A Sufi Story

I once heard a sufi story about a man riding his donkey rapidly through a crowded city.  The man did not stop to greet any passerby and his face held an air of intense determination as he galloped through the city.  One man, a beggar, was fed up with seeing this strange man every few hours and resolved to figure out what the man was after.  The next time the man passed by the beggar jumped out in front of his donkey and yelled, "Stop!" The man stopped immediately.  The beggar asked, "What makes you gallop around this city everyday in such a hurry?"  The man with the donkey replied, "I'm looking for my donkey."

Often we are like the man and his donkey as we continue to seek that which is right underneath us.  Our experience.

Translator for Experience

Many people live as if their personal train of thought acts as the engine for experience when its operation is more akin to that of a translator.  If thinking stops experience doesn't stop.  One's thoughts are brought forth from what one perceives, yet, thoughts try to describe experience even though, because of their very essence, thoughts cannot encapsulate  true and full experience.  When one thinks endlessly it is as if one thinks in an attempt to explain and unravel the secret of existence.  The secret is that there is no secret to find, only more and more experience to be had.  The function of the mind is to translate this experience into a communicable form so it can be understood by other experience engines.(people)

A Strangely True Answer from a Truly Strange Guy

Chasing the Self

Once one finds oneself firmly embedded in the present either through self-work, exercise(body-work), or as a natural state of being, the next spiritual pinnacle to reach becomes the experience of self.  The self is a slippery thing to get ahold of because when one believes they have attained it it slips right through their fingers and they find they are actually more or less than they  previously believed.  This slippery aspect of the self originates from the fact that the self can never be complete in of itself at any one time.  The self we were yesterday is not the same as today and the same is true of even twenty minutes ago.  One continuously creates the self through experience which arises from the ever-changing self interacting with the ever-changing outside world.  This synthesis of variables coalesces into a state of being where one is experiencing every unique moment through a unique self.  This paradox underlies spiritual living and the growth inherent in it.  The self is continuously created through a lifetime, not achieved all at once.

I believe the true-will is the influence our future self (from the end of our life) has upon the present moment.  The self that has already experienced our life paradoxically influences the path our present life goes through.  This "ultimate" self may not just have experienced our current life path, but, all possible life paths we could have chosen based on any conscious decision we made throughout our life.  So this "ultimate" self which influences us through intuition or conscience knows us better than any present self could.

MXE Methoxetamine or "Robot Kittens"

Research chemicals arrive at a faster and faster rate in order to keep one step ahead of the DEA and their scheduling system.  MXE OR Robot Kittens, as the dealer called it, is one of the newest chemicals out on the market.  It is a near analogue of PCP and Ketamine and has similar yet reportedly safer and cleaner effects.  I tried it once during after a night of mephedrone bingeing when it was new on the market and had a strange yet unquestionably enjoyable experience.  My roommates and I ended up being the life of an alcohol filled party next door while also being able to enjoy a trippy experience of watching the visualizer while listening to electronic music.  It was strange how at the party we attended our minds felt utterly empty yet we always had something witty to say to each other or to any drunken reveler we engaged.  The strangest part of the night was our short trip to 7-11 4 blocks away where we descended into giggles, walking aimlessly in the aisles, and ridiculing the drunk or stoned people frequenting the Sev at the early morning hour.  The 7-11 guys didn't care as we were frequent inebriated customers.  But damn were we having a blast just walking around 7-11.  Everything was so familiar yet so new at the same time.  It was as if the MXE made us aware of new sensations and feelings about occurrences and locales that we already had frequent experience with.  The subjective feeling gravitated between extreme inebriated disassociation and an almost godlike sensation of obvious yet encompassing omnipotence.  At some points in the night I was sure my companions and I were bound to take over the world shortly before I realized we were experiencing our usual AM stoney adventures albeit in an extremely warped and exaggerated perspective.
 After this first occurrence I did not locate another source for  a few months.  When I did I went on a respectably large binge of MXE with some LSD and 4-ACO DMT thrown in around it, this lasted for about 2 weeks.  During this time I felt as if I was on the verge of some kind of cosmic realization that only needed one more trip to break through.  I eventually came back to reality when I realized I was accomplishing little except for snorting large quantities of MXE.

