Spirituality and the Ego

Blog - November

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Sculpting an Initiation


It took many years for the stage of life to be set up just right so that the Hurricane Period would occur with the intensity that it did. Just when it began potentiating I cannot know for sure. To this day, it feels like it fit perfectly into life's pre-written script, sculpted outside of Time, and masterfully orchestrated.


There are many ways to tell the story, for it came about not for a single purpose but for many. Exactly what happened could also be interpreted in a wide variety of ways. Were all the perspectives to be seen at once, they might collectively make a circle. And so I shall continue telling the story in short spurts, so that I can circle around and around in the hope that, eventually, a 360 degree perspective is presented, which is what the story deserves.


The difficulty I have in explaining the Hurricane Period stems from the wide variety of experiences I had during the 3 weeks in which it occurred. This was, properly speaking, my Initiation as a Spiritual Seeker. I witnessed many portals opening up, many landscapes of thought flashing in my mind like lightning, vistas that I am still exploring to this day.


Spirituality and the Ego


From one perspective, the Hurricane Period was an unfolding of lessons illuminating the nature of the ego. There are many definitions of the word "ego" and quite often it is linked to matters of self-esteem, or too much of it. From my experience, I personally prefer to bundle such an interpretation of the ego with the function of maintaining one's integrity. More formally speaking, I would define the ego as the autonomous, largely unconscious aspect of the personality which is responsible for developing, solidifying, and upholding the integrity and the identity of the personality. As one lives a life and the experiences affect a psychological movement in the personality, the ego is what is responsible for solidifying the changes so that they are integrated with the overall identity of the personality.


The ego is usually defined as the inflated sense of pride with respect to others, but to me this is just one version that an ego can assume, usually because the ego, being largely unconscious, autonomous, and therefore susceptible to a high degree of influence from the emotions, is greatly influenced by the good feeling behind finding pride in the self. There are many spiritualists who make it a central point that the ego must ultimately be destroyed in order to achieve adequate progress on the spiritual path. A strong ego can be detrimental when it prevents movement where movement is due for growth and exploration. However, I believe that a weakened ego or a self-destructive one can be just as deleterious as an improperly configured ego, for it results in ambivalence, fragmentation, and the inability to build and grow in reaction to life's lessons. That the ego can be both detrimental and helpful on the spiritual path invites us to explore its nature in order to evolve.


The Emergence of a Dragon


The Hurricane Period marked the end of my employment at my first job after graduating from college. I joined just as the internet boom was beginning to peak and quit months before the stock market began to plummet, just before the year 2000. The company was at 30 employees when I joined, and reached 250 by the time I left a year and a half later, only to gradually return to its original size after the market crashed. Because of the rapid growth, people like me, who had hardly any work experience, filled leadership positions that would have ordinarily required much higher levels of seniority. We certainly worked hard enough to do the best job we could, but our professional roles, like the technology stock prices at the time, were inflated and thus they were subject to correction, just as a bloated ego invites itself to be put in check. My company was situated in the famous Multi-Media Gulch in San Francisco, and the entire area was bustling with internet startups trying to go public and cash out. One day, I had a vision of dinosaurs parading the area and this was my first hint of the up-and-coming collapse.


Around this time, I wrote a short story that depicted a group of highly reputable men that gathered together from throughout the land. The purpose of their meeting was to discuss a very startling new discovery; that a real-life dragon, hitherto thought to be a purely mythical creature, had been spotted in a cave.


My inner life at the time was taking on a strange shape. Due to the intensity of the workload and the resulting deeply personal involvement in the job, I was developing my identity largely around being a professional software engineer, while my deeper self had nothing to do with such a deviation from the spiritual and artistic life. A chasm within me began to pronounce its existence and I started sensing a self-destructive side of me develop.


One day, a message surfaced in my mind that said that I was a dragon slayer. I did not know what that meant. I asked a friend of mine and she said that I was battling the self, or the ego, that it was a commonly experienced passage of the spiritual path.


The Dismantling of the Ego


During one of my lunch breaks I met a fascinating character, who I will call friend s. He exhibited a high degree of intelligence and over time I realized that he possessed an enormous amount of personal power. We would meet from time to time for lunch and discuss various topics such as spiritual philosophy and art. These areas were not exactly his domain, for he was very business-minded, but he would take whatever idea I'd introduce and run with it to the far reaches of the earth, usually returning a week later with a magnificent response. Over time, however, I began to notice a dark side emerge in his character. There surfaced vague elements of competitiveness, machismo, greed, and a deeply felt dislike of others. My own character was not finely tuned, to say the least, at this time, and I naively resonated with some of these traits; they existed inside me to some degree and his influence made them come out. And in this manner, my ego moved further in a direction that was dissonant with the deeper parts of my psyche, as my own negative side became more and more accentuated.


My self-destructive side continued manifesting and, whenever I was alone, it was common for me to feel a strange pain that was not physical but one that I can only describe poetically to be a "laceration of my dream body". My solitude had always demanded a high level of purity in order that I reach my higher states of mind and it is still common to this day that a stretch of solitude begins with a period of discomfort, if not a full-blown, anxiety-filled struggle. But, the pain during this period was becoming unbearably intense and a profound sense of weakness began to overtake me. I had a vision that complemented my state, showing a large bridge-like structure whose steel hangers were being dismantled one by one. This was what my ego was going through. Another vision that stood out was of a snake made of blue light readying for the attack.



One night, I was in an especially visionary state. My visions opened up to a point of clarity and I was asked a question that went something like this: "Would you rather continue developing a work-related ego or would you rather return to being an artist?" My obvious response was that I wanted to return to my art. And the vision said: "In three months, you will experience your downfall at work, after which you will enjoy a year and a half of artistic creativity." I saw an image of two parallel lines, one representing the ego of the artist, the other representing the ego of my professional self. The line symbolizing the latter abruptly curved at one point to the line of the artist, as if depicting me slipping through a worm-hole.


Gradually, my relationship with friend s became subliminally confrontational and there were problems with some of the others at work as well, except at the job the negativity was even more hidden. My own ego transformed further into the negative, much like a puppet maneuvered by invisible strings, and my self-destructive side manifested exponentially as a result. My constitution became more and more frail until I felt like an open wound.


In exactly three months after I had my vision, the hierarchical structure of my department at work shifted and, as a result, I was suddenly completely stripped of my power as a technical lead. The blow to my ego was so acute and so threatened did I feel psychologically that I mustered up all my spiritual power in order to cope with the event. The Hurricane Period opened up with full force as a result. As I noted in earlier posts, I invited the movement so as to evolve as quickly as possible.


My ego now mutilated, I felt like a ghost without its shell of a body. The final release into a state of selflessness with respect to the job, however, took much spinning about in the hurricane for the ghost to really come out. The speed of the psychological movement was quite frightening since I sometimes went through hell and heaven in a matter of seconds. It took hardly a day or two that all sense of personal stability was lost.



My visions, however, were now full-blown. Whenever I failed to follow their instructions, I fell back into a hellish pit of turbulence, the oscillations now random, chaotic, and painful. Whenever I was able to pay close attention to my visions, I sped through insight after insight after insight, the oscillations taking the form of upward-rising spirals, possessing a poetic order, enigmatically intelligent.


In the movie "the Matrix", the characters while plugged into the matrix could ask people on the other side to download information into their brain. The download involved large amounts of data all jam-packed into their brain within seconds. This was similar to what I experienced but if the information came too fast, it wouldn't register consciously, so the speed rarely came anywhere as close. The form of learning was typically as I described in earlier posts, that of spiraling through oscillations centered around the subject at hand, combined with much synchronistic conditioning to help me interpret life's events as if I were in a dream.


Contrast Building


The Ra Material, which could very well contain the most advanced teachings on metaphysics readily available to the public today, upon discussing the steps necessary to understand mental discipline states that the self must be examined and the polarity in our reality must be internalized.


Where you find patience within your mind you must consciously find the corresponding impatience and vice versa. Each thought a being has, has in its turn an antithesis. The disciplines of the mind involve, first of all, identifying both those things of which you approve and those things of which you disapprove within yourself, and then balancing each and every positive and negative charge with its equal. The mind contains all things. Therefore, you must discover this completeness within yourself.


Hurricane Thinking took such exploration of polarities and accelerated the process to the nth degree, and it all came about instinctively. It is not a form of thinking I would advise, for it can rip apart a personality as it did mine. I am sure the Ra Material spoke of internalizing the polarities in a calm and meditative manner. But, one of the main benefits of experiencing the Hurricane Period was that I was able to see life's evolutionary process, which typically occurs over a long period of time, accelerated to the degree that the enlightening psychological movements inherent in life's evolutionary process could be traced and witnessed in action. The increased speed made the evolutionary process visible as an upward-spiraling movement.


A month ago, the following words surfaced in my mind: "contrast building". I will do my best to define the term: "contrast building" is the developing of biases through experiencing contrasting states of mind, perspectives, or processed catalysts of the mind. It is similar to the gathering of a group of individuals with contrasting views on a specific subject to debate relevant issues until a conclusion is reached, except that contrast building occurs entirely within the self as it travels psychologically over time.


The ego, in addition to its other functions, slows down the movement through the upward spiral (upward if indeed one is learning life's lessons and progressing in the subject(s) at hand) and, in doing so, anchors the individual and gives her/him time to more thoroughly explore the proclivity of any point in the spiral. The personality, then, having had the time and ego-based involvement to process, synthesize, and integrate the specific proclivity, or anchor point, then moves on to the next point in the spiral with a solid backing of experience when the next movement goes into effect. And thusly contrast building keeps adding to the foundation of the spiral so that one does not fall back and re-learn lessons that have already been experienced. In contrast, during the Hurricane Period, there were a number of lessons that I had to learn over and over again simply because the speed of the movement made it too difficult to assimilate and integrate the revelations.


Therefore, it is my opinion that, contrary to popular spiritual teachings that encourage the dissolution of the ego, the process of balancing which is central to spiritual development relies to a large degree upon a healthy ego so that the necessary solidification takes place that enables one to become deeply involved in the lessons at hand.


I currently view the ego as an aspect of the personality which attempts to emulate the process of crystallization, but typically does so in a clumsy manner, being largely influenced by the emotions. The good feeling of self-pride bloats the ego and the personality takes on an identity that goes beyond its true boundaries. The bad feeling of low self-esteem makes the ego cower inward and become self-destructive, causing the disintegration or fragmentation of the personality. Either state of the ego, or the oscillation between the two is the sign of an undisciplined ego and can indeed hamper spiritual growth. But, this is merely a sign that the ego needs to be better configured. The question is: How does one tune the ego? I believe the answer lies behind the fact that the ego responds to the emotions.


Max Freedom Long is the author of an excellent book titled "The Science Behind Miracles". In it, he delineates three separate aspects of a human being: the Higher Self, the Conscious (or Middle) Self, and the Lower Self. The Lower Self is comprised of the emotions and other automated, unconscious portions of the psyche. He then postulates that the middle, conscious self cannot directly influence the lower self in a rational manner, through logical communication. There has to be some sort of impact for the lower self to change its natural course. The communication must use to a certain degree the language of the lower self.


