We should never simply write ourselves off as a confluence of various forces. It’s always our decision who we are.

I am tired of Earth. These people. I am tired of being caught in the tangle of their lives. – Dr. Manhattan

What?

No, but do I sound like I do?

I hate losing more than I love to win.

I cannot say it will weigh very heavily on my conscious.

What is an hour?

I want you to know
one thing. 

You know how this is: 
if I look 
at the crystal moon, at the red branch 
of the slow autumn at my window, 
if I touch 
near the fire 
the impalpable ash 
or the wrinkled body of the log, 
everything carries me to you, 
as if everything that exists, 
aromas, light, metals, 
were little boats 
that sail 
toward those isles of yours that wait for me. 

Well, now, 
if little by little you stop loving me 
I shall stop loving you little by little. 

If suddenly 
you forget me 
do not look for me, 
for I shall already have forgotten you. 

If you think it long and mad,
the wind of banners
that passes through my life,
and you decide
to leave me at the shore
of the heart where I have roots,
remember
that on that day,
at that hour,
I shall lift my arms
and my roots will set off
to seek another land.

“It is the power of the mind to be unconquerable.” – Seneca

I am only me, that is all that I can be
No more, no less, don’t second guess

I love, I laugh, I live and cry,
I’ve wished at times, that I could die

Some days I’m funny, others I’m not,
sometimes I’m in overdrive and can’t stop

I am a loyal and honest friend,
You know that I’ll be there until the end

I am a romantic, sensual, and passionate too,
to the love of my life, I’ll share this with you

I can be sweet and shy or sassy and bold,
I’m quite a handful, or so I’ve been told

I am not perfect, I do have my faults,
like when I scare I put up high walls

Or I’m not as forgiving, as I’d sometimes like to be,
because when I hurt, I hurt deeply

My logic is all my own, at times misunderstood,
because I don’t always do things for my own good

I have many facets, like a diamond you see…
I am only me.

The 8-Circuit Model Of Consciousness

Here’s a rundown of the first four lower circuits:

1st circuit: Survival/Security. Fight or flight or somewhere in between. Pure instinct. This is connected to the first source of this conflict: nursing at Mom’s nipple. It’s what’s known in developmental psychology as ‘oral’.

2nd circuit: Territorial/Emotional. This is a particular manifestation of ’emotional’- are you feeling up or down? Are you on top of the world or down in the dumps? This relates to the basic primate pecking order – who’s the big dog and all? This one is full of stereotypes – all the examples I have given are male, yet every female knows there’s just as much game-playing between women. Women traditionally have been made submissive to men, but in many cases that’s not the case, and in any