through a stack of photocopied pages from his notebooks. To my shock and pleasure I discovered that he had not just copied some of his more beautiful hand drawn pieces but several pages worth of instructions for drawing golden spirals, phyllotaxis, and hypercubes and other sacred geometries all in relation to each other. Alberto taught me phyllotaxis awhile back and I recently passed it on to James and Luara, and for the past several days I had been experimenting with golden spirals based off of fibonacci's sequence and was only beginning to scratch the surface, but here in my hand were secret techniques that would allow me to push these lines to the horizons. I felt like I was holding pages torn out of some ancient grimoire, magical knowledge hidden in the layers between ink and page, and when Alberto saw me scrambling through the pages he laughed heartily. Of all the people who had walked past the table that day and rifled through the sheets I was the only one so far who saw them for what they were, magic spells, and a chance to tap the mind of one of the greatest living alchemical artists in the world, or at least on this side of the room. How am I so blessed that my closest friends, the people gathered in this ten foot bubble of art and energy, are the ones who will revolutionize the medium and push art past whatever boundaries it has currently been languishing? And is it coincidence that they've all gone to CMU and live in Pittsburgh? I think not.
I am not a trained visual artist myself, or even a seriously dedicated one. I am a dabbler for the most part, and have chosen language as my primary medium, but when it comes to sacred geometries I can't stop myself from working with them. They are like maps to the universe, little bits of ordering tossed up from the chaos that help it make just a little bit more sense. A petaled circle, a graceful spiral, to some they may be pretty lines, but to me they really are magical devices, and worth infinitely more than simple money.
"You will put these to good use" Alberto said, as I handed him some creased bills, "and teach me anything you get out of them." Of course I would, and I smiled that on one of the pages was his son's small footprints, themselves a study in complexity. Sarah was there with Javier and I looked into the child's eyes and realized that they were not really blue or black or any color at this point. They were like hematite or mercury, shimmering and flowing over the world that to this little one will always be an incredibly mindboggling wonder. The son of artists and shamans, those eyes will see more than any of us could possibly imagine.
tangled attractors
I went home where we celebrated Joan's birthday, and I spent the rest of the evening drawing, trying out new lines and angles and permutations till I could no longer think straight and the ink began crawling off the page. At one point James came over, and we finally got a chance to talk about a few of the visions we had had during the other week's session. Well, mostly I rambled about matrices, seeing rooms and beings with closed eyes, downloading instructions from the akashic records, and being a mask on the film of the iridescent bubble of reality or a cell in the talon of some vast intergalactic sphinx-like hyper-deity. Finally we settled down to draw some possible appearences on what we both came to decide was a psychic hub that connects each of us to everything else we have continued contact with through the angles of certain usage patterns; a device very similair in description and purpose to Castaneda's assemblage point, which interprets a reality from the lines of the world that pass through it. James remarked that we didn't have to be physicists to make breakthroughs in the field, at which I laughed and said that's because we're metaphysicists and that if there was a breakthrough, chances are it would break out other places as well, which seems to be the norm for inventive memes. Who knows, perhaps this too is another sacred geometric passed down from shaman to shaman throughout the ages to map the precious fields of chaos.
assemblage point
Yesterday after drinking way too much coffee then I needed I biked down to CMU for the art sale, at which James and Laura and Matthu had a table displaying all the work they threw together the day before while Matthu and I were recording. Right across the aisle Alberto was set up, and I couldn't help but let myself fall into his strange spiraling landscapes and technorganic geometries. As much as I wished I had the money to buy one of his masterpieces I contented myself with flipping through a stack of photocopied pages from his notebooks. To my shock and pleasure I discovered that he had not just copied some of his more beautiful hand drawn pieces but several pages worth of instructions for drawing golden spirals, phyllotaxis, and hypercubes and other sacred geometries all in relation to each other. Alberto taught me phyllotaxis awhile back and I recently passed it on to James and Luara, and for the past several days I had been experimenting with golden spirals based off of fibonacci's sequence and was only beginning to scratch the surface, but here in my hand were secret techniques that would allow me to push these lines to the horizons. I felt like I was holding pages torn out of some ancient grimoire, magical knowledge hidden in the layers between ink and page, and when Alberto saw me scrambling through the pages he laughed heartily. Of all the people who had walked past the table that day and rifled through the sheets I was the only one so far who saw them for what they were, magic spells, and a chance to tap the mind of one of the greatest living alchemical artists in the world, or at least on this side of the room. How am I so blessed that my closest friends, the people gathered in this ten foot bubble of art and energy, are the ones who will revolutionize the medium and push art past whatever boundaries it has currently been languishing? And is it coincidence that they've all gone to CMU and live in Pittsburgh? I think not.