I believe that the ego can be placed in the same category as the Lower Self, and the methods of tuning are largely emotion-based. One can then infer that one of the reasons why living life intensely is so beneficial to spiritual development is that the ego becomes involved in life's lessons and not just the conscious self because life is lived out with a high level of emotional charge. Thus, the ego remains in tune with the lessons and aspirations of the conscious self and there need be no dissonance even when the main drive of the conscious self is towards evolution. The regularization of the personality is the result.


What are some of the feel-good experiences along the spiritual path? Ecstasy is one of them. Does not the feeling of ecstasy reconfigure the ego? In my own experience, it has. It replaces the desire for the relatively stale feeling of self-pride with a marginal flick of the wrist. My ego is driven towards spiritual development, mainly because it wants to experience the ecstasy again and again. The interesting thing is that when I go without experiencing ecstasy or similar feelings for a long period of time, my ego resorts to self-pride to get its kick. Take me back to a higher state of mind, and my ego quickly resorts to its humble configuration.


Archetypes and Power


Another point of interest I will add here with regards to experiencing life with an ego torn apart was that I felt as if I beheld the archetypes, which I can only describe as pure power, power that affects our every experience. My visions gave me protection from their power, but when my visions were absent I felt as frail as can be. When my visions returned I felt the power of the archetypes run through me, and thus my strength oscillated in and out.


Today, it is a prominent question in my mind whether the oscillations of the Hurricane Period came from the the visions themselves, or that the movement came from the archetypes while my visions directed me so that the influence of specific archetypes were called forth through my visions-influenced proclivity. I am beginning to believe that the latter is correct; in fact, a visionary message surfaced a few months ago saying: "we speak through the archetypes".


A Precursory Look at Building the New Ego


One night during the Hurricane Period, my visions told me to go see a movie called "Fight Club" which was playing at the theaters at that time. A part of me found that movie entertaining but in the middle of it, my visions suddenly told me to get up and leave the theater and I did.


A few days later, I was hanging out with a friend of mine at work on a cigarette break (the same friend who told me the meaning of the term "dragon slayer"). I mentioned the movie to her and she asked me how I liked it. I replied that it seemed well done, but I walked out in the middle of it because my intuition told me so.


"You mean you missed the ending? But, that's the best part!" She was practically shouting.


"Really? Perhaps, I'm supposed to hear the ending from you," I said.


The movie was about a bunch of guys who got together and formed a fight club, for the simple reason that they could meet up and get into fights with each other. It was about the wonders of male testosterone and all the derivative complications it could produce such as machismo, maintaining suppressed aggression, and the like.


My friend proceeded to tell me the way the movie ended. Do not read this paragraph if you do not want the ending spoiled. The fight club started getting out of hand and instead of containing the violent adventures amongst themselves, they turned into destructive exploits against public society. Right before the climaxing finale of the destructive behaviour (something about blowing up a bomb, I believe), the main character realizes that the other members of the club were but figments of his own imagination, that throughout the entire movie he was simply fighting his own self. Hmmm...very interesting.


The cigarette break was over and I went back to my desk. Right then and there, I got a phone call and it was friend s. He proceeded to tell me how he had wanted to punch me in the face earlier that day while we were having lunch because I had disclosed some secret I had forgotten about in front of his colleague from work. It was not my usual experience to hear a good friend talk to me like that. In fact, it was my first.


My instincts (or my visions) kicked in, especially having just been told the ending of the "Fight Club" movie (which was an excellent example of synchronistic conditioning), and I retained an immaculately positive demeanour. I had also just found out that day that the job he had had his friend offer me would entitle him to almost 20% of my rate per hour, instead of me pocketing all the money. Instead of being mad with him for his hidden intentions, I insisted that he stick to the same plan if I were to take the job. I emailed him repeatedly reiterating my insistence, even adding an "I love you, brother" in one of them, and he called me back in tears begging me to stop harassing him. I suggested that we get together for dinner later that evening in order to clear up the confusion between us. As I drove to the street corner where we were supposed to meet, my visions told me quite clearly that he wasn't going to show up. Nevertheless, I waited for an hour at the corner purely as an expression of my devotion, as a Gesture to Spirit, as Castaneda's don Juan would say.


(Were I to experience such an episode again, I might not take on the same positive stance, with such absolute purity. I now realize that I was playing with fire, for I was calling upon the Archetypes. This is the closest I've gotten to using sorcery with another human being, albeit unconsciously. I cannot say for sure that this is related, but he came down with an illness that lasted many months after this episode. I had a number of dreams that told me that I had caused his illness, albeit indirectly. One can either see it that way or interpret it as a mere coincidence. I, myself, commit to neither interpretation.)


I would describe this episode as being in the "Eye of the Hurricane", for this was when I was completely rooted to the spot, untouched and unmoving, as the positive and negative forces I was dealing with were completely out in the open for me to see, racing after each other like a dog trying to catch its tail. Such polarity builds much potential. It was not too long before I lost my foothold in the positive stance and I got swept back into the oscillation, and throughout the Hurricane Period I alternated back and forth between periods of extreme turbulence and periods of very solid stability. During those times that I was firmly rooted were critical periods that usually involved crucial interaction with others. For example, I was worried stiff that I would be caught in a bout of turbulence during my job interviews and thus have difficulty landing new work, but every time I really needed to be, I was solid like a brick. The "orchestration" of this period was impeccably tight.


I feel the need to reiterate that the degree of negativity that I was experiencing at this time was not so great when compared to what some people go through in more (much more) traumatic sitautions. The marked difference is the degree of intensity with which one lives life, and also to what extent one's most basic and fundamental proclivity strives for purity and the heights. Back then, I had just come out of a college life of sheltered purity in solitude where I kept up my intensity to the maximum, with little understanding of how or even why to tone it down given how fruitful life can be while retaining this proclivity, especially as an artist. Coupled with the necessity to retain my personal purity in order to reach my higher states, the slightest negativity which entered the circumference of my psyche had quite far-reaching, destabilizing effects on my ego, which, although I wasn't aware of it at the time, retained its heights largely through positive polarization. To state this more accurately: the solidification of any aspect of negative polarization as a part of my identity automatically started a dismantling process in which the ego started to crumble. As the Hurricane Period progressed, my personality started regressing to that of a child. And as I wrote in "Human Erasure" months later, I was reborn into "a new form of infancy".


The Philadelphia Experiment


In "L I F E and Extreme Astronautics", I mentioned the article titled "The Philadelphia Experiment" which David Wilcock had written. The synchronicities leading up to reading this article are worthy of note, which seemed to spotlight its contents so that I would pay close attention. Wilcock can be described as a type of theoretical physicist who was largely self-taught through massive research of the scientific literature, some of which is very cutting edge. Although Wilcock is someone I regard very highly, I am not sure how much of the scientific discourse in this article is in line with mainstream science and thus the reader's own critical discrimination is encouraged.


I came across this article a few months ago and I emailed it to myself so that I would skim through it at work if I felt the need to take a break. Earlier that week, I was contemplating the mechanics of Hurricane Thinking and I was wondering in which direction one is flung after experiencing a quick oscillation and why. There are some movements in consciousness that the psyche accepts so that they become sticky (in which case the ego solidifies around the new proclivity so that it becomes a part of one's identity); others are on some level rejected and swing consciousness back to the departure point or further beyond it. If all people oscillated in the same fashion over varying lengths of time, then the argument stood that the pendulum ultimately swung one towards the Truth. I focused on this question till my entire being resonated with the pursuit of finding the answer.


While at work, I was contemplating the issue when I got an image like a diagram that seemed to depict the roadmap for an arbitrary oscillation. The image then changed so that the skeletal arrangement of the paths taken could be seen to comprise a circular structure with one line that led up and to the right. In my lingo, a path to the right constituted the positive path, and also the final destination of the oscillation, the grand finale, so to speak. That very instant I glanced out of my office and saw a woman walking across the street. She was taking off her jacket and she did so curiously while her right arm was stretched up and to the right, in a very similar fashion to the image that had just surfaced in my mind. I then recalled the quote by Ra about shedding that which was no longer necessary as one progresses down the evolutionary path and she seemed to be symbolically doing just that with her jacket. My story "Human Erasure" was about deliberately escaping the human domain and it was born out of the Hurricane Period.


Perceiving the synchronized events, I remembered Wilcock's article since synchronicity was one of the commonly discussed topics on his site and user forum. I opened his article and one of the first words I read were: "...if you create a strong-enough flow of current between a negative and positive pole, you will get an anti-gravity ‘thrust’ that starts propelling your device in whatever direction the positive pole is pointing."


I have always been interested in seeking the parallels between properties and processes in consciousness and the scientific observations of our physical world. This seemed like a potential correspondence, especially if "the strong-enough flow of current" was seen to represent living life with great intensity and an anti-gravity effect was likened to the elevation of one's state of mind. In "Human Erasure", Astronaut X escapes Earth's gravity, which represents the Human Domain. During the Hurricane Period, the oscillations were rapid psychological movements between opposite polarities, and I experienced states of mind and psychic abilities that I never imagined to be possible, in addition to periods of profound enlightenment, ecstasy, and forms of mentation that I now like to describe as "cosmic thinking" (more on this later).


Wilcock explains how an aircraft that resembles a UFO would be constructed based on this anti-gravity effect. "...You’d have the entire bottom of the ship be a negative plate, and the small sphere at the very top of the ship as the positive plate. You can navigate the ship by breaking up the negative plate into a series of pie-shaped sections and varying the current flow between them." This explains why so many UFO crafts look like round discs. The picture below from the article looked remarkably similar to the image which surfaced in my mind when I was contemplating the mechanics of Hurricane Thinking (the similarity could have been due to the fact that I had glanced at the picture earlier that day (I don't remember if I did or not) and thus the re-surfacing of the image in my mind was a form of synchronistic conditioning that highlighted the connection):




The article proceeds to talk about what allegedly occurred at the Norfolk Naval Shipyard during the Second World War. Basically, "strange ‘warp’ effects were being observed" at an arc-welding facility which used extremely high voltage to weld metal plates. "What they saw was truly unprecedented. With the electrical blast came an equally intense 'optical blackout'. The sudden shock of the intense electric weld impulse was indeed producing a mysterious optical blackening of perceptual space...The more outrageous fact was that the effect permeated the control room, causing 'retinal blackout' even when personnel were shielded by several protective walls...Workmen began noticing that tools and other weighty items, left on the floor or around the chamber, were somehow 'misplaced' during the heavy arc discharge process."


The article then proceeds to discuss time-space, which I've already delved into in previous posts, but I will summarize the term again here as the flip-side of the space-time fabric through which we experience our ordinary reality. Instead of 3 dimensions of space and one dimension of time, time-space has 3 dimensions of time and one of space. Back to the article:


...with a strong enough high-voltage current, you can bend space PAST the ‘crossing point’ of light, and reach ‘crescendo’. At that point you have created a direct portal into time-space. When any person or thing in our reality transitions into time-space, it becomes invisible to our perspective.

A vortex into time-space may appear as a jet-black "hole" in the space in front of you, a slate-gray surface as in the case of certain stargate technologies, or as a mirage-like bubbling ‘lens’ effect within the room around you in other cases I’m aware of.

You can go THROUGH time-space to instantly travel anywhere in our space or time...


