For a moment I touch the consciousness of the earth itself, as seen from outside. The entirety of what we are on the planetary level, when seen as one being. It hurts. Its in pain. Growing pains. Its thrashing, fighting with itself, struggling to awaken, not yet of a high enough energy to do so. But the closeness gives glimpses of awareness, just enough to see itself for a moment, before it is lost again.

I pity this poor wretched creature of Earth. It pushes against a darkness it is unable to overcome, but is becoming aware of the struggle. In doing so, is able to feel pain. Its not going to be an easy century for us. Growing up sucks. Being born is worse. The womb is awfully cozy, until its too small to hold us any more. But we have to move on.

1/8/01

I'm frustrated. As a magician, my tactic is to identify things. By indentification, the mind has a handle on the idea, a name. For example in demonology, one names a demon (or daemon, as the case may be), and researches the name to have a fuller understanding of it. By naming, one has control. The mind can grasp the idea or spiritual creature (same thing, on one level), and gain control over it. Grasping allows manipluation, according to the internal rules of the object.

As a spiritual person, having a strong sense of spirituality is important to me. Being in line with the soul and God is important, but I have to understand how I'm doing it. So, I need to identify my spirituality in order to make it what I want it to be.

Problem: how do you define a spirituality that is by nature and design one that is above definition? I understand that our best attempts to name God are flawed, and I seek the higher truth that is unattainable. It is a drive that causes me to progress, but to a goal that is perhaps unreachable. How can a system understand something outside of its realm?

To find peace of spirit, I must settle for something less, a system in place that is workable for others, or one of my own design that has limit so that I can define it. But this is never enough. I can't settle, at least not forever. My true faith is in something beyond my magic. That duality of paradox again between two things that cannot coexist, but yet in the trying to grow to a point where they can. So I move from one system to another, incorporating each but consciously becoming one or the other at any given time. Now pagan, now Catholic, now Shaman, now Agnostic. But in each I know it is not complete, and that I can't find what I really want here.

Knowlege of the flaw is pain, but also hope. I will have to eventually settle on something so as to satisfy the lower parts of my higher soul. Its irritating, but necessary. A path is necessary in order to reach the thing beyond I can't define. I can only throw myself at infinity for so long before I either break, or discover it and wink out of this existance, neither of which fite terribly well into my plans.

Such a system will have to be by definition malleable. As an imperfect system, it must understand and embrace its imperfection, so as to change as needed to always be in line with what is above. Remain the best it can be at any given time. As times and circumstances change, so must it to keep up, or else break under the weight of blind rightousness.

*sigh* Maybe I'll just go back to Quaballism for awhile. That'll keep me busy enough to just live for awhile again, until need requires I dive into something else. Nothing like the Law for when Chaos becomes to much to bear, eh?

Why am I putting all this stuff online? Well, when I journal write, I write as though to an audience anyway. I don't write notes to myself. I don't seem to work that way. I can't journal write unless I pretend its a conversation of some sort. So, I guess it only makes sense to make it public. I've found that being true to myself in all things makes life a lot easier. All the easier if other people are able to understand me.

1/9/01

Magic is a feedback loop. I know that if I hold my hands a certain way and think a certain way, I channel energy into my chackras and raise my internal energies. Well, I feel that I do, anyway. Am I actually channeling any measurable energy, or is my expierence entirely subjective? External actions as an extension of internal process, causing a subjective change to my current state.

Does it matter? Not really. It still feel the same, regardless of how it works. I am, at the least, causing a change within that feels beneficial, regardless of if it depends on "energy" or merely tapping of conscious control over my nervous system.

Subjective reality is real to the subject. "Objective" reality is only the reality of something else that includes you. All reality is subjective. It just depends on where you're standing.

1/10/01

Apocolypse. In greek, it meant "revelation". How apt, that the word has come to also mean "the end of the world". Essencially, a form of death. Revelation - gain of signifigant information, that changes the way you see things. New information when processed can change the system it is entered into signifigantly. Such a revelation means the old self is no longer. Death.

To change, one must accept the loss of the old self. If that change is so drastic that the old self is not recognizable, it is quite a death. Apocolypse. A revelation so vast as to change the world. When the world has become something so different from what it was before, it is indeed the end of the world, though the world itself has not ceased to exist. It is just different now. Perhaps unrecognizable from what it was, but cerrtainly still around in the broader sense.

Around 1000 AD, men believed the world was about to end. Then there was a Reniassance, an industral revolution, massive political changes and cohesion. Indeed, the world ended. This world is nothing like the world of the Dark Ages. How signifigant then that many believed the world would end in 2000. Doubtless, the world of 2013 will look less like the world of 2000 than the world of 2000 lookd like the world of 1980.