I am not a trained visual artist myself, or even a seriously dedicated one. I am a dabbler for the most part, and have chosen language as my primary medium, but when it comes to sacred geometries I can't stop myself from working with them. They are like maps to the universe, little bits of ordering tossed up from the chaos that help it make just a little bit more sense. A petaled circle, a graceful spiral, to some they may be pretty lines, but to me they really are magical devices, and worth infinitely more than simple money.
"You will put these to good use" Alberto said, as I handed him some creased bills, "and teach me anything you get out of them." Of course I would, and I smiled that on one of the pages was his son's small footprints, themselves a study in complexity. Sarah was there with Javier and I looked into the child's eyes and realized that they were not really blue or black or any color at this point. They were like hematite or mercury, shimmering and flowing over the world that to this little one will always be an incredibly mindboggling wonder. The son of artists and shamans, those eyes will see more than any of us could possibly imagine.
tangled attractors
I went home where we celebrated Joan's birthday, and I spent the rest of the evening drawing, trying out new lines and angles and permutations till I could no longer think straight and the ink began crawling off the page. At one point James came over, and we finally got a chance to talk about a few of the visions we had had during the other week's session. Well, mostly I rambled about matrices, seeing rooms and beings with closed eyes, downloading instructions from the akashic records, and being a mask on the film of the iridescent bubble of reality or a cell in the talon of some vast intergalactic sphinx-like hyper-deity. Finally we settled down to draw some possible appearences on what we both came to decide was a psychic hub that connects each of us to everything else we have continued contact with through the angles of certain usage patterns; a device very similair in description and purpose to Castaneda's assemblage point, which interprets a reality from the lines of the world that pass through it. James remarked that we didn't have to be physicists to make breakthroughs in the field, at which I laughed and said that's because we're metaphysicists and that if there was a breakthrough, chances are it would break out other places as well, which seems to be the norm for inventive memes. Who knows, perhaps this too is another sacred geometric passed down from shaman to shaman throughout the ages to map the precious fields of chaos.
assemblage point
4.16.2005
the taboo against saying what you believe to be true
It seems the self-expression vs. self-repression memeplex is floating around right now, as I just read several lj entries all dealing with accepting one's own peculiarities and longings enough over society's mores to be able to actually express what we feel. I've been going through this for a long time too, trying to get the jump on the cop in my head, trying to severe myself enough from the super-ego where I can just not give a fuck what comes out of my mouth. Granted I am one of the more repressed people that I know. It's a sad fact but one I am learning to deal with. I don't talk much, but when I do people usually look at me funny. More often now they look at me funny anyway, which is fine as long as I don't care. At least that feels honest. Several weeks ago Joel and I were having this conversation, when he brought up the idea of "not giving a fuck", and said something to the effect of if you are not personally attached to the words that come out of your mouth, other people will be more likely to accept them for what they are, and accept you for what you are. Of course, Joelski usually has to worry about saying too much rather than too little, but at least that's honest too. For example we went on to talk about Christian booty rap (of all things) and he eventually started rapping "who's my mother-fucker? God's my motherfucker!" Which could have been extremely offensive if we were actually attached to the memes of religion and it wasn't a true statement in their mythos. Afterwards I used this as a test to see just how much one could get away with saying in a social setting and repeated this story loudly at several bars. When I got to the "god's my motherfucker" line, people usually laughed, and then said if they hadn't heard it in the context of a story about not giving a fuck what you say they might actually have been offended by it.