I wrote "Human Erasure" many years before I was introduced to the notion of time-space. Recall that Astronaut X awakes to find himself orbiting the moon, following an inevitable trajectory through Space, which is the flip-side of the way we experience our reality, in that we move inevitably forward through Time. He begins to go back and forth in time to recall parts of his life, and eventually begins to recall various versions of his life that never happened, or that occurred in parallel realities. This was where the story was becoming too complex for me to complete writing it and I eventually had to quit for fear of distorting the archetypal patterns behind the piece by using my own, all-too-human imagination to fill in the blanks.


In any case, since the story ultimately describes one man's psychological journey out of space-time into time-space, the question is: What did this man do in order to enter time-space? Keep in mind that this story is the fictional equivalent to my own real-life story of having gone through the Hurricane Period and, a few months later, slipped into the most ethereal period of my life, one which, without exaggeration, rendered all previous and later experiences pale in comparison.


The answer to the question can be summarized by the term "extreme astronautics". Just as extreme measures were taken to create the time-space portal in the naval shipping yard of Wilcok's article, Astronaut X utilized similarly extreme maneuvours to escape the human domain, just as I brought on the Hurricane Period to accelerate the evolutionary process to the maximum.


But, before I delve more into the "Human Erasure" story, I want to introduce my previous works of fiction. In most of them, the theme of invisibility (or transparency) is present as a highly enigmatic leitmotif, the mystery of which is un-penetratable. Invisibility in my fiction is what I now understand to be the entrance into time-space. Therefore, this theme existed since the early days, but it was not thoroughly dealt with until the story of Astronaut X emerged.


The discussion of entering time-space from a scientific perspective does not diminish the quality of mystery I find in this topic. And I believe that this observation stresses the enigmatic quality of our existence, especially when we research the far-reaching extremities of consciousness and our relation to the cosmos at large.


The artist in me wasn't truly active until my late teenage years. In a sense, that's when I was truly born. Quite appropriately, my first story was narrated in the voice of a child. The boy had a friend named Timothy who would grow transparent and disappear from time to time. At a certain stage of the boy's growth, he began to become transparent too and this signaled that it was time for them both to venture out into the great forest, where they eventually grew into the size of giants. (That my characters became giants when they reached the "other side" is a repeating theme and I will discuss this in depth over time.)


I also began another story at around the same period about a woman named Thea who represented 'the most obscure form of night.' 'Tales of Crimson and the Child of Thea' followed; the anima gave birth to a baby girl. Crimson is an adolescent boy who in many ways represents myself a few years before and right after the Hurricane Period.


Crimson is a compulsive fire-spitter, in a magical way. His fire has the ability to transform a building or any other man-made structure into a giant crystal or crystalline sculpture. This only occurs when he is successful, however, and when he is not, the fire burns in a semi-magical way till it scorches the structure black. Crimson's fire-spitting is a metaphor for my art or music making and his tendency towards excess was similar to my own obsessive compulsion to always remain artistically productive.


The following excerpt is perhaps the most central part of the story and it was written after the Hurricane Period:


She found him grappling with a dragon; a luminescent dreamscape creature half-made of fire and the other half golden shards of light stitched together by some other-world god. Throughout the battle, it would oscillate between gaining and losing transparency, as if Crimson had deliberately snatched it from another reality in order to fight the monster in his domain.

Sparks shot out sporadically from the struggle with the beauty of a fountain of jewelry and electric noises whipped through the air with the potency of lightning. And then, a miracle occurred: out from the dragon's mouth, appearing like the masterpiece creation of a genius artist, a long thread of fire manifested and speared itself for hundreds of meters till it hit a tall building two city blocks away. The resulting explosion could scarcely be described in words. The ripples of fire that burst forth changed color and produced undulating waves in such a manner that the beholder of this sight could not help but follow the movement with his entire being. The far away ripples resonated in the Child of Thea's innermost foundations of sobriety to produce a massive shift in state of mind that tummeled her through long forgotten memories of her infancy. They strobed before her and died away almost instantaneously. Suddenly, with amazing swiftness, a sea-horse looking creature of green-hued effervescence flashed into eyesight and started darting about the streets, his eyes shifting back and forth in a wild, searching manner. A vaguely familiar feeling rose up inside of her and watching this creature move about so sporadically almost made her sick to her stomach.

"Was this a toy I used to play with when I was a baby?" she asked herself but the look it had was far too outlandish. Its crazed movements started getting faster and faster until she could only catch sudden glimpses of its whereabouts every few seconds. She felt her insides starting to spin and she instinctively decided to try to focus all her attention on Crimson's fight with his dragon. Gradually, she became more rooted. Her sea-horse looking friend transformed into a marginal oddity that flickered about the streets like a light reflected by the quivering diamond of a necklace.


In the meantime, the dragon had by now shrunk in size. Whatever Crimson was trying to do apparently seemed to work. It was not like its size had proportionately grown smaller, but that some of its limbs had doubled up and folded inward. She grew aware of the unsettling feeling that what she was witnessing did not take place in a manner of minutes, but spanned days or even weeks. She was riveted to her spot while the rest of the world sped by about her, hypnotized by what seemed to be an archetypal process. She felt aware that she was growing into a woman.


Finally, the dragon had been reduced to apparent invisibility and Crimson fell to the floor exhausted. He immediately tried to get up, but his ailing limbs got the better of him and he fell down once again. The Child of Thea left him in peace and walked back home.


The next day, she saw him walking about the streets without the slightest limp or sign of the wear and tear of battle. But, his eyes gleamed curiously with the strong, solidified color of a precious stone though she could not decipher which color it was. He disappeared around a corner.


And on the following day, she again saw him walking around, with the same gleaming eyes and their ambiguous hue. This time he wore a peculiar look of intent on his face so that he was absolutely beaming with energy. He noticed something about the neighborhood and stopped in his tracks. Looking around he seemed to be satisfied with some aspect of his surroundings as if having found a long lost secret garden. And he withdrew inward.


He suddenly took a deep breath and for a split second, nay a microsecond, he entirely disappeared before her very eyes. It happened so quickly that her awareness could barely register the act. To her profound surprise, When he flashed back into existence he was spitting a long line of fire from his mouth that extended smoothly through the air and latched on to a 5-story building. The entire structure lit up in one big burst of alternating colors, like molten jewelry exploding from a sacred volcano. It was a spectacular sight and it transformed the neighborhood into some prehistoric magic ritual performed by the gathering of sorcerers from throughout the land.


That fire-spitting corresponds to my creative projects here suggests that it is the projection of the ego which is responsible for a work of art, even a masterpiece creation. However, Crimson achieves a successful fire spit after temporarily disappearing into time-space (a meta-reality in relation to ours), which reconfigures his ego so that an ego projection can affect crystallization. Crimson first had to grapple with the dragon, to shrink its size. Thus, the ego had to be transformed into a state of relative selflessness and only then could he perform his disappearance act.


That Crimson's ego was a dragon and that of the Child of Thea a seahorse suggests that the nature of the male ego is different than that of the female. But, I would prefer to think of the Child of Thea as a character related to the anima. In my September posting, I wrote of how the anima was represented as a flying horse in my vision of the Pegasus that ultimately fell into the black hole. There is a correspondence here between a seahorse and a pegasus, but not an exact one, probably because the child of Thea is a child. That would also suggest that Crimson's ego represented as a dragon is probably the ego of an adolescent male, with a tad too much creative aggression, as is my character with respect to my obsessive drive to creatively produce.


It is interesting to note that in Freedom Long's book on the relationship between the Lower, Middle, and Higher Selves, The conscious, middle self is only able to communicate with the higher self through the lower self as mediator. In Crimson's case, it is the ego-dragon which is responsible for the fire-spitting. The dragon-ego along with Crimson still have to disappear into time-space, however, to be configured correctly in order to perform a proper fire-spit. Just how Crimson achieves the disappearance is still unclear, but, just before he does so, there is a great look of intent that Crimson exudes, as well as undefinable hue in his eyes.


Just how much the Crimson story conforms to archetypal patterns is a big question mark in my mind. The "Human Erasure" story came with a lot more inspiration. During the creation of some of the scenes, I was seeing the world in white, sometimes my being felt completely drenched in the white light. The merits of that story with regard to the subject of spiritual development in general is questionable, however, for Astronaut X uses sheer aggression (akin to Crimson's look of intent), coupled with what I will later define to be "extreme astronautics", in order to escape the pull of planet Earth, in a similar way as I used aggression and an "Evolution or Bust!" attitude to call forth the Hurricane Period.


Such use of unrestricted aggression to maximize the efficiency of evolution is not an appropriate way to develop oneself spiritually, as I've learned, largely due to the resulting fragmentation of the self, and the negativity that naturally comes with the pain from going through changes at a rate too fast to handle. And so the "Human Erasure" story ends almost nightmarishly.


Astronaut X follows his inevitable trajectory down into a bottomless crater and the story ends with him recalling a car accident he had experienced in his youth due to his reckless driving, an expression for his manic obsession for speed. The undulating lights of the automobiles passing him by while stuck in his wrecked car drive into him the appreciation of the endless oscillations and rythems that are inherent in life itself. Just as the recalling of the memory crescendos with intensity:


Like sharp, needlepoint spears, the vast field of stars broke the crust of his skin to suddenly desiminate him into an unfathomable expansion, the surging wind of a burst celestial body.


The following excerpt from the Crimson tales serves as a necessary precursor to the "Human Erasure" story:


She dreamt of him wedged in a man-sized chunk of crystal; in search for the crystal's fire, the dream said. Why? To melt himself free?


Crimson fossilized in bedrock, such were the perils of mining the earth. She found his manic, tormenting obsession with spitting fire very delusional, very silly. Yet, she was strangely attracted to him for his compulsion. That quality which she found childish also bound her to him with a strength that could only originate from the realm of the supernatural. She longed for him. She would forever stand by his side in hope that one day he would call for her, despite the isolation of his extreme narcissism. For, somehow, as he was held fast in his own festival of mirrors, she would emerge as one of the many stray reflections of his possible selves, the sudden materialization of a forgotten desire surfacing from that part of his depths that linked him with the external world. Yet, she feared that if they were to meet in his inner world, his version of her would suffice and she would at best become the mere replica of an underworld goddess, the stale icon of a living deity of love.


At the time this was written, I was still very much a solitary. There are many reasons why solitude was so attractive, which I shall not delve into here. One of them was that my regularized focus on evolution was simply unmatched by the others I met, and secondly even if they were, my own path was unique and I did not wish to be diverted from my 'work'.


Since much evolutionary catalyst comes from interaction with others, this missing aspect must be compensated in solitude. Crimson's extreme narcissism demanded the creation of his own internal gods and goddesses, his "festival of mirrors". What this translated to was the internalization of polarity. The catalysts that arise from interaction with other selves comes from contrasting views, beliefs, proclivities, and attitudes. In other words, each self has her/his own sets of balances with respect to the various polarities. Evolution in solitude, then, demands the manifestation of an inner dominion, prolifically rich with the contrasting multiplicity of the self.