Quote of the Day

Once Goethe was asked, ’What is the meaning, the secret, of life?’ He replied, ’That which the plant

does unconsciously, do consciously... that is to say, grow."

Growth happens whether we are ready for it or not so throwing ourselves into situations in order to grow consciously rather than waiting for uncertainty to come knocking at our door and demand a response is a good way to consciously engage the growth process occurring throughout our lives,

Leading by Control or Example

The people who control society lead the masses through restriction and enforcement.  This causes a backlash towards authority through crime and deviance.  If the decision makers among us led by example rather than control people wouldn't have anything to rebel against, only existing methods to innovate from.  The leaders could function as the artistic and individualistic exemplars that seek to impart individuality throughout the masses.  People would choose a leader to follow until they were confident enough in themselves to lead others according to their own views.  In this way the best among us would slowly influence the masses towards their peaks of consciousness through example and encouragement.  A united society of individual enlightened persons would function much better than the presently imposed hierarchy 

A Way for the Rich to Redeem Themselves

An idea: If someone could enlighten or bring real love to the super rich in our world they would realize that their hoarding of wealth for selfish ego purposes harms the rest of humanity.  They need to realize that the man on the street corner started out with the same conscious sense of self that they did and that his experiences of pain and poverty are as real as the rich's experiences of splendor and luxury.  I bet there exists a special place in hell or the cosmos for the super rich who realize their commonality with everyman and continue to hoard wealth for no perceivable reason except extreme greed.  Maybe they are reborn as dung beetles or something suiting for their shit-hoarding habits.  If these people would step down from their pedestal and realize that the world is full of people just like them with the same fragile consciousness they may have hope for redemption.  If the super-rich suddenly all experienced intense unity or the mystic experience they may even band together in order to give away all their wealth in order to enrich the living standards of all men.  If all these tycoons redeemed their greed through an act of gratuitous yet needed generosity I think god and the masses  could forgive them for their sins.  Can people really believe life is about collecting the biggest pile of shit?

Witnessing the Perfect Present

Spiritual awakening can occur gradually or instantaneously.  It really depends on the individual's experience.  Once it happens it is like seeing your life more intimately than you have ever felt it before while at the same time, having a sense of being outside your experience as an impartial observer.  Once the two states of being combine and you are both intensely in the present moment and outside of time witnessing the moment, real growth begins.

Trippy Song of the Day

Personal Time vs. Social Time

If time is classified as thought moving through space then when all thought stops so does time.  The world's technology proceeds in an effort to quicken the pace at which people can think.  We don't have any notion of what this acceleration of thinking is leading us towards except more thinking.  I believe once technology is integrated into life fully enough to become enmeshed in the experience then we will begin to live outside of time.  Living outside of time lends a sort of simultaneity to all one's actions as every action can be seen to really be occurring in the ever existing present.  When time relates to the individual and their relationship with reality rather than the individual's relationship with human society we will have an enlightened society of individualists rather than a mindless cattle herd.

Trippy Song of the Day

A Reversal of Roles

Women seem to obviously be better negotiators and communicators so why is it that men who rarely can process others ideas alongside their own run society?  I believe we are in a stage of rapid male-led advancement in society that is bringing us towards some kind of impasse in time where society will return to both a balance with nature and between the sexes.  Men will return to their role of creative explorers of the mind and reality much like their hunter gatherer ancestors while women will regain their roles as the protectors and sustainers of human society.  With the two sexes integrated men will bring change from outside the system through spiritual exploration and mind expansion to the rock-solid female led base society.  Materialism has made it seem, because of physical differences between the sexes, that women are the receptive force while men are the penetrative force.  While this rings true biologically if one meditates on the difference between the male and female mind it seems men have a receptive mine while women have a penetrative one.  This denial of each sex's interior landscape in relation to their biology causes harm to the human race.