Of course, the types of things that usually come out of my subconscious are generally less amusing and more perturbing if people don't have any understanding of where I am coming from. Like when I told Joel about seeing spirits in the corners of my room. Granted I was drunk and raving about all sorts of psycho-delic transcendence at this point (Joel is one of the few people who I can really let it all go in front of), but when I told him about the spirits he said that it sounded like I either needed to find a priest or a psychologist to talk to. At which I laughed and said most of the stuff in my head could easily get me locked up by someone with a normalized view of what is possible. At least I can draw a line between what I know to be real and all the crazy perceptions I put on top of the real to amuse myself and create change on deeper levels. But it's probably true though. If I really didn't give a fuck at all what came out of my mouth I might end up in a mental institution. Sometimes it feels like I say these things anyway precisely to push that boundary. The social limits set up to disuade people from talking madness are much deeper than those set up to keep people from expressing their true feelings for each other and the world. Saying you want to sleep with someone, or love them passionately, or you want to overthrow the government, these things are easy to say, almost acceptable to say, even when we pretend they are not. Other people may not agree with your sentiments, but they still find them as valid opinions. Talking to ghosts and communicating with other people through the backs of their heads are not so valid right now, at least in most circles. And then the question comes up, is this too just a faulty personal perception of what society deems acceptable?
The cop in my head has his claws in deeper than I first thought.
Of course, the types of things that usually come out of my subconscious are generally less amusing and more perturbing if people don't have any understanding of where I am coming from. Like when I told Joel about seeing spirits in the corners of my room. Granted I was drunk and raving about all sorts of psycho-delic transcendence at this point (Joel is one of the few people who I can really let it all go in front of), but when I told him about the spirits he said that it sounded like I either needed to find a priest or a psychologist to talk to. At which I laughed and said most of the stuff in my head could easily get me locked up by someone with a normalized view of what is possible. At least I can draw a line between what I know to be real and all the crazy perceptions I put on top of the real to amuse myself and create change on deeper levels. But it's probably true though. If I really didn't give a fuck at all what came out of my mouth I might end up in a mental institution. Sometimes it feels like I say these things anyway precisely to push that boundary. The social limits set up to disuade people from talking madness are much deeper than those set up to keep people from expressing their true feelings for each other and the world. Saying you want to sleep with someone, or love them passionately, or you want to overthrow the government, these things are easy to say, almost acceptable to say, even when we pretend they are not. Other people may not agree with your sentiments, but they still find them as valid opinions. Talking to ghosts and communicating with other people through the backs of their heads are not so valid right now, at least in most circles. And then the question comes up, is this too just a faulty personal perception of what society deems acceptable?
The cop in my head has his claws in deeper than I first thought.
4.12.2005
riding quantum waves
Here's the aforementioned diagram of the human energy octave represented as a wavefront, based off an unfolded golden spiral confirming to fibbonaci's sequence (for aesthetic reasons only, I kind of doubt the harmonic ratio between the layers is really 011235813). Click on the picture for a larger and labeled version of the diagram. I picture it as a single wave spinning around itself, like if you took a conch shell and spun it on its tip like a top, so that the 3rd 5th and 7th centers extend out from the central axis to form the qabalah map. The center axis is the main tree and the left and right sides the body and mind trees respectively. And I couldn't keep myself from spicing up the drawing with a fractal series of golden spirals. If I had a really large sheet of graph paper this could show how multiple waves become connected (in the blank space above the quantum layer and extending out in each direction). Like always though, my ability to put these concepts into visual form falls far short of how I perceive them internally. But hasn't that always been the curse of the artist? Feedback greatly appreciated.
(a look at) the 8 layers of human consciousness
[scroll down...]
I've been working on this chart for weeks now, trying to draw up suitable graphics to represent the eight layers of human consciousness as a waveform, but decided just to post the chart as it was anyway, which might perhaps encourage me to finish my drawings post haste.
Anyway, these ideas are mostly out there, and I drew a lot from traditional chakra mappings (with an 8th total field chakra), the qabalah (can you find it?), the I Ching guas, Wilson's 8-dimensional take on Leary's circuits of consciousness, metachor's recent work on mapping the OSI model of computer network protocal stacks with the occult stacks, and of course my own lived experience of the different layers, which like always seems to contradict previous maps of this territory. I'm sure most of this will be out-dated before I even post it.