L I F E and Extreme Astronautics

Diary Blog - October






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Wednesday, 10/03/07:


Ecstasy and the Awareness of Synchronicity


The other day, I stumbled upon the following sentence from one of my earlier diaries: "A cluster of synchronistic events is itself a crystalline structure." How true that is I don't know but the idea seems to possess a significant degree of potency. (Does potency represent truth? Again I don't know...)

Last Saturday, I was sitting outside at a coffeehouse when I naturally slipped into a state of ecstasy, albeit a mild one. The way I understand ecstasy these days originally came to me as a vision. I saw the self (not my self, but just a generic human being) whose embedded light (which usually lies dormant) was kindled like a fire until it resonated with the light throughout the cosmos, or for those who are not skeptics, the light of the Creator. This resonance can manifest into an intense white light which puts the self into a state of ecstatic union with the creation. The feeling of one-ness, or at-one-ment with the world is the simple, almost obvious, reaction to ecstasy, for the energy is at once both inside and outside the self, although this might only be intuitively grasped by the one having the experience.



Ecstasy is for me in the same family of experiences as alighting in unconditional love, of bathing in the white light, of brilliantly glowing with love-radiance. All these experiences come with an internal reordering of one's being, an unblocking of the energy centers, a smoothing out of the distortions due to the higher order of these energies. There have been so many instances when I have been in the worst state of emotional and/or mental health and the slipping into such an ecstatic experience instantly washed me clean and left me hoisted in calm and serenity, for ecstasy is an infinite reservoir of well-being. Depending upon the level of intensity, such experiences are truly miraculous in nature.

As I was sitting in the coffeeshop and enjoying the last dewdrops of my mild ecstatic experience, I realized that I had suddenly become much more aware and alert of my surroundings. And the seemingly trivial events going on about me took on meaning, an order that seemed to fit tightly into place.

An hour or so ago, I had asked myself the following questions: "Why the spiral tug? Why does the kundalini rise in the form of a snake? Why does the light spiral upwards as opposed to rise up in a simply vertical fashion?"

There was a baby crying incessantly at the far table to my right, as if newly born. In order to reduce the level of annoyance of the other customers at the coffeeshop, the father was tapping his hand rythmically on the baby's mouth so that instead of hearing a long steady wail like "WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH", it sounded like "WAWAWAWAWAWAWAWA". Most of us were laughing at the hilarious sound and someone to my left said "it takes the edge off." Oh yes, indeed it does.

Then I read the following words in the Ra Material, the question centering on the reason why "certain sacred Hebrew and Sanskrit words [were] powerful because they were mathematically related to the structure of Creation":

"...the linkage is mathematical and related to musical ratio...it is equivalent to types of rotation of your primary material particles.

A couple of hours later, my friends informed me that they were at the "Love Parade" in San Francisco, which is an annual outdoor party that featured a large group of DJs on parade floats pumping out loud electronic dance music. When I arrived, I felt my spirits lift instantly, as if I were riding the beat, which can be perceived as a sine wave that encourages one to vibrate with the same wavelength, i.e. to dance. I felt high and buoyant like a helium balloon.

The next day I was at a social gathering mingling with some friends. Sometimes our ideas come out in a surprisingly balanced fashion through the spontanaiety of conversation. One guy asked me what was my horoscope. "Gemini," I replied, "I deal with polarities."
"Oh, you're bipolar," he laughed.
"No, to be a gemini does not necessarily mean you swing about. But that you can balance the polarities. It's like having a pair of wings."

This set of events can itself be perceived as a piece of music, and my focused attention, intrigued appreciation, and emotionally-charged involvement in the rythem and the flow as a form of dance. Watching people dancing passionately without hearing the music can make them look awkward and amusing. In a similar fashion, listening to someone's synchronicity story lacks the underlying order of the movement that accompanies living out those events personally. However, those who know synchronicity well are already dancing.


Thursday, 10/04/07:


Strengthening the Grace of Multiplicity

Whereas an ecstatic experience can help one grasp the concept of oneness on an intuitive level, it was the Hurricane Period which provided my conscious mind with the opportunity to witness all human beings as one, doing so by shifting my state of mind in ways that moved me psychologically closer to whichever person held my attention. Until then, I thought my own concept of oneness, which stemmed from my mystical experiences in college, had been partially developed as an influence from popular spiritual teachings.

Once the knowledge that we were all one became well integrated with my outlook on life, I was able to recognize consciously that I had, indeed I've always had, before me a pallette of selves from which to choose. With the proper degree of selflessness as well as looseness of my ego, that which I beheld before me was that which I became. This was true only to a limited degree, of course, but for all practical purposes a full becoming of another is neither necessary nor desired for inherent in the self is the essential melody, the proper leitmotif.

The term "Hurricane Thinking" is elusive in that the overall trajectory of movement is indeed circular, or spiral, in shape but each actual movement is best described as a jump from one prespective to another. When seen in its proper complexity, hurricane thinking is a dance whose movements bounce about points on a set of axes of polarities. The higher the state of mind, the more this resembles electricity sparking about a neural network.

In order to get from point A, my self, to point B, an other self, there is a specific set of intrinsic points to which I can psychologically traverse in order that the appropriate new sympathetic state of mind is reached. My selflessness must be absolute especially if the other self's character is not harmonious with my own normal character. And the looseness of my ego, which is to be differentiated from selflessness, also must be maximized.

One of the main things that the Hurricane Period did to me can best be described in Carlos Castenada's terminology: the magnificent oscillations of that period "dislodged my assemblage point". The assemblage point of an individual at any specific point in time is that state of mind or being which determines how s/he perceives the world. An average adult naturally gravitates back to what can be called their assemblage point of normalcy after any temporary shift in consciousness. Dislodging my assemblage point meant that my point of normalcy to which I always returned was uprooted and I found myself forever floating around. In other words, the ground was pulled away from beneath my feet.

Seen from another angle, my ego, that which held me together, was shattered to pieces. Any attempt I made to resolidify my ego was followed by a return to a child-like state. At times I felt like an infant, with the mood swings of an infant.

In my higher states of mind, oscillation was lubricated by unconditional acceptance, selflessness and an all-encompassing sympathetic affirmation of life in both macro- and micro-cosm. In my more normal states, there was always the fear from the uncertainty of the movement. Any intervention on the part of my conscious self produced the friction and dissonance which made the movement painful, deleterious to my well-being. The extrinsic destination of the oscillation was not reached and I felt the pain of fragmentation as a result, the movement tore apart rather than transformed. Thus, grace in movement had to be learned.

I used to listen to some fast, high-energy drum and bass music while driving my car and I would visualize myself flying through the air and transforming into many selves. This adrenalin-infused imaginary game was a slightly different version of one of my favorite pastimes when I was a kid. There were specific ways of transforming which were graceful and smooth, while others produced a 'crashing effect' which would force me to restart my aerial flight. Such visualizations helped me understand the archetypal patterns inherent in some movements in consciousness, albeit at the intuitive level, because of the spontaneity demanded by the speed of the music. This was only one of many examples of how I was able to learn to follow my oscillations with greater ease even in my more normal states.


Saturday, 10/07/07:


There were many reasons why the Hurricane Period hit me when it did, and one of the most important of them was that I needed to switch paths from one that was based on my professional career to a path based upon my artistic pursuits. I had worked for a year and a half at an internet startup which had really burnt me out with its long hours and it was time for me to find another job that gave me the free time I needed. By the time the Hurricane Period ended three weeks later, I had successfully set off on a new career path which was to enable me to work a total of 9 months out of 12 for that year and I ended up more than doubling my salary.

This was during the internet hype right before the year 2000. At the time, nearly everyone in my company thought it was going to go public and we were all going to become rich. I had written a short story a year earlier which possessed some archetypal themes. I noticed the parallels between the story and the current state of the company and I therefore deduced that it was a sinking ship. I recall during the last week I was there, the CEO of the company sent out his first email that their going public will have to be delayed. The company was eventually to shrink back in size to below thirty employees, hardly keeping its ground.

Everyone I knew at work asked me why I was leaving the company, and to each person I concocted a different reason, each specifically tuned for his or her ears. In my heart, however, I wanted to write my farewell email to everyone in the following manner: "The real reason for leaving this company is because I want to become an astronaut. I know this may come as a surprise to you all, but I have already made my decision..."

After the Hurricane Period ended, I went through the most difficult period of my life mostly because of my incessant mood wings; any negative judgment I harbored about my self, an other self (which at this stage was but a reflection of my own self), or about life in general or in particular had the potential of sending me straight to a psychological hell. Even though there were some beautiful moments and I was still absorbing so many insights, at times I was convinced that I was staring face to face at the archetype of self-destruction. My only salvation was to adopt and regularize a thoroughly affirmative attitude towards life and everyone I knew. I kept a diary and the time when my struggles started to lift coincided with when my diary writing turned into fiction. I started to write a science fiction story; the first sentence surfaced completely on its own and it went like this: "There was a flash and Astronaut X found himself floating high above the moon."

The Science Fiction Period

The story was eventually named "Human Erasure" and it was about escaping or transcending the human domain, depending how you look at it. A month or so after I began, my spirits were reaching heights that were out of this world. There came a week when I had to take time off work because of some minor ailment. I was euphoric practically the entire time and the world about me seemed to be bathed in white light. As I was writing my story, I had visions, dreams, and inspired thoughts that were so profoundly moving that they outshone every single experience I had had before then. Like my astronaut character, I had truly left the planet and found a dimension that was unfathomably beautiful. Everything in my past was nulled out and void, and I say this without exaggeration. And I have yet to experience states of mind that are in any way comparable.

After returning to work the next week, I could no longer keep up with my inspiration and writing and I felt as if I was half in this world and half outside it. Finally, one night I had a nightmare that I was stuck on Mars all alone and so my writing ended, leaving the story unfinished. I returned to my old, turbulent self, but eventually I regained my stability to a certain degree and the hurricane movement mostly occurred during my higher states of mind.



Sunday, 10/08/07:

Those who have a deep appreciation of abstract art have the knowledge, even if it is only at the intuitive level, that a mere set of lines can produce an enlightening transformation in consciousness through witnessing and absorbing their specific configuration. Great works of art are of a higher order, and they help the viewer evolve by imprinting their special intelligence into one's psyche for possible integration. This usually happens at the unconscious layers and the effects are subtle and vague.

Abstract artists, through the repeated process of adding, deleting, fading and enhancing abstract forms on the canvas, develop the ability to look at aspects of their surroundings at any point in time and highlight with their inner eye those forms which produce an inspiring effect. In some states, I can do this with ease and it is as if whatever image lies before me begins to speak; at times, my surroundings come alive and it is as if the world is smiling at me.

Abstract musicians, through the repeated use of raw sound and sound textures also develop the ability to hone in on the sounds of everyday life and to harmonize themselves with it, allowing them to appreciate the soundtrack of everyday reality as if it were a symphony. I often concentrate on the sounds of my surroundings as a method of meditation, and at times this alone hoists me into an ethereal state.

Being in tune with one's surroundings in this manner is in no way limited to artists and musicians, however. These experiences are shared by mystics, or by those who approach being mystical, through their at-one-ment with the world and their deeply rooted appreciation of the magic behind everyday life.