Struggle Between Spirit and Matter

Within man is the feeling that he exists as something more than the body and the encompassing reality the body resides in.  Glimpses of this "other" self appear at times of increased stress such as near death experiences or intense hallucinogenic episodes.  The enlightened men of the ages were people who could sustain contact with this alien, spiritual, and infinite self.  The contact with this other self inside oneself leads man to rebel against his nature or the current energy waveform we find ourselves in.  Man senses he is more than he perceives and exists as, so, he tries to escape what he feels is a prison of his true being.  This feeling led man away from his hunter-gatherer origins into agriculture and civilization.  As capitalist ego-driven global society breaks down we are beginning to see that we were wrong to deny our origins and that we'd be better off embracing our current state of being and all that it entails while still serving the outside perspective of witnessing buried deep within our being.  Organized religion has always suppressed the body and nature in favor of a moral, ego-driven, and abstracted service to what it believes is the only source of our being, our contact with the transcendent.  What the major organized religions missed was the fact that our nature exists to act in tandem with our spiritual connection so we may spiritualize the matter outside us while materializing the spiritual within us.  Our transcendent spiritual connection to infinity and our limited bodies are both divine in origin and operate best in tandem.

Humanity's Teen Angst

The greatest is within the smallest.
-Lao Tzu
Mankind's history seems to mirror the personal development of one single man.  When we were hunter gatherers we existed with vast potentiality and a love for all that surrounded us in nature.  The heavily engrained ego self-images of man we call religion and philosophy still paled in comparison to the vast raw spiritual experience man found himself taking part in.  In these early years man was close to his mother(the earth) and tried his best to act in accordance with her wishes.  As time went on man began to feel that he was more important than the earth he sprang from and cities, agriculture, and organized religion arrived to place man in a state of  circuitous self-reference that excluded his relationship with nature and the earth.  Much like the young child who has just learned how to speak and believes he knows everything.  Recently, just like a rebellious teen gravitates to beer and cigarettes humans have begun to poison their collective body, the earth, in an effort to reach some unforeseen future.  We have even made a prodigal journey to the moon believing that our mission was to leave the earth.  Like a teen who leaves home only to sadly trod back in the door days later.  More and more, we are feeling that all these self-driven strivings for dominance and independence from the natural matrix are ill-begotten.  Humans are beginning to see that our destiny originates from the past as much as it echoes from the future.  We cannot escape our origins, we must rather, build a new foundation upon what we always were with what we have learned in the millennia of civilization.

Prodigal Journey

I just returned from a one month journey in the US from Philly to Southern Cal and back and phew was that enlightening.  People differed immensely from state to state while still retaining a distinct American flavoring. I met lots of great people throughout all the locales.  One common thread throughout all the areas and peoples I met was their dissatisfaction with the current system and their strong hope that something better was coming along soon.  I usually echoed the people's sentiments right back towards them as my research on myself and others had yielded a similar state of mind within myself for a time.  People's complaints went from anything as above them as the banker's blatant disregard for other people to just a general sense of disappointment with how their own life had turned out.  Many of these downtrodden folk related how they were imprisoned in their current sad state of affairs by someone outside themselves, be it the bankers, the government, Big China, or their neighbors.  No one seemed to be able to hold their-self in anyway accountable for their current place in life.  It seemed as if many of these people were waiting for some kind of savior from outside themselves to pull them out of their misery.  It began to feel to me if everyone pulled themselves up by their own shoelaces while sharing what they have of themselves to give with others the world would be able to attain a more self-actualized existence than the present collapse and the circular blame game that trails closely behind it.  Whose going to save us from our problems but ourselves? We can't help anyone else unless we first help ourselves.