While helping me compile this work Metachor pointed out that several of the layers form dialectic pairs across the body-mind spectrum. Particularly the 3rd, 5th, and 7th layers which end up forming the side spheres of the qabalah when mapped out. I'll have that diagram done soon...
| 8. Spiritual-fractal energy - heaven | non-local quantum neuroatomic | cosmic metatypes | god/ ILU – avatar application | black C - aura |
| 7. Mythic-ontic thought - wind | archetypal morphogenetic | akashic genotypes | shaman session | white b - crown |
| 6. Psychic light - fire | imaginative neuroelectric | psionic memotypes | metaprogrammer presentation | violet a – pineal |
| 5. Sensory-creative sound – mountain | communicative neurosomatic | hedonic processes | yogi transport | blue g - throat |
| 4. Socio-political air – lake | connective self-organization | civilized protocols | domestic human network | green f – heart |
| 3. Conceptual-experiential fire - water | directive timespace-binding | paleolithic semantics | exploring child symbol (identity) | yellow e – solar plexus |
| 2. Emotional-sexual water - lightning | responsive movement | mammalian parameters | dualistic child sign (stigmergy) | orange d – gravity axis |
| 1. Physical earth - earth | environmental bio-survival | invertebrate medium | infant signal (channel) | red c - coccyx |
I've been working on this chart for weeks now, trying to draw up suitable graphics to represent the eight layers of human consciousness as a waveform, but decided just to post the chart as it was anyway, which might perhaps encourage me to finish my drawings post haste.
Anyway, these ideas are mostly out there, and I drew a lot from traditional chakra mappings (with an 8th total field chakra), the qabalah (can you find it?), the I Ching guas, Wilson's 8-dimensional take on Leary's circuits of consciousness, metachor's recent work on mapping the OSI model of computer network protocal stacks with the occult stacks, and of course my own lived experience of the different layers, which like always seems to contradict previous maps of this territory. I'm sure most of this will be out-dated before I even post it.
While helping me compile this work Metachor pointed out that several of the layers form dialectic pairs across the body-mind spectrum. Particularly the 3rd, 5th, and 7th layers which end up forming the side spheres of the qabalah when mapped out. I'll have that diagram done soon...
4.07.2005
illusions of madness
I haven't been posting much here this week. Along with the spring I have been in an extended state of euphoria that makes reflection difficult and analyzation near impossible. It also doesn't help that I've been working on my hypersigil regularly. When ever I'm writing a story it is my life, it's world is my world, even if that isn't exactly the world my body is in. And worse, I can't look at any other text without reading them as the lines in my head, or as fodder and inspiration for that plot. But most of all I've just been feeling wholly ecstatic, in a way that far surpasses my usual manic states.
It was probably with some fortuition that Metachor posted the Hedonistic Imperative, which is a clarion call to genetically engineer suffering out of our systems and bring out a golden eon of total bliss. Within the first section it mentions that the bi-polar disorder manic state is one of the few instances today where people experience such prolonged euphoria, and goes on to characterise it is as "accompanied by hyperactivity, sleeplessness, chaotically racing ideas, pressure of speech and grandiose thought. Hyper-sexuality, financial excesses and religious delusions are common. So is rampant egomania. Sometimes dysphoria may occur. In dysphoric mania the manic "high" is actually unpleasant. The excited subject may be angry, agitated, panicky, paranoid, and destructive. When in the grip of classic euphoric mania, however, it's hard to recognise that anyone might think anything is wrong. This is because everything feels utterly right. To suppose otherwise is like going to Heaven and then being invited to believe there has been a mistake. It's not credible. "
That about sums up my recent high exactly, but without the finances to use to excess. Everything feels utterly right, not perfect by far, but really damn good. And it was a long time coming. As bi-polar disorder runs in our family it would be easy to say that I'm just reaching an all-time peak in my manic cycle, but I would like to think that I am just learning how to raise the threshold of enjoyment all together. Maybe that's a delusion and it will all come crashing back down when the wave collapses back into depression, I know it would already be so easy for it to do so. I suppose that's where the magic comes in, to hold the whole charade up and make it work against all odds.