Just as an ecstatic experience brings a higher order into a personality's configuration, so does the mystical appreciation of life in its raw form, its core experience, provide for the necessary tuning to behold the archetypal order behind life's events. And this is why, in general, I like to integrate my ideas with my real life story, for without attempting to express the archetypal order beneath life's events that originated these ideas, they would seem to the reader to float about without solid foundation. This goes for my music and art as well. It is a wonder why I waited so long to start this blog, perhaps a distortion towards shyness...

These psychological phenomena highlight the intense potential for a human being to gain inspiration from life at any given point in time, and shows each moment to be pregnant with possibilities for our evolution. Add to this the wide variety of catalysts that is born out of everyday human interaction, the synchronicities, the dreams, the ideas running through our heads, and already life can be seen to be overflowing in potential.

We seldom, myself included, utilize each moment for our betterment, however. Usually, the moment, as pregnant with power as it is, passes us by, missed like an unwanted train.

In my past, there was a night which I vividly remember, in which my pores were completely open, so to speak, to absorb the wisdom held in each moment. I was actually at a bar at the time, which is typically full of life, usually obnoxiously loud but not for me at this time. I will try to be accurate in describing my state of mind:

First, there was the aforementioned appreciation of abstract form, so that every visual aspect of my surroundings came alive upon my focused attention.

Secondly, I experienced an extreme amount of "synchronistic conditioning", which I desrcibed in my August blog to be the conditioning of one's state of mind by deeper portions of the psyche to better perceive synchronistic events. But, it was to the point that I would think a thought or recall a memory (or rather a thought or memory would surface on its own) and I then would witness something or hear lyrics in the music that ping-ponged a meaning at me through the relative contrast between the inner and outer event.

Thirdly, my thoughts were jumping around like electricity in a selfless form of Hurricane Thinking and sweeping in insight after insight through the use of polarity, a delightful orchestra of revelation conducted by the synchronicities I was witnessing.

Altogether, my mind felt like it was speeding faster than a space rocket.

At one point in the night, I perceived a very loud vision which showed me traveling through a circular tubing, shaped like a donut. Each moment in time was represented by a flash of one solid color, and this color was full of intelligence and meaning. I was being shown the power in the moment and how much wisdom was integrated in every second of our existence.

This circular tubing shape, I was to find out many years later, is called a torus. I was first introduced to this shape in the article below, to be found on David Wilcock's website, DivineCosmos.com, but I'm sure it's a common image amongst physicists. It discusses what occurs when you travel close to the speed of light based on Einstein's Theory of Relativity although I believe the ideas discussed here were an extension of Einstein's thoughts. (I could be wrong, however. Please do not think I have any degree of proficiency in the field of science!)

http://www.divinecosmos.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=337&Itemid=30

Here is an excerpt from that article:

...Einstein’s discoveries that space and time are part of one unified ‘fabric’...

Space-time starts out ‘flat,’ without curvature, and as you accelerate it towards the speed of light, the curvature increases. This curvature bends gravity along with it...

At the speed of light you create a torus as you see in the next image. Space could now be thought of as the outside surface of the torus, and time as the inside.




What happens when you accelerate the curvature PAST the speed of light? The torus unrolls again -- but now it is INSIDE OUT.

Time, which was on the INSIDE of the torus, has now moved to the OUTSIDE of the torus -- the SURFACE.

What was once time has now become space.

Everything inverts. And as your velocity further increases (from our perspective) or decreases (from the other side’s perspective), the torus again flattens out, becoming a stable, inhabitable plane.

You have just created a gateway into ‘time-space’ -- a parallel reality in which there are three dimensions of time (as we think of it) and one dimension of space (to our perspective.) Over there, the three dimensions of time become the space you move through, and experience as space -- and the one dimension of space (to us) becomes the steady flow of time.

Could the torus shape in my vision correspond to what occurs when our evolution reaches that extreme level of acceleration? Now, you might be saying: "Yo Makram! You really think your consciousness traveled the speed of light? You must be crazy!"

Indeed, but here is another piece of the puzzle: Just as I had no idea when I had the vision of the torus that it was the shape of space-time as one travels close to the speed of light, similarly, when I wrote my Astronaut story, I had also yet to be introduced to the space/time vs. time/space relationship. As David Wilcock explained above, in time/space, space becomes a constant, similar to how time is a constant in our space/time in that we forever only perceive the current moment. And in time/space, time takes on 3D characteristics that we can explore just as we explore 3D space in our space/time reality.

What occurs to Astronaut X when he finds himself floating above the moon? His body follows an inevitable orbiting trajectory but he cannot help but forever float motionless in the air. In other words, he is fixed in space. And throughout the story he recalls alternate periods from his life on Earth, i.e. he moves himself through time.

So what am I trying to say in all of this? Only that which has already been stated in the Ra Material. The main point I am trying to make is that there is a threshold in consciousness which when transcended takes us outside of time as we know it so that we are no longer stuck in the moment but capable of moving around in time, both into our past and into our future. In Ra speak, through transcending "space/time balancing", we "enter the combined realms of space/time and time/space."

In my opinion, this is an extremely important model of the human psyche and it serves to explain the reasons behind so much psychic phenomena that most scientists refute solely on the grounds that these phenomena, despite being witnessed over and over again, do not fit in with any scientific explanation. Predicting the future is no longer a mystery when we accept the fact that consciousness can tap into time/space; the only question is how we can reach time/space.

If we take the emergence of the story of Astronaut X, which was just a fictional extension of my diary writing, as the point in time when I switched over to time/space through "transcend[ing] space/time balancing", the most significant personality shift or tuning I underwent was the adopting of a thoroughly positive attitude. And this goes in line with Ra's statement about the Transformation of the Mind archetype. Speaking of the "the pull towards mental polarity" of the conscious mind deciding between the positive and the negative: "In order for the Transformation of Mind to occur, one principle governing the use of the deep mind must be abandoned."

The Poetics of Bipolar Oscillation

Diary Blog - September


If this is your first time reading this blog, it is recommended that you start here.

Please visit http://shiftingshadow.net for my more complete collection of music and artwork.






Saturday, 09/01/07:


The Paisley Pattern


Most of us have had our share of dreams with seemingly contradictory messages. In my experience, this occurs most often when our personal development is not advanced with respect to the topic at hand. My visions once showed me how one can visualize one's development on any specific subject as movement and oscillation within a Paisley pattern, an example of this pattern is shown below:




In the early stages of our development on a particular subject, we begin in the lower, wider portion of the Paisley pattern, where there is much room to oscillate. Experience, dreams, life's events that relate to the topic seem to shift randomly from one side of a polarity to another making life seem sporadic, without meaning, and confusing. Over the course of our evolution, we develop understanding, bias, and focus. Thus, we move up the Paisley pattern to the narrower regions where the oscillations are less intense and experience surrounding the topic at hand begins to seem more orderly. Finally, we move further along the narrow, winding path of the top of the Paisley pattern, in a seemingly never-ending process of recursive refinement. If you are familiar with Paisley fractals, they express this form of never-ending, recursive evolution and refinement.


Following this analogy, when innerscape content and life's events seem to oscillate with a feeling of randomness, it is most likely because our understanding of the topic at hand is still immature. Such is the case, I believe, with my own understanding of the anima and its relation with the conscious self since my dreams last month on this subject seemed so contradictory.



The Flying Pegasus


This morning, I felt the same kind of tug and pull on my astral body as I did during my grapple with the shadow creature last week. This time, however, I was fully awake in bed and so I dared not fall back to sleep. I began getting imagery of a strange nature that was very intriguing. However, something seemed wrong and I felt that the messages were coming from the dark side.


Later, the dark feelings went away. And in relation to last week's message "help harness life's questions", I hallucinated a very life-like image of a winged horse (a pegasus) colored blue (which in the Ra Material is the color which depicts freely given communication). The vision began with the pegasus flying through a very ethereal setting but the surroundings eventually turned dark and foreboding. It ended with the horse being consumed by a dark, black hole. I believe this was a warning as I continue to receive messages from the unconscious, to beware of messages from the dark side, as they could be just as fascinating and thus alluring, but ultimately detrimental.


Monday, 09/03/07:


Dreams as Movements in Consciousness


The general attitude I have witnessed towards interpreting dreams centers around the attempt to gleam the revelatory information contained therein. I do not believe that every dream, even the dreams that come with power, are mainly meant to convey meaning. Some seem to have the sole purpose of affecting a movement in consciousness, a conditioning.


The dream I had this morning provides an interesting example. Ever since returning from my trip to New York, I have been longing to go back and it has made me view my current dwelling grounds, San Francisco, in less than an attractive light. Since my desire to return is neither feasible nor is it useful for my current disposition, I dreamed of New York City in a way that reminded me of the bland police TV shows of the early 80's. Since it's already been a couple of weeks since my return, the dream was enough to wash off the last remaining longing to return. I now view San Francisco in a positive light again. In this manner, dreams are very useful in keeping us psychologically healthy or at least on the right track. For even when we don't remember our dreams, we experience movements in consciousness. More often than not, however, such movement is subtle and goes by unnoticed, like that of a shifting shadow.


On that note, if we were to review the two seemingly contradictory dreams I had last month concerning the anima, it is possible to view their primary function as movements in consciousness. The first, being the orange-robed monk dream, suggesting an assertive attitude towards the anima, and the second as a warning against an aggressively demanding and overly assertive attitude.




Since I am not very advanced in this topic, it is certainly conceivable that a wide, exploratory movement between the two polarities can be instructive to my conscious self in that the effects of both perspectives are illuminated through actual experience. Given such illumination a bias can then be formed towards one side of a polarity or another, or one balanced somewhere in between, and such a bias can be further refined over time as one moves up the Paisley pattern.


I have had visions in the past of the archetypal patterns of movement that come with these evolution inspiring oscillations. I currently glimpse barely discernable, graph-like images of these patterns and it seems like there is intervening material awaiting me in my subconscious that needs to surface first before these images are presented and understood. But, from what I can tell so far, they resemble the mathematically enigmatic patterns produced by some crop circles.


The Hurricane Period


I have been consciously aware of experiencing these evolution-inspiring movements since my college years more than a decade ago. At that time, I lead a solitary life full of introspective exploration and creativity on the weekdays and on the weekend I visited my home town to visit family and friends. The return to gregariousness on a weekly basis was like a sanity safety net and during the week I allowed myself full indulgence in the adventures of the inner landscape. Each week would follow a similar pattern; it would start out calm and uneventful in the beginning. By Tuesday or Wednesday, I would start to feel some inner turmoil brewing, which was usually vague and unnexplainable. The resolution of this internal dissonance would come in the form of one or more shifts in consciousness that would happen on their own, sparking a movement that would propel me into a higher state of mind by Thursday night, at which time I was most productive in my creative pursuits. These movements in consciousness not only resolved the inner discord and led me to higher states, but also possessed poetic qualities that fascinated me to no end so that they were typically at the center of my attention.


There were a series of events that occurred after starting my first job after college which, metaphorically speaking, pushed me into a corner in that I felt very threatened psychologically. In a deep sense of panic, I called upon these movements to take on full force so that I would develop and advance myself in those areas I felt vulnerable and in need of understanding. The oscillations, which either involved mental perspectives or the emotions or both, moved me from one extreme to another sometimes in less than a few seconds. At times, it left me confused and unstable, at other times it gave me knowledge that was very useful, and I had powers of mentation that I never imagined possible.