Why change the outside when you can change yourself?

    In today's world of rapidly expanding industrial infrastructure it has become hard to discern what all this progress really accomplishes for humanity as a whole.  People often say technology helps us live easier and more fulfilling lives, but, evidence exists that gives credence to the idea that the technological demiurge actually mitigates our ability to live rewarding lives.  Obesity and technological addiction represent only two of the facets of modernity that seem anything but progressive.  People have given up their inherent rights to enjoy their bodies alongside their minds when they become sedentary obese consumers.  Much of the technology that we believe extends our human capabilities actually makes us into machines where our only self-directed activities have become pushing buttons or other input devices upon the computers we love so deeply.  Along with these negative externalities we place upon ourselves there also exists the obvious stress technology and industry places upon the environment.
    Modern agricultural man has always tried to adapt the environment to his own devices when all other humans have adapted their culture and mind to the environment they found themselves in.  Humans have adapted to different ecosystems and niches across the globe throughout our long history.  Humans live full lives in the Arctic Tundra, the Amazonian Rainforest, and the Arizona desert, among many other places. Why do westerners and their capital system demand that a given area be adapted to suit the needs of their monolithic culture?
   I personally believe that this method of attempting to control the environment will continue to wane in the years to come.  Environmental awareness and global activism represent just two aspects of this rising trend.  Now what will the system of environmental degradation give way to?  A 1960's like return to nature and abandonment of technology? No, I believe that the object of our transformative technology will cease being the outside environment and will begin focusing upon our own physical vessels, our bodies.  Why adapt the outside world to our minds and bodily tastes when we can use man's inherent mental adaptability coupled with our new found technology to transform ourselves so we may fit into any ecological niche, terrestrial or extraterrestrial, that we wish.  Nanotechnology, genetics, computer brains, all these frontier technologies would allow man to adapt his self to any role he saw fit.  As technology advances we may even become so amorphous that we are able to change both our thought patterns and body structures at will.
  An example application of this idea would be to create photosynthetic men that require only sunlight and water rather than solid animal food.  This would quickly solve our population and hunger problem.  Let us hope that man realizes the futility in attempting to control the chaos outside him and begins to turn his need for adaptation inward, upon himself.

A Neo-tribal Manifesto

How is it with the info-sphere bombarding our American minds at every opportunity that we can still all be so apathetic?  We all know America is using an unfair amount of world resources and seems to be creating history's largest military in order to defend this claim to rape and pillage the earth and its peoples.  It is also obvious that capitalism itself and our unsustainable farming practices are modes of life that are untenable.  With 7 billion people hurtling towards disaster isn't it time people walked away from this monstrosity?  The only thing keeping us eating McDonald's, working jobs we despise, and supporting a government that continues to build nuclear weapons is the paralyzing fear of the unknown.  Our imaginations have been so stunted by TV, video games, and the net that we cannot imagine anything other than this samsaric brave new world that we are all trapped in.  If people begin living on their own accord and waking up from their perpetual desire fulfillment games we may gain the imagination we need to surge through this hardship that awaits us.  If each person imagined at better world and tries to embody the world of their imagination the earth could be transformed.