Personally I am still not convinced that these extreme states are just in my head, that they are not reflections of the cycles in the world and my life, even down to the daily cycles of eating and sleep, which perhaps have the most direct effect on my mood. My last major depression occured shortly after 9-11, and lasted through two years of being broke, directionless, and in a terrible relationship. And there's too much feedback to tell whether the situation or my mood were the cause of the other. But it was a low to come out of, and I certainly thought I was going mad through a lot of it. Luckily my caring psychologist friends turned me on to R. D. Laing who claims madness is just a response to our insane society, and Casatenda who asks why anyone would want to be sane in the first place and what can we do to get out. I could say that I just feel these cycles more intensely than other people, that my genetic pre-disposition makes me somehow more receptive to them for better or worse. If life is a record mine has deep grooves (or a precision needle). Except I want> to feel the extremes at this point, and after years of trying to dull my senses and dampen the overload of experience, including the highs which had always been few and far between, I am beginning to suspect that there is something really powerful in being able to bear all of it.
Well, it's far past a suspicion at this point. I know I'm pushing my limits here, but I'm curious to see if I can sustain this euphoric "mania" further, if I can manage a controlable level to function without crashing. Riding society's flatline consciousness is hard from the edges of the spectrum.
It was probably with some fortuition that Metachor posted the Hedonistic Imperative, which is a clarion call to genetically engineer suffering out of our systems and bring out a golden eon of total bliss. Within the first section it mentions that the bi-polar disorder manic state is one of the few instances today where people experience such prolonged euphoria, and goes on to characterise it is as "accompanied by hyperactivity, sleeplessness, chaotically racing ideas, pressure of speech and grandiose thought. Hyper-sexuality, financial excesses and religious delusions are common. So is rampant egomania. Sometimes dysphoria may occur. In dysphoric mania the manic "high" is actually unpleasant. The excited subject may be angry, agitated, panicky, paranoid, and destructive. When in the grip of classic euphoric mania, however, it's hard to recognise that anyone might think anything is wrong. This is because everything feels utterly right. To suppose otherwise is like going to Heaven and then being invited to believe there has been a mistake. It's not credible. "
That about sums up my recent high exactly, but without the finances to use to excess. Everything feels utterly right, not perfect by far, but really damn good. And it was a long time coming. As bi-polar disorder runs in our family it would be easy to say that I'm just reaching an all-time peak in my manic cycle, but I would like to think that I am just learning how to raise the threshold of enjoyment all together. Maybe that's a delusion and it will all come crashing back down when the wave collapses back into depression, I know it would already be so easy for it to do so. I suppose that's where the magic comes in, to hold the whole charade up and make it work against all odds.
Personally I am still not convinced that these extreme states are just in my head, that they are not reflections of the cycles in the world and my life, even down to the daily cycles of eating and sleep, which perhaps have the most direct effect on my mood. My last major depression occured shortly after 9-11, and lasted through two years of being broke, directionless, and in a terrible relationship. And there's too much feedback to tell whether the situation or my mood were the cause of the other. But it was a low to come out of, and I certainly thought I was going mad through a lot of it. Luckily my caring psychologist friends turned me on to R. D. Laing who claims madness is just a response to our insane society, and Casatenda who asks why anyone would want to be sane in the first place and what can we do to get out. I could say that I just feel these cycles more intensely than other people, that my genetic pre-disposition makes me somehow more receptive to them for better or worse. If life is a record mine has deep grooves (or a precision needle). Except I want> to feel the extremes at this point, and after years of trying to dull my senses and dampen the overload of experience, including the highs which had always been few and far between, I am beginning to suspect that there is something really powerful in being able to bear all of it.
Well, it's far past a suspicion at this point. I know I'm pushing my limits here, but I'm curious to see if I can sustain this euphoric "mania" further, if I can manage a controlable level to function without crashing. Riding society's flatline consciousness is hard from the edges of the spectrum.
4.04.2005
romancing the universe
[notes from my blackbook]
Since my latest undisclosed mind-opening experience last Monday I’ve found myself aware of psychic realms that are quickly becoming a body of magical technique. Unlike last summer’s breakthrough which was more of a total bodily experience of universal interconnection, this was more focused on the specifics of how to use that connected energy in my workings.