This type of fast oscillation I used to call Hurricane Thinking and deserves a chapter of its own which I plan to write later. Hurricane Thinking is highly UN-recommended because it can be very damaging to the ego and mental/emotional stability. The three weeks of experiencing this form of mentation took me literally two years to entirely recover from, what with all the ego-mutilation I went through because of the oscillations. During this recovery period, it was not uncommon for me to suffer from anxiety attacks that lasted two or three days. But, as the saying goes, "what doesn't kill me makes me grow." Over time, I learned how to call upon such a speed of movement but to remain absolutely stationary in my tracks as my thoughts whisked about me. This is possible through selflessness, a deeply rooted sobriety, and a complete emotional detachment from the movement. The adjustment of the speed of the movement is possible through the will, when I am able to connect my conscious will with the will that is rooted in deeper parts of my psyche, which I can only accomplish in certain states.


I now view the series of events which lead to the Hurricane Period absolutely fated, that the development of this form of mentation is of utmost importance to my spiritual path. As I wrote in my diary during my college years: "The purpose of the artist is to manifest a hurricane and stand still within it.


I am not sure from where or how the specific patterns of movement come about but I consider them archetypical in nature. That my mentation can automatically follow such patterns is still a very mysterious phenomenon for me. My current theory is that just as I feel I have crystallized as a musician in that there are very specific rules that have fit into place with a high degree of regularity and strength, so have these patterns of movement become ingrained in my being so that they are a part of my vibration as a psychological entity. They are crystallized pathways of thought and during my higher states of mind, many ideas I possess can be passed through these avenues. Another way to look at it comes from one of my works of fiction. The main character, named Crimson, unleashes "pocket hurricanes", tiny twisters that flit about the city and eventually settle down when their work is done.


A Simple Example of Oscillation


This weekend, I experienced some oscillation with respect to my confidence in writing this blog and I think that the story can be an instructive, although simplistic, example of the intelligence behind seemingly random movements in consciousness. Seeing the potential in developing my ideas, my ego became inflated and I saw myself affecting humanity's evolution in a positive manner. For the last decade or more, I've been hallucinating an "X" when I close my eyes. No matter what mood I am in, I can conjure up the "X" with ease. Saturday night, I had very vivid visions of vibrant energy dancing about with amazing speed. The "X", which I have come to interpret as a symbol of transformation, was at the center of the vibrating energy. Generally, when I see the "X", my being is centered upon a specific location with respect to the "X". When I am at the bottom, middle part, it represents my ordinary states of mind and that of humanity at large. Passing through the middle of the "X" denotes raising my spiritual level to the next higher realm. During my higher states, I see myself at the middle top part of the "X". That night, my visions showed me passing through the middle of the "X" many times, the "X" now extremely vibrant and alive, and as I did so, there was magnificent white light. The more the white light shone, the more the light attracted the rest of humanity upwards through the middle. I envisioned myself helping humanity through projecting this form of love-radiant, buoyant light.


Over the next few hours, and the next morning, I oscillated to the other extreme of the self-confidence/self-debasement polarity. I felt completely useless and incompetent with respect to my writing abilities and ashamed of having had the audacity to believe that I was going to be a significant aid to humanity's evolution. This kind of extreme oscillation is quite typical when consciousness moves far into a certain perspective which is essentially lacking realistic foundation. It is the equivelant of stretching a rubber band. Such movement inpires evolutionary development, however, in that it can give a 360 degree view of a particular axis of polarity in relation to the subject at hand. Oscillating towards extreme self-confidence gave me an intense amount of ambition and drive to write, as well as inspiration and a radiating, unconditional love. However, I saw how it also filled me with unrealistic expectations, and led me to accept unfounded assumptions; my usual skeptical questioning of the inspired ideas that were surfacing in my consciousness. My subsequent oscillation towards self-debasement gave me an opportunity to question the ideas I have accumulated so far, and to build a constructive criticism of my writing so far. It also allowed to visualize the reactions of a reader who is highly skeptical and quick to dismiss my new ideas. The disadvantages of such a state were the lack of drive to write and the blockage of my inspiration.


I have since then settled on the more balanced perspective that there will be at least some people who benefit from some of my ideas and the faith in this belief is enough to give me the drive I need and to avoid blockages of my inspiration. I still feel capable of conjuring up the love-radiance from time to time that I had during my visions and I am working on integrating the oscillation into an extremely critical and skeptical attitude about my writing into my ordinary inventory of perspectives so that I forever push myself to increase the level of my writing's quality. This settled attitude, then, is more of a regularization of my confidence and forms a specific bias, which pushes me upwards in the Paisley pattern. Subsequent oscillations will less likely be as extreme and more likely come in the form of refinement. If extreme oscillation were to occur, the movement will most likely settle back close to this developed bias.


Such an example illustrates purely internal adventures. The same order, however, seems to underscore the psychological movements that originate as a reaction to the external events in life and in this manner life provides catalysts for our evolution.


My "harnessing the question" of the proper configuration of the conscious self with respect to the anima has provided a much more complicated example of personal development which is integrated in Time. Let us review the essential events. First, there was the orange-robed monk dream which suggested that a domineeringly masculine proclivity could help achieve buoyancy in the face of distractions minutiae, i.e. the superficial and the mundane. Secondly, I took the picture of the "Gentlemen" painting which synchronistically showed the bartender excersicing her power over the loud and spiritually distracting television. Thirdly, my attempt to tune out a distracting conversation coming from a neighboring table in a restaurant led me to read a passage in a book that recounted the story of an orange-robed monk that turned ON the television as a light-hearted demonstration of the existence of magic. Fourthly, I attended a live show of a band whose singer was a male with the breasts of a woman, which symbolized the exaggerated manifestation of the anima. He sang "Are you free?" repeatedly and that same night, I had a nightmare that my consciousness was imprisoned, which can be interpreted as the over-emotional reaction to having to keep a full-time job. And finally, I had the dream that warned me against suppressing and abusing the anima or else I risk getting attacked.


These events provided a complex buoquet of symbolism that pictured a variety of psychological proclivities, some of which seemed contradictory. And their unresolved richness more typically exemplifies the common nature of our development in various aspects of life. Normally, however, we are not aware of the various ways in which life teaches, the lessons remaining subliminal to a large degree. But, just as we are affected by our dreams even though we may not remember them, we are also moved by life in ways that we could follow and at times interpret were we to become aware of them. Therefore, the methods of strengthening our discernment of the underlying order behind our lives is arguably of great importance. Methods of increasing the efficiency of utilizing the catalysts life gives us as opportunities for growth are also of high benefit.


I dove head first into my creative pursuits during my college years. I quickly realized that I was most successful when I lived life very intensely. To be deeply passionate about life and to live it to the hilt is a form of appreciation and unconditional love of life, an invitation for life to come out and play. This passionate involvement comes with the risk of getting hurt, however, and therefore one has to be able to desensitize oneself from the various aspects where harm can be done and the ability of "dancing in and out of the steps of living" (as written in the Ra Material) is ideal. One of the main advantages to this intensity is that the movements in consciousness can become quite rich and possess the potential of bearing much fruit. Secondly, it facilitates the awareness of the deeper, more subtle processes, intuitions, thoughts, and feelings by raising the volume, so to speak. The awareness of potential synchronicites while living them out is an example of how intensity can bring out into the light that which is generally hidden or obscure.


Strengthening our discernment of the underlying order also occurs by paying close attention to our dreams, in addition to synchronicities, and holding our focus on the same specific areas of exploration and development for some time so that the process has time to unfold and the inner life is not so sporadic. Also, living intuitively, moment to moment, provides the opportunity for synchronistic conditioning to occur so that the synchronicities of life become more apparent.


Thursday, 09/06/07:


The Racing Car


Two nights ago, on Tuesday, I felt rather drained after work. I was waiting at the bus stop when my thoughts turned to my writing. My spirits fell as I found I had no drive nor inspiration. Just then, a car daringly sped through a red light and raced off, my synchronicity radar tingling.


Last night, I felt further drained from work, contradicting my desire to keep my writing going so as to keep up the continuum of these diary entries. When I fell asleep, I dreamt that I was in a car with a man who seemed to symbolize the epitome of a crystallized writer, one who could write in any state of mind, come rain or shine. I am similarly always productive as a musician but as a writer, I still require inspiration. In the dream, this man is behind the wheel and he is driving us through a roadblock. A policeman motions to stop the car, but the man dismisses his demands and speeds off, leaving the cop behind us screaming as we race through the streets. This seemed to represent placing full control in the hands of the assertive conscious self, symbolizing the extreme masculine side of consciousness that neglects and rejects all order but those of its own choosing.


When I awoke, life was playing a strange tune: I was still experiencing the movement of the racing car except that it seemed as if my consciousness itself was shifting. In addition, this movement was being pictorially visualized with my inner eye as the long, broad brush-strokes of the paintings I've been creating lately on my computer. Indeed, I have been able to train myself lately to heighten my sensitivity to color so that the slightest brush-stroke affects a discernable movement in my consciousness, the aim being to create imagery that moves one towards a higher state of mind.












Friday, 09/15/07


The Leaping Whale


The dream last Friday was quite mind boggling. I was stationed at a coastal town with what seemed to be a group of military personnel. We were all intently watching the sea which was calm but very opaque. All of a sudden a big whale leaped into the air some 500 meters and crashed down onto the houses in the town, violently lashing about and causing incredible damage before diving back into the sea. It did this repeatedly and when I was able to scrutinize the shape of the whale, I found that it resembled the paintings I published last month that tried to depict the amazing speed and vitality of some of my higher states of mind.

In my inventory of dream symbolism, creatures from the sea represent elements from the subconscious, as was also the interpretation of Carl Jung. The damaging effects of high-speed oscillations and bombarding, seemingly contradictory currents of energy were quite clearly depicted in this dream and this can also be related with my dream of the mirrored restaurant in which the hostess advised not to be overwhelmed with the complexity caused by all the reflections. This kind of energy is indeed detrimental when I have not reached my higher states, which are light-hearted, selfless, and possessing a great deal of sobriety. I dreamt this dream on Friday after a full week of work, while I was trying to balance work with receiving inspiration for my writing. That day, a series of events took place, one after another, which brought up some very personal struggles which I will not go into here. They seemed to lash at me just as the whale did in the dream, damaging and dismantling my ego.


That weekend, I went to my parents' home town for the weekend. All went well, but the bed in which I slept, which used to be in the same position as where I slept during my high school years, was moved to a different location in the same room. I have always been quite sensitive with respect to the position of my bed in any room with which I am very familiar. This new position gave me some very strange dreams that seemed to be related to struggles I had not dealt with since high school, and I awoke feeling very weak.