Hold on to your seatbelts, this is going to be quite a ride.

1/11/01

What am I? As the rules and limits of myself are removed in the search to unfold and reveal my true self. Hints of that self are seen, but are frightfull in their suggestion. What I enjoy, what brings me pleasure, is entirely mutable, is subjective, can be programmed and changed. What I enjoy is what I do, that I am doing. What I do is a matter of what I can do, even the quest to aquire new abilities to do more is a function of the ability to learn.

What I thought was my consciousness is little more than a set of programms running, albeit in an incredibly complex system. Still, a system none the less. But one that is able to contain that which we illusively call the Soul. What I thought was me is nothing, of no importantce. Just a machine, and organic computer running a chain reaction equation for information density. But to what end? What is it we are to discover with all this work? This gathering and compiling of data, to build more data to be compiled again. The serpent swallows his tail, and grows bigger with each bite.

I am. That is all I can be sure of. Behind this machine, the pilot sits, and contemplates the direction the vehicle goes. I am not the machine. I am the sum total of what the machine represents when seen at once, then represented as a single point, which is contained within the machine. No wonder the soul can't be grasped. As soon as it is seen, the machine changes and in so doing does the location and composition of the soul. Energy continues to flow through fields of data and relationships, chasing its tail around infinity.

I am. Be here now. It sounds so simple, doesn't it? Just be, stop chasing your tail, and you will be your soul. The thing is, you are anyway. You just get a chance to stop and enjoy it for a moment.

1/15/01

Seeing outside the box allows for a glimpse of the box. But things don't always make sense outside of the box. You don't have the comfort of 4 walls around you, a floor that is stable, and a top that can open if need be but mostly remains closed. Things are always the same in the box, and they are known to work.

Outside, there are an infinity of possibilities. No walls, no floor, no top to hold you in. But without these things, how do we tell which way is up, which is down, and where we are positioned? Outside is confusing, hard to navagate and difficult to understand. Its crazy, and more at once than you can handle.

But you can see the box, all of it, the sides you never see from within. The limitations seem trivial and unnecessary from out here, save as a point of refrence. How small it appears, when compared to the Outside. While I'm out here, I can change the box a bit. Make the walls a bit bigger, poke some holes, patch others, perhaps build an addition. There is always work to be done.

But in the end, I can do a lot more work with solid ground beneath my feet. So, I crawl back inside again, remembering what I have learned from my more expanded view. I leave the top open a bit, in case things get too crowded in here.

1/16/01

The psychedelic expierence. Self awareness. "Awakening".

The eye turns inward, to regard oneself. What am I, how do I work, what is it I am doing? The process of our own intelligence is utterly fascinating. An endless journey of discovery awaits, for the complexity and detail of it seem beyond what we can percieve.

Indeed, that is the point of the excercise. One can never understand the totality of one's being. The eye is a part of the body. In looking at the body, to understand all of the body, one must look at the eye as well. But in order to look at the eye, the eye must grow outside of it, so that can behold where it was. Now that this is know, the work is not done for now the body has changed. The eye is not where it was, it has moved. To see itself, the eye chases itself around in circles: Growing to catch a glimpse of itself, but then having grown more to view. The serpent swallows its tail.

When one sees one's own functions of intelligence, that knowledge becomes a part of one's self. You can understand how you worked before, but this required new functions in order to percieve, and new data is stored. So one looks upon that, and grows larger for the knowing. The tail grows larger with each swallow, and the serpent grows from its devouring of itself.

We are never done with self awareness. There is always more to know, more to discover. We cannot swallow faster than we grow, and we grow from swallowing. Although this expansion is not geometric. One can only feed upon oneself for so long, before iterations cease to return additional information. The returns diminish, approach zero, approach stability, until new information is fed the system, and the process begins again.

Yet still, a balance point is approached, if not ever met. The information becomes more dense, more compressed. Cognitive file compression. We are not so different from the machines we create. The database engine of our minds seeks to find the most efficient archetecture, and will continue to try to "understand" until this stable point is reached. The serpent grows smaller again with the swallowing, but is not diminished.

The system approaches a stable point, diminishing returns again in an asymtotic equation, just as before. Something close to a theoretical stability is reached again, but can really never be reached as long as new information is always being added to the system. New data must be integrated. This requires the compressed files to be uncompressed, expanded again, so that all relations can be checked against the new data.

The system expands and contracts, fluxuates like a pulsar. An engine, devouring information, building itself. It is never finished, for if it were, we would cease to act any further. Nirvana is a nice ideal, but it is also a form of death. Is a place to pass through and continue on from, resting there only at death or complete trancendence of this universe.

Crunch. Back to eating. Life is a simple machine, with a very complex set of controls.