For days I’ve been forming a stronger psychic connection with my muse (HGA, whatever you’d call it). Last year the Teacher and I were on 4-aces and almost succeeded in breaking through the boundaries of selfhood, and I had my first direct experience with that place right behind our heads where the self and the world become one. At one point reality grew so thin that he said if I looked over I could see another being present in the room that was made from the both of us together. At this point my psyche couldn’t have handled it, and I didn’t look. The other day though I had this experience again in a much more controlled and relaxed manner, recognizing that we are connected in a matrix like manner as individual masks on the face of some larger collective entity, and can learn to access that point of connection. So after the usual ritual preparations, circling, yoga, breathing, etc… I meditated on candle flames with half-closed eyes (which I am trying to develop into a scrying technique) and began chanting to my muse romantically as if to summon her into actual being with my love. The energy in the room was gathering rapidly and the flames flickering wildly, and as I got to the peak of my chanting and verbalized that she was here I felt a tangible presence in the room connected around from the back of my head and the wall above my alter began rippling like water, as if something might emerge from the thinness. I knew that if I looked around, she would be there. But I didn’t, because I heard the strange popping noises in the upper corners of my room which has become a call sign for negative energies. Ever since I magically set off the fire alarm interruptive noises suck me into a ‘bad reality’ paranoia and have become inimical to my workings.
I decided that what I needed was a tool that could clear my mind and space, that would act as a metanoic edge to separate the energies I wanted present from those I didn’t and keep me from slipping into the dark. I’m not so familiar with the Golden Dawn system of magic for creating such tools, but recognized that a sword or athame was the right device for the task. Not having a good ceremonial knife handy I picked up the old wooden toy kris dagger my cousin had fashioned for me as a kid, which already has a lifetime of positive and magical experiences gathered around it, and placed it on my alter. The next night I stayed up until I had reached the sleep-deprivation trance state and then as the sky turned from black to gray to blue I did several sun salutations and stood on my head for ten minutes before sitting at my alter with the sword in my hands. It was raining softly outside, and birds were singing joyfully in it. The window was open and these sounds were carried in on the gentle spring wind. All this peace wrapped around me and cleared my mind and I channeled that feeling into the sword with all the memories I had of its past use in my childhood. Then I recited my favorite Rilke quote, which is in itself a mantra of clarity. "Cast the emptiness out of your arms into the spaces we breathe – perhaps the birds will feel the expanded air with more passionate flying." As I said this the flock of birds in the tree out front took flight past my window and the rain stopped. Then I rubbed fragrant oil over the blade to act as a mnemonic trigger for its new energy, and it seems to work so far. Just touching the object brings me back to that peace of rain and birdsong and clearing the corners of my room with it has made the following rituals much more peaceful and undisturbed by strange noises and energies.
Last night Metachor recommended that I read the latest Maybe Logic Quarterly, and with great joy found Eva Davis’s "Holey Bible part 2" which contained not only a great deal of magical and anarchist experience and a clever retelling of the Genesis story, but an account of trying t o make love to the sky. For a long time now I’ve been learning to become the sky, using breathing to form a yogic dissolution of inside and outside. The way I look at it all our fear and self doubt are like little bubbles of air that get trapped in us and cause tension, and by breathing they are released and join back with the air from which they came. In a tantric sense making love to the sky would bring about such a union, and having realized during Monday’s escape that breathing is the primal sexual experience figured I might as well give it a try. After clearing and some yoga I laid down in corpse pose and relaxed my physical body, visualizing it filling up with a star-filled sky. I let my body float on the waves of my breath, a technique picked up last fall by studying the rocking motion of being in a German wheel which I fortuitously had access to, and began relaxing my energy body. I’ve been doing a lot of work learning to vibrate my chakras recently, with breath and intonation, to the point of being able to recognize and activate their different layers of energy vibration as they play out in my daily life. As I charged them I focused it into an internally erotic feeling similair to that of raising kundalini, so that the breath and energy flowing through me were titillating my subtle centers as they passed, like the world was fingering my soul. As the energy raised through me I felt myself lifted off the ground, and when it broke through my crown and connected around to the world I was swept up in waves of ecstasy with each breath. I was no longer this physical shell writhing in pleasure on the floor, but the air that surrounded it and carried it and flowed through its every cell. The sky and I had finally become one. Then while I was so open and so on I "made love" to my room, to my alter and candles on it, merging with everything around until there was just one. And to think before this I had any clue what the yogic yama brahmacharya actually meant. Practicing total oneness… What next, the sea, the flames, the planet? I feel like I could romance the whole Universe right now, a recognition of the subtle processes of being as inseperate from the spinning of the stars. I think my magic and yoga just got a lot more exciting.