To show that I am not just a rabble rouser I'll present my own idea for a whole new world system.  In this system people would live in traditionally sized groups of 50-100 people.  These people would live and work together in some kind of common building or parcel of land.  The difference between these groups and our present system or the communes of the 1960's would be that these groups would all have a stated goal and agenda.  The men and women in the groups(or "tribes") around the world would be sovereign to follow their group imaginations in order to fulfill the goal they had placed before them.  People of a certain age would be both matched and able to choose a "tribe" that suited their personal talents and aspirations.  Once in the tribe they would acclimate to its structure and make a decision to stay or not.  People would not be bound to one tribe but could move freely between tribes until they discover or found a tribe that encompasses their unique person.  Tribes would have all kinds of functions only chosen by their members.  An example would be a tribe that attempted to create the most sustainable agriculture.  Another, a tribe that attempted to study the human mind to its expansive limits/  The possibilities lay in the imaginations of the people the tribe is composed of.  With 50-100 people working for an obvious stated goal anything is attainable.  Now some may say that this would be a fragmentation of human society into competing groups that would resemble the very nation-states we are trying to escape from.  The difference would be that these tribes, different as they are, would all be in it together and would respect the sovereignty of the other tribes.  Also, the tribes would be in constant communication with each other through a worldwide internet that allowed the different tribes to share their breakthroughs with the rest of the world.  This system would give humans a purpose and focus but not bind them to  a mono-culture that stagnates with time.  It also would allow individuality of purpose while also encouraging a greater HUMAN purpose through the cooperation and mutual advancement of the tribes.  This kind of collective has the strength of the original human social form, the tribe, while also enfolding the technological advances we have made into a new system that embraces our past and future.    This kind of society resembles a collection of differentiated organs(tribes) created from inherently the same stem cells(humans)  What we have now resembles a  unbalanced coral reef of unrelated constituent parts at best, and a differentiated mass of cancerous single-cells at worst.  The hive system we are now trapped in has no interest in furthering humanity's or the planet's interests its only wish is to funnel more wealth and power to those already in power.  Imagine a new system and work yourself towards it.  More to come.

Uncertainty

I once heard a story about two magician's apprentices that were at the last leg of the training with their master.  The two young men had both undergone identical training under the older and wiser magician's guidance.  When they sensed their training was coming to an end the master magician sat them down and told them that they had but one test to complete.  After this test one of them would become a black magician, and the other, a white magician.  The day of the test the elder magician began them on a journey that would last many days and would lead them to the edge of the world.  When they arrived at the edge of the world both young magicians looked over and saw the ambiguous and infinite abyss that lay before them.  They both recoiled in fear.  The elder magician sat them down and told them that their final test was to jump over this cliff into the unknown.  One apprentice turned tail and sprinted back to his village to become the town magician.  The other held his nose and took the plunge.  The one who jumped became the white magician.

Camp Bisco X

I am still recovering from the 3 days of unbridled spiritual hedonism that were Camp Bisco X.  It was my first time attending such an event and though the experience was largely positive from my current temporal perspective I believe I went unnecessarily hard on psychoactives.  Every thing one could imagine was available, especially, k, molly, and lsd.  The dealers were bold and walked around the festival announcing their wares.  Shouts of K! accompanied the pounding dance music throughout the venues.  This atmosphere did not surprise me as I myself had brought quite a large stash of molly, uppers, and downers.  I ended up rolling all three days which was a mistake, but this occurred because I already had my molly so it was the most easily available.  The downers and uppers helped the molly come up and downs but definitely contributed to me feeling like I got hit by a train once I got home.  Most of the time I chilled with my campmates or just let the music flow through my body into some absurd dance moves.  The venues were all ridiculously lit and covered with lasers, smoke, and strobes.  Although I was only rolling I experienced some real trippy visuals in relation to the lasers, which were of every color conceivable.  People in the front tended to dance and looked as if they were rolling while the trippers and high people stuck to the back lawn and laid on towels or blankets.  All the shows I saw were great but especially the disco biscuits, who brought a real intense energy to their namesake event.  Bassnectar also killed it the last night with some drops that caused screams throughout the audience.  Pretty Lights played last and his show was especially ridiculous light-wise.  Lasers of every color conceivable mixed and mingled out of the dance tent.  Can't miss Shpongle-Live which had a trippy ass show during a thunderstorm that came and went with their set.  The drops and visuals for this show were especially decadent and out there, but enjoyable as shit.  The place did seem overly crowded with 40,000 in attendance and I remember rolling ass waiting for very long lines at some points.  All in all a positive musical experience although my brain and body aren't thanking me now.  Funny story from the event: I was standing outside the dance tent with my friend watching pretty lights the last night of the show we were rolling but not hard because it was the 3rd night in a row.  In front of me walks a dealer yelling, "K!, Molly!, Doses!" most people seem to ignore him because it's late and they're already fucked up.  But out from behind me comes this wookie guy, probably 25-28 years old, with full shoulder length dreadlocks and dreadlock beard, wearing some kind of afghan material robe, he paws up to the dealer on all fours and meows like a young kitten, "Meow, meooow, meow" The dealer turns around and is like, "Aww Johnson(he obviously knew this character) Do you even have money?" he says in perfect stoner english, "Nah man but I got you." The dealer reluctantly cuts him a line, which he nails and then asks for another.  The dealer acquiesces and then begins to berate the guy that he has to help him sell this shit all month.  The wookie dips quickly looking satisfied as a kitten.  I don't know if these guys were festival chasers but they were ridiculous.  Another awesome part of the show was the Philadelphia Experiment which was a fireball show in-tune to music which went every night 12-3am.  The wave of heat that hit you when the fireballs went off was intense and I found myself dancing off my comedown here most of the nights.  They had a massive rigging of about 12 propane tanks attached to fireball condenser sticks all this in time to some generic club music.  Also they had slamming female representatives who were a joy to talk to and look at, rolling face.