1/19/01

Everybody Poops. That this book is necessary at all says volumes about us. In case you've missed it, its a children's book explaining that pooping is an ok and natural thing, one not to be afraid, uncomfortable, or puzzled by. But why would we ever have such a reaction to something so intrinsicly natural to our physical presence?

Well, it becomes fairly evident that our minds, while capiable of great and versitile learning, are not programmed so well initially. As a baby, we have to figure out everything, including how to use this machine we are housed in.

Naturally, there are some residual instincts. The body knows how to take care of itself, afterall. When hungry, it will put things into its mouth until something makes it feel better. Then, the mind can remember that it has found food, and start to take over. When thirsty, it will crave liquid. It avoids that which causes it damage. It poops.

But the mind is not connected to these instincts. It has to figure out what these responses mean, and how to deal with them. There is such a bare baseline of knowledge that we are born with. The rest, we come up with on our own. Why do you think it takes so long to grow out of childhood? We are utterly dependent on the passing of external knowledge in order to survive and adapt. Our instincts are mere sensory input to us, just as is light or touch, and we must learn how to interpret them before we perish.

In this sense, we are completely different from animals. We do not naturally know what we are supposed to eat or do. Mateing is a horribly complex trial of interpreting urges caused by pheremone and tactile responses we have to figure out for ourselves. We don't just "know" what to put where or why to do it. Though if left on our own in the wild, we may manage to figure out how to survive just as the animals do. We are given all the tools, all the necessary data. We just have to put it all together and figure out what it all means. And of course, we can always put it together in a different fashon, and often do.

We are at a considerable disadvantage, having a smaller set of instincts to draw upon. Our instincts are very general, rather than more specific to an environment. We know we need food, and have a vague idea of what taste is nutritious. We just don't know what it may be in, so we have to try everything until we find it. Of course, being adaptable and not having set instincts, we can theoretically learn to survive in almost any environment. So, there is some tradeoff, here.

Not having these instincts, and being given instead the ability to reason, it is no wonder that we are confused when our body poops. We don't know what this is until we either figure it out for ourselves, or someone tells us. So, the mind must learn that the body is just doing its job, and that this is ok.

1/22/01

Love. What a mess it is. Lets look at this for a moment.

Love can be seen as a measure of the importance placed in something external. It can also mean to gain pleasure from something, and thus desire it. Eg, I love pizza. I find pizza to be an important thing, and will go out of my way to get it. I also enjoy it an awful lot. Really though, this definition of love is more one of lust. I should say, I lust pizza, as I desire to obtain it because it brings me pleasure.

This is not love. Love is a passive force. It is in serving another that we are loving them. It is in making them important. If I loved pizza, I would do what I could to support the existance of pizza, because it was important to me.

Love is reactive. It responds to the needs of another unthinkingly. It does because the other requires or desires it. It is making that other person a part of yourself, so that their needs and desires are your own. You become something more than just yourself, you become yourself and someone else. Together, you are more. The human spirit likes to grow and become something greater, so it is no wonder we find this expierence of the utmost pleasure.

Love is designed to be bidirectional. Each side invests love in the other, invests themeselves in the other, and thus becomes to the extent of the love invested a single creature. If only one side invests, then the balance is shifted. The creature is not a shared one, but one that is controlled by only one side. One person is in the thrall of the other, is subservient to the other, and does so willingly and lustfully, for their love is still being accepted. Just in lacking the return, the lover will waste away, their own needs being secondary to the loved and not compensated with the other loving them back. Most unhealty.

Strange things happen with love. One is connected to the other through it. That which hurts one, will hurt the other. Feelings will be shared to the other. Desires will cross and mingle. One becomes an extension of the other.

It is no wonder that some individuals seek to spread love between every person at once. While mostly regarded as "fluffy" or insipid, this idea does have some merit. Afterall, if we all loved eachother, to even a small degree, we would always think twice before causing harm. We would find the needs of others worthy of consideration before we act. We would be more considerate and cooperative. We would act as a group, rather than as individuals.

Its not so easy to practice as it sounds in theory, of course. It doesn't hurt anyone to love, except possibly ourselves. Afterall, we open ourselves to potential abuse and damage. One can easially take advantage of one who is loving them. Its somewhat dangerous in that fashon, as long as there are those around who would receive love but not recipricate it.

Thus comes the Thelema ideal of "Love under Will." One should be carefull in their loving, least it cause them harm. Love, but be aware of those that are abusing this love. One can excercise the will to protect ourselves from it in such cases, though it be difficult to overcome. Afterall, love brings us great pleasure, even if it is not returned. That's just the way we are, and eventually it will matter a great deal to our development as a spiecies. Trancendence can't happen without it.