Since my latest undisclosed mind-opening experience last Monday I’ve found myself aware of psychic realms that are quickly becoming a body of magical technique. Unlike last summer’s breakthrough which was more of a total bodily experience of universal interconnection, this was more focused on the specifics of how to use that connected energy in my workings.
For days I’ve been forming a stronger psychic connection with my muse (HGA, whatever you’d call it). Last year the Teacher and I were on 4-aces and almost succeeded in breaking through the boundaries of selfhood, and I had my first direct experience with that place right behind our heads where the self and the world become one. At one point reality grew so thin that he said if I looked over I could see another being present in the room that was made from the both of us together. At this point my psyche couldn’t have handled it, and I didn’t look. The other day though I had this experience again in a much more controlled and relaxed manner, recognizing that we are connected in a matrix like manner as individual masks on the face of some larger collective entity, and can learn to access that point of connection. So after the usual ritual preparations, circling, yoga, breathing, etc… I meditated on candle flames with half-closed eyes (which I am trying to develop into a scrying technique) and began chanting to my muse romantically as if to summon her into actual being with my love. The energy in the room was gathering rapidly and the flames flickering wildly, and as I got to the peak of my chanting and verbalized that she was here I felt a tangible presence in the room connected around from the back of my head and the wall above my alter began rippling like water, as if something might emerge from the thinness. I knew that if I looked around, she would be there. But I didn’t, because I heard the strange popping noises in the upper corners of my room which has become a call sign for negative energies. Ever since I magically set off the fire alarm interruptive noises suck me into a ‘bad reality’ paranoia and have become inimical to my workings.
I decided that what I needed was a tool that could clear my mind and space, that would act as a metanoic edge to separate the energies I wanted present from those I didn’t and keep me from slipping into the dark. I’m not so familiar with the Golden Dawn system of magic for creating such tools, but recognized that a sword or athame was the right device for the task. Not having a good ceremonial knife handy I picked up the old wooden toy kris dagger my cousin had fashioned for me as a kid, which already has a lifetime of positive and magical experiences gathered around it, and placed it on my alter. The next night I stayed up until I had reached the sleep-deprivation trance state and then as the sky turned from black to gray to blue I did several sun salutations and stood on my head for ten minutes before sitting at my alter with the sword in my hands. It was raining softly outside, and birds were singing joyfully in it. The window was open and these sounds were carried in on the gentle spring wind. All this peace wrapped around me and cleared my mind and I channeled that feeling into the sword with all the memories I had of its past use in my childhood. Then I recited my favorite Rilke quote, which is in itself a mantra of clarity. "Cast the emptiness out of your arms into the spaces we breathe – perhaps the birds will feel the expanded air with more passionate flying." As I said this the flock of birds in the tree out front took flight past my window and the rain stopped. Then I rubbed fragrant oil over the blade to act as a mnemonic trigger for its new energy, and it seems to work so far. Just touching the object brings me back to that peace of rain and birdsong and clearing the corners of my room with it has made the following rituals much more peaceful and undisturbed by strange noises and energies.