Creative Responses to Chaos

When a seed

—or an animal

—or a man is ripe,

it must mature

to its next phase.

Or rot.—Stewart Edward White

At some times in my life I have felt as is I was stuck in mud or, running on a treadmill.  When I had a moment of lucidity and realized my situation I was spurred towards a new mode of living.  Novelty is required at certain points in life to bring us out of our comfortable habits and into a new(and hopefully) improved way of living.  Novelty can appear in our material daily existence, our inner logical thought streams, through an external event, and especially personal experiences such as, dreams, trips, and realizations.  It doesn't matter where it originates from, but, its effect on our lives depends on our personal reaction to it.  One event may require you to change your morning commute another, your entire view on life and the universe.  These events(chaos) and our reaction to them(creativity) are one of the most integral parts of being human.  Increasing one's ability to adapt to chaos from the outside and the inside is crucial to surviving in these trying times.  Shed those extraneous parts of your life so that you may uncover the inner core of your being in those things you truly enjoy.

The Eschaton is becoming Immanent

Change on the Earth is accelerating.  Human activity is accelerating the earth into some kind of transitory  phase that is not only going to change the form of human life, but, all life on earth.  The internet is an example of the obvious  increasing physical and mental connections made between humans throughout the earth.  Connections are also growing between man and nature(life outside man) and between man and his inner true self(spiritual enlightenment).  Those who have felt their connections to nature and inner self strengthen recently know the sensation.  That inner-drive that takes us towards novelty and away from the herd-mentality.  The exponential change is obvious even to those who are asleep at the wheel of their lives, cut-off from themselves and nature in the confines of global capitalist culture.  Even these 'sheeple' of the nation-states can see that technology is now moving almost too fast for a person to stay up to date.  Little do they know that this acceleration is only an echo of the acceleration occurring within every human brain.
Our brain's are changing, moving into a state that has never occurred throughout the human race before.  We are adapting to exponential change by going through exponential change, internally.  Or, our inner change could be what has been causing the outer change, it doesn't matter.  People are apt to fear the change; what could get better in a world of war, poverty, crime, apathy, and homogenization?  Could it b e that when all our problems have reached the ultimate manifestation, a solution arises?  There is an idea that all this great pressure from our problems could force a crystallization of a solution, much like coal transforming into a diamond under immense pressure. Wishful thinking?  What the world will be like on the other side is anyone's guess but I'm one to hope it will be a place of increased humanity, culture, appreciation of nature, and spirituality.  Since, the critical mass for change is already here, the only thing that still must appear is the one event, idea, or person that will open the floodgates and unleash chaotic change upon the world.