The next day I went into work and there was much drama going on, some of which was directed against me. I simply felt devastated and powerless. By this time, I was still stubbornly hunting for inspiration for my writing, even though I was too distracted to get very far. Because of my weakened state, I decided to give up and let go entirely. The rest of the week at work offered me a crescendo of drama but, having no more need of engaging my anima, I felt fine and solid, one night working a twelve hour shift without it even phasing me in the least. I now understand this falling out from my writing as having been depicted by my vision of the pegasus that ended up being consumed by the black hole. The part of that vision which became dark and foreboding depicted surroundings that looked like splintered rock, i.e. fragmentation. This goes to show that engaging my anima and keeping the connection to my subconscious open at the improper time can invite in elements of the dark side which instantiate contradictory and dissonant energy that leaves my psyche dismantled.


Syria and Israel


I've been somewhat disturbed by the news lately. I've been having a vision which I cannot shake off that shows a war between Israel and Syria. This vision first surfaced during the Hizbulla-Israel war and when that one ended I was relieved that it was proven wrong. In the last several days, however, Israeli warplanes have penetrated Syria and they attacked an army base there. Over the last few days, the vision unfolded its logic to me and showed the archetypical patterns taking place. I will recount that logic even though I am not fully convinced of it and these ideas should be taken with a grain of salt; they could just be reflections of my own psyche projected upon the situation in the Middle East. Notice that because I am Lebanese, I can only envision the situation from the perspective of the Lebanese; I do not know of the archetypes in which the Israelis and the Syrians are involved.


The Lebanese can be regarded as a people who are fed up with war to the maximum. Even though I cannot speak for everyone, there is a deeply rooted bias towards peace that developed as a result of the civil war, the Hizbullah-Isreal war, and the seemingly endless political turmoil that plagues the country. There is also the resilience and the almost indifferent behaviour of many people even during very troubled times. It seems like there is much desire albeit, unconscious in the culture, to continue strengthening this form of resilience at all odds.


A war between Syria and Israel, Lebanon's two neighboring countries, would arouse much fear of the spread of that war into Lebanon. But, the bias of the Lebanese towards peace would continue to prevail and uphold the country's well being, allowing it to shine beautifully over time as a result of the momentum built by the regularized desire towards peace. The country's main obstacle is the lack of unity across religious sects and the polarization between pro-Syria and anti-Syria ideologies. The development of the bias towards unity is paramount and the struggles that ensue will most likely oscillate back and forth between an accentuation of that struggle and its temporary relief. But, Lebanon has a high chance of acting as the Yin of the Yang (or the Yang of the Yin) with respect to the conflicts in the Middle East.



Sunday, 09/16/07:


The Swirling Waters



After taking a break from all writing and artistic pursuits this week, I was able to dive back in without a problem on Friday night. However, late that evening, despite being inspired to write some more, I decided to set up some new hardware on my computer at home instead, which took all my time and I then went straight to sleep.

I had the following dream: Out in the sea, there were whirlpools that somehow existed in a contained manner so that they were stationary, regular, and tame, similar to the pocket hurricane idea in my fiction. These whirlpools were curiously called the "swirling waters" and this intrigued me because, in the Ra Material, Carla, the instrument, was repeatedly advised to use a specific type of bathtub therapy called the swirling waters for her arthritis condition. In the dream, however, these stationary whirlpools were meant as docking points for boats and people lived in them. I was somewhat of a vagabond character and I decided to maneuver my small boat into one of them and make it my home. The dream ended in the climax of being scolded by a woman who was apparently the landlady saying that I could not continue living there until I paid my rent.


Paid my rent? What did that mean? I wonder if that referred to my coming home all inspired but working on my computer hardware project instead of my writing. There is an obvious correlation here between the swirling waters, hurricane thinking, and the concept of the kundalini or upward spiraling light. That these were homes inside the sea (which usually depicts the unconscious) is an interesting twist. But, indeed, the movements in consciousness which I have been talking about originate in the subconscious, or at least the conditioning to enable the movement starts there. That they were given the same term as the healing method for Carla's arthritis presents a mystery which could shed light on her arthritic condition, not sure if it still exists. In my opinion, a stiffness in the joints occurs in psychics when the speed of vibration of their channeling, which is typically higher than human, creates dissonance with the speed of vibration of the body, or the current personality residing in the body. But, this is not for me to say.


Recent Paintings



This morning, I must have hallucinated at least 50 paintings, some of them ethereal, most of them in the style of the paintings I've been making on the computer lately:











Click on the image for full size.






Click on the image for full size.






Click on the image for full size.






Click on the image for full size.





Click on the image for full size.


I also hallucinated the vision of one of my long and broad brush-strokes, which, to me, referred to the racing car dream representing an overly assertive proclivity. The scene then switched to what appeared to be an image of the eclipse of the sun and then I saw the face of a man. His skin started to harden into rock and splinter just like the landscape of the pegasus vision when it turned dark and foreboding. The man also started slipping away to the left, the negative side.


Monday, 09/17/07


Contrasting Colors


In color theory, opposite colors in the color wheel are called complementary colors. I have been finding that complementary and other contrasting color combinations play a significant part in creating the effect of ethereality. One can compare the effect of consciousness seen side by side with the exploratary oscillations found in evolution-inspiring movements in consciousness. Since color is basically neutral in nature, opposed to the way we regard our experiences in life based on negatvie/positive, good or bad, happy or sad, color in art is a form of all-joyful, playful, and light-hearted adventure in oscillation. In this manner, art can be an extremely useful tool in understanding the balancing process on am intuitive level. And artwork that evokes feelings of ethereality can show the heightened balancing of the enlightenment process.


I woke up this morning thinking that the anima is a perfectly functioning portion of the psyche because its very nature is to follow the laws of nature. Thus, it is the deeply rooted proclivity of the conscious self which should be tuned for a healthy relationship as opposed to applying any kind of conscious-self directed influence.


On a similar note, I have witnessed some very feminine women exhibit leaps of insight whose depth of wisdom betrays an archetypal order, capable of setting aright, or completely derailing, an entire system of philosophical thought laboriously constructed by the most talented logician, and done so with the mental equivalent of a whimsical gesture, a marginal flick of the wrist or the toss of a flock of hair. Such power, exhibited with such simplicity and grace, is seldom appreciated by the male, for lack of understanding or otherwise.


As if in response to such ideas, today was a typically difficult Monday due to the stark contrast between the transitory and hollow experiences at work and the magical heights of the weekend, which seemed to open portals of thought and imagery pregnant with the most delicious "human" experience. The transition was like being in one of Rome's beautiful cathedrals, finding a crack in the wall, and staring at it for 8 hours. It is not too difficult to find the humor in our contemporary existence. But, while I was at work, the anima was indeed alive and kicking, and synchronistically, the computer program I was working on logged the following message over and over and over again: NOT_STOPPABLE,NOT_PAUSABLE,IGNORES_SHUTDOWN. Fine. I got frustrated at our development team overseas, which I now regret because I kind of let them have it, which I never do, always careful to stay away from the corrupting ways of the business world; I felt like an agent of the negative side. Not that I really let them have it, but for my standards it is was truly overboard. The residues of frustration were carried with me to a restaurant in which the beautiful, flirtatious waitress handed me a tiny black desert plate after dinner. It consisted of a small, round cookie covered with powdered sugar which spilled over to the side. When I ate the cookie, the black hole that was left behind looked like an eclipse of the sun, just like yesterday's vision!


Tuesday, 09/18/07


I am surprised at myself for having handled the disciplinary action towards our development team the way I did, for it was not done in a constructive manner, but with an overly harsh attitude which not only spreads negativity but causes a backlash reaction. My "loss of positive polarity", as Ra would say, is quite marked and obvious; my inspiration is gone, I had trouble remembering my dreams, feel fragmented, confused, so on and so forth.


The Slingshot Dynamic


The discomfort and unease I felt last night and this morning because of my exaggeratedly negative behaviour against the lead of our overseas development team was quickly washed away when I reconciled with him over online chat this morning. Even though he is just a professional acquaintance, the dispute's end hoisted me into fantastic spirits abound with inspiration so that at work throughout the day, even though the job demanded my focused attention, many delicious ideas circled about my mind in the background.


Indeed, I had not felt so good in weeks. And this kind of oscillation into the dark side yesterday proved in the end to have the opposite, slingshot-like effect of swinging me deeper into the positive side. My current theory behind this kind of movement in consciousness is the following: My personality is already biased towards the positive, and deeply so, despite the fact that I waver from time to time because of life's struggles. The bias towards positivity holds me rooted to that polarity and as I got drawn yesterday into the negative side, the movement away from my base built up enough potential that when I finally released that potential, I was swung back to the positive with full force. This slingshot dynamic of the psyche especially occurs after the regularization of a personality with respect to the specific axis of polarity involved in the movement. This is because a temporary deviation needs to come with the necessary strings attached so that one gets subsequently pulled back towards the original position. This movement differs from the type of shift which can be described to be an exploratory oscillation, which goes hand in hand with ambivalence.





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The Chakras and Creativity


Another perspective on this subject deals with chakras. For those who do not have a working knowledge of chakras and the dynamics of energy flow and blockage, I believe one of the most instructive introductory examples illustrates what occurs in our being when we get into quarrels with others. Holding a grudge or similar strong negative emotion towards someone with whom we have come into dispute typically creates a marked feeling of inner dissonance and discomfort, whereby the natural psychological processes now feel clumsy and disjointed. This is especially evident when the other self is a very close acquaintance. The moment we resolve the disagreement and become reconciled, there is a sudden sense of relief and revitalization in our being, a sense of harmony, ease, and fluidity of motion. That which occurs during dispute is a blockage of the energy flow through our chakras, and when the grudge or negativity is released, the energy flows freely again, the chakras are functioning well once more.


The fourth chakra in Ra's system of thought, also called the green ray, is the energy center of unconditional love, acceptance, and understanding. When this chakra is functioning well, I typically feel as if I am soaring like an eagle, emitting a brilliance that is transmuted from its original, raw love-radiance form into the inspired creativity that funnels into my projects. Ra once described the green ray center as the "springboard to primary blue" which is the energy center of freely given communication, or the offering of "light" without seeking a reward in return. The blue ray is that which is activated within the talented artists, writers, teachers, musicians, and the like. When these centers of energy are properly functioning, my productivity and inspiration levels in my creative pursuits seem endless and I never tire. At times, I return home from a draining week of work on Friday night and my creative output remains solid way past midnight. Compare that with averaging one or two inspired hours per week back while I was in college. With my extremely busy schedule, I don't have time to fuss about with dry spells; put my pen to paper and I leave myself no choice but to produce. Therefore, honing in that skill to achieve maximal up-time requires developing much self-discipline over the years and this has been largely based upon solidifying an unconditional acceptance towards others which then quite simply results in greater understanding, and even the natural blooming of love for whoever repeatedly crosses my path.


It would be far too simplistic, however, to say that all talented artists have the first five energy centers well-balanced, and especially delusional to think that they each are crystallized in unconditional love for their fellow man. Indeed, some of the greatest artists in history betray a very cruel and selfish side, although I believe these traits are typically accentuated distortions that lie on a bed of greater than average ethical standards. The factors which determine the free flow of inspiration are numerous. However, when analyzing the personality of an artist, let's say, in relation to her/his creative output, one needs to be aware that we are not only talking about inspiration but also one should consider the crystallization of inspiration into a skillful talent that is readily available come rain or shine. Those artists who have developed such talents need only peace of mind, time, and focus. And inspiration can come during moments of peace, or whenever life presents the opportunity to enjoy an inner sense of balance.