Last night Metachor recommended that I read the latest Maybe Logic Quarterly, and with great joy found Eva Davis’s "Holey Bible part 2" which contained not only a great deal of magical and anarchist experience and a clever retelling of the Genesis story, but an account of trying t o make love to the sky. For a long time now I’ve been learning to become the sky, using breathing to form a yogic dissolution of inside and outside. The way I look at it all our fear and self doubt are like little bubbles of air that get trapped in us and cause tension, and by breathing they are released and join back with the air from which they came. In a tantric sense making love to the sky would bring about such a union, and having realized during Monday’s escape that breathing is the primal sexual experience figured I might as well give it a try. After clearing and some yoga I laid down in corpse pose and relaxed my physical body, visualizing it filling up with a star-filled sky. I let my body float on the waves of my breath, a technique picked up last fall by studying the rocking motion of being in a German wheel which I fortuitously had access to, and began relaxing my energy body. I’ve been doing a lot of work learning to vibrate my chakras recently, with breath and intonation, to the point of being able to recognize and activate their different layers of energy vibration as they play out in my daily life. As I charged them I focused it into an internally erotic feeling similair to that of raising kundalini, so that the breath and energy flowing through me were titillating my subtle centers as they passed, like the world was fingering my soul. As the energy raised through me I felt myself lifted off the ground, and when it broke through my crown and connected around to the world I was swept up in waves of ecstasy with each breath. I was no longer this physical shell writhing in pleasure on the floor, but the air that surrounded it and carried it and flowed through its every cell. The sky and I had finally become one. Then while I was so open and so on I "made love" to my room, to my alter and candles on it, merging with everything around until there was just one. And to think before this I had any clue what the yogic yama brahmacharya actually meant. Practicing total oneness… What next, the sea, the flames, the planet? I feel like I could romance the whole Universe right now, a recognition of the subtle processes of being as inseperate from the spinning of the stars. I think my magic and yoga just got a lot more exciting.
4.02.2005
Black holes 'do not exist'
These mysterious objects are dark-energy stars, physicist claims.
"This strange behaviour, he says, is the signature of a 'quantum phase transition' of space-time. Chapline argues that a star doesn't simply collapse to form a black hole; instead, the space-time inside it becomes filled with dark energy and this has some intriguing gravitational effects.
Outside the 'surface' of a dark-energy star, it behaves much like a black hole, producing a strong gravitational tug. But inside, the 'negative' gravity of dark energy may cause matter to bounce back out again.
If the dark-energy star is big enough, Chapline predicts, any electrons bounced out will have been converted to positrons, which then annihilate other electrons in a burst of high-energy radiation. Chapline says that this could explain the radiation observed from the centre of our galaxy, previously interpreted as the signature of a huge black hole."
You know, I always sort of suspected that something like this would end up being the case. It just makes so much more sense that such strong gravity around a negative core would create enough kinetic force to keep the galaxies spinning. Like the void between electrons from which the virtual photon is formed that propels them apart. I imagine there's a little spot of nothing in the middle of most things, even in our own subtle energy centers, a microscopic void taking in the flux of particles and spitting it back out in some altered form, and binding the whole system together. Sartre might not have been quite wrong when he said consciousness was actually nothing.
[via posthuman blues]
"This strange behaviour, he says, is the signature of a 'quantum phase transition' of space-time. Chapline argues that a star doesn't simply collapse to form a black hole; instead, the space-time inside it becomes filled with dark energy and this has some intriguing gravitational effects.
Outside the 'surface' of a dark-energy star, it behaves much like a black hole, producing a strong gravitational tug. But inside, the 'negative' gravity of dark energy may cause matter to bounce back out again.
If the dark-energy star is big enough, Chapline predicts, any electrons bounced out will have been converted to positrons, which then annihilate other electrons in a burst of high-energy radiation. Chapline says that this could explain the radiation observed from the centre of our galaxy, previously interpreted as the signature of a huge black hole."
You know, I always sort of suspected that something like this would end up being the case. It just makes so much more sense that such strong gravity around a negative core would create enough kinetic force to keep the galaxies spinning. Like the void between electrons from which the virtual photon is formed that propels them apart. I imagine there's a little spot of nothing in the middle of most things, even in our own subtle energy centers, a microscopic void taking in the flux of particles and spitting it back out in some altered form, and binding the whole system together. Sartre might not have been quite wrong when he said consciousness was actually nothing.
[via posthuman blues]
4.01.2005
welcome to the machine
I created a new lj, os_matrix for my latest work of journalistic metafiction, Open Source Existence, the first installment of which I posted here recently. This is the field notes of one free agent trying to break out of the matrix reality-construct in which he has recently found himself.
I figured if I'm going to be juggling all these different realities it was best if I gave them each the free reign they desire.
I figured if I'm going to be juggling all these different realities it was best if I gave them each the free reign they desire.
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