Speaking for myself, when I do find myself in a dry spell, I often perform the following trick: If I am stuck in a rut while making music, for example, I pick a close acquaintance of mine whose taste in music I know well, and I pretend that I am composing music specifically to elevate the state of mind of that someone. This feeling of giving and helping purifies my insides, points my focus in the direction of service, and activates my green ray which in turn alights the blue. In addition to the mechanics of chakra balancing, as Ra points out, those whose intentions to serve are pure gather towards them a mass of light.


While I was in college, my personality could be judged to be fairly positively polarized when it came to dealing with others. However, there was certainly room for refinement and I believe that one of the most helpful aspects of solitude in attaining my inspiration was that I rarely interacted with others and therefore my energy centers suffered minimum blockage of that type. I definately did get numerous hints from my subconscious, however, that I had to put an end to my feelings of annoyance which were aroused by the presence of other people who I felt were superficial. One of the most blatant of these messages I intuitively wrote in big block letters in one of my paintings: "BREAK MIDDLE FINGER FOR SUPPORT!" The avoidance of interacting with others in order to retain the higher state of mind is, in my opinion, one of the main reasons why many spiritually-minded people exhibit tendencies to live like hermits.


At the heart of the spiritual, or mystical, experience is the sense of one-ness, or at-one-ment with the world. During my college years, I had numerous experiences in which I felt everything around me was in fact portions of my own psyche. These were not states of mind that were delusional. On the contrary, they were accompanied by an unparralleled clarity of thought and judgement, and an awareness that stretched its wings far beyond the boundaries of my tiny, human existence.


I did not truly understand the concept of one-ness, however, till the Hurricane Period hit me just before the year 2000. This three-week period was jam-packed with "events" and it left me 100% busy trying to keep up with all the insights and messages that were surfacing in my mind as well as all the shifts in consciousness.


One day, I was standing in my living room and the series of revelations I was having was truly blowing me away. The data coming from (or through) my unconscious became louder and louder as a result since my level of inspiration was extremely high. It got to the point where I was seeing vision after vision of such intensity that they reminded me of a Hollywood trailer for an action movie. I was viewing oscillations between love and hate, kindness and cruelty, and so on. And when I was finally completely in a trance, the following words spilled into me like honey: "Go the way of the Buddha, brother". And I broke down and cried for the first time in many years.



Nearly a minute or so went by and my need to shed tears ended as suddenly as it began. And only a split second after that, my phone began to ring. I was not in any mood to talk but the timing of the call seemed to be too much of a coincidence so I answered it anyways.


It turned out to be the bank for my student loan and they were calling with the odd purpose of assuring me that my loan payments were perfectly on time! Now, how often does one get a call like that?


It was a blatantly obvious synchronicity, but what did it all mean? Let us attempt to interpret this event as one does a dream and try to gleam the symbolism behind it.


My student years, in addition to giving my career a jump start, were a time of solitary initiation for me, a focus on achieving purity and the heights. It was a period in which I avoided others and the lessons learned from interacting with others in order to develop a blueprint of my psyche in its purest and most essential form. This avoidance of gregarious contact accumulated something like a loan of lessons to teach me the manner in which I should interact with others. The arrival at the revelation that I must go the way of the Buddha, to find the understanding and compassion for other selves, was the intersecting point between my solitay quest for inner purity and its gregarious equivalent.


What followed were a thread of experiences that made me glimpse the reasons why people were the way they were. Whenever I focused my attention at any one of the many workmates that I knew, my state of mind began to shift dramatically. It would take a swing to the left and then a swing to the right, to loosen me up, and then keep shifting in a unique manner so as to eventually settle down in a state in which I was able to better understand the proclivity of that specific person. In such a manner, I went through one by one the people I knew until my visions showed me a stream of bodies flowing down into the Great River of Humanity. This set of experiences taught me, or, to put it more accurately, jammed down my throat, the lesson that we are all one, that we are all but versions of each other and that the way of the Buddha was the way of compassion and understanding.


From that point on, it became quite clear that harboring negative judgements about anyone was completely NOT ALLOWED. This attitude was especially difficult to adopt because I was dealing with an extremely tumultuous friendship with someone who had temporarily polarized into the extreme negative. I remember many times unable to fall asleep because I hallucinated his face directly in front of mine for hours into the night as if I were staring into a mirror. My visions pushed me endlessly to accept him for who he was and any negative judgement against him turned immediately against myself. In this manner, I found myself spiralling down the path towards the archetype of self-destruction.


Eventually, I visited my old college town for the weekend in order to return to the sense of purity that I used to feel there. Throughout my stay, it felt as if the town rejected my presence and none of the cherished states I used to know would surface. Finally, the last hour came and I was about to leave town with a sense of complete defeat when a vision popped into my head, showing me my friend-enemy and then the words "love everyone". I saw with great clarity the poison of my hatred and I threw away all my negative emotions directed at him. The town then bloomed with the unique beauty of the inner-life richness I used to know so well and I felt as if I were still living there.


From that point, I could honestly say that unconditional love was a significant element of my persona, well integrated. And it took an intense bout with the negative side in order to spark such a fire.














Saturday, 09/21/07:


Dismantling Shifts in Color


While I was readying myself for sleep last night, out of nowhere I got a vision of a monster-like face accompanied by a strange roar. I felt a surge of fear hit me with a strangely powerful force that seemed to originate from a bottomless pit of negativity. My my my, what amazing strength accompanies these psychic attacks! The vision and roar repeated itself and I felt myself being absorbed into the dark side, the world around me shifting and my thoughts turning sour. I mustered up my unconditional acceptance and love and did my best to direct it at the vision. Slowly, I returned to normal and the inner darkness subsided.


What fascinated me about this experience was the color scheme used in the monster image. The background was orange and the monster was purple. The two colors side by side created a vibrating effect, a dizzying, optical illusion typical of some color combinations. I show this effect in the image below:





Just as the leaping whale in my dream last week was rendered with sporadic lines in such a way as to express violently rapid movements that were dismantling and deleterious to the ego, so does this color combination produce an effect of confusing dissonance in the eye of the beholder. The curiosity such a visual effect can typically arouse highlights the alluring nature of the negative side when expertly presented.





Sunday, 09/23/07:


Explore the Prophecy


I bumped into the following flyer posted on a pole this morning.







I wouldn't have thought anything of the flyer had it not been posted en route of my favorite walk that I try to take every Sunday morning after breakfast, and had it not contained the image of a lion with wings, which resembled my vision of the horse with wings I had at the beginning of this month. My vision showed the pegasus starting off in an ethereal setting and then flying down into a black hole amidst dark and foreboding surroundings. This seemed to predict my own psychological adventure over the following couple weeks in that my visions and dreams led me down dark avenues of experience till my ego felt dismantled and weak to the core and then finally the dreams and visions themselves died down. [10/09/2007: To this day, the visions have been few and far and between. My dreams have also taken on very superficial and seemingly random characteristics.] And then here I bump into this flyer which said to "Explore the Prophecy" and instead of a winged horse, which could be seen to represent the anima taking flight, depicted a winged lion, the leader of the animal kingdom, which seems to symbolize the alpha-male taking flight.


Let us ideate about the mechanics behind this synchronicity, if indeed it is one. I would hesitate to entertain the notion that the flyer's creation was itself a part of the underlying order behind my spiritual development. I would be more inclined to think that my inner self, or whoever/whatever was responsible for my Pegasus vision, because it exists in a realm outside of time as we know it, was already aware of the high likelihood that I would stumble upon the flyer since it was taped to a pole that was en route of one of my habitual walks in the city. Since having the Pegasus vision, I had been wondering why the horse had wings, that if the vision had shown a horse without wings the message behind it would have been transmitted just as clearly; the magical nature of the horse was already quite obvious, since the image of the horse gave me the feeling of being larger than life, or archetypal. Seeing the lion with wings leads me to believe that the wings on the horse were simply a form of synchronistic conditioning with the intention of making the connection with the flyer a lot more clear so that I would pay proper attention. To accumulate the coincidental data even further, the pole with the flyer was right in front of an African-American church from which I occasionally enjoy hearing very passionate religious singing and shouting. It always reminded me of one of my favorite CDs I bought a few years ago which contains samples of people singing in the same manner. And the name of the CD was "Discipline". Am I reading too much into this or am I gleaming the mathematically enigmatic intelligence of the way innerscape content and synchronistic events intersect with our daily lives?


Having just written the last paragraph, I feel what I call a "spiral tug" on my idea that the wings in the Pegasus vision did not carry anything but an intrinsic highlighting effect on the lion flyer synchronicity. It is likely that the wings had the double purpose in this case, in that the wings represent the anima attempting to take flight on its own. Interesting to note that the winged lion was not the only winged animal in the flyer, but was accompanied by a winged tiger as well, in addition to a bear. And should I wonder about the coincidence between the word flyer and the messages depicting flight? Goodness, how the mind can really start to spin trying assimilate these ideas.


My dreams and visions concerning the anima have died down lately and I wonder if this is because I have reached a balanced understanding on the subject: Although seemingly whimsical because its dynamic nature appears erratic and unpredictable when compared to the steady, sober logic of the masculine side, the anima is a perfectly functioning portion of the psyche although it only represents one side of the picture. The well-fitted efficiency of the male-female couple relationship as seen in the husband-and-wife team who get along can be a simple, though exemplary model for the conscious self and anima/animus configuration.


The vision of the winged horse, if indeed it symbolized the anima, showed the deleterious effects of it flying on its own, and the ego-dismantling dreams were the result of a subconscious that had manifested out of control. On the same note, mutual cooperation of the anima and the conscious self, side by side, would have changed my dramatic behaviour with my overseas team at work the other day. My frustration, full blown due to an anima that was alive and kicking, was a perfectly natural and therefore necessary reaction to their actions which had become more and more unprofessional of late. The conscious, logical side wanted to retain the momentum of the positive working relationship but the anima would not have it, affecting a reaction which albeit de-constructive was necessary for upholding the harmony which had lost its original foundation. Had the masculine assertive side also been fully activated, however, the necessary stoic sobriety and calculating mind would have transformed the frustration into clear, assertive, and concise actions that would have corrected the issue without the negative drama and its derivative, chaotic results.


I do believe that throughout all this time I've missed the main point behind the vision that came to me that morning accompanied with the word "achieve micro-buoyancy". I show it below once again.





The vision does show the anima and the conscious self in a cooperative proclivity, each stemming towards its own direction in a properly polarized manner. That the conscious, masculine self stems higher than the anima is perfectly logical since the male is by nature configured in the masculine fashion, whether it be for reasons that are sexual, physical, chemical, psychological, or what have you. What I have come to believe is the main meat behind the vision, however, is that the simultaneous existence of the two polarities within the self is what generates the buoyancy, whereas, intuitively, one would expect the balanced male to be only slightly masculine, while the balance female only slightly feminine. The vision, on the other hand, encourages the two natures to be fully activated and living side by side as a cooperating duality within the self.

In the image above, the faded lines that seem to generate a sense of motion were not my own additions, but came with the vision. These lines suggest the instantiation of the upward-spiraling light, or the kundalini uncoiling like a snake through the energy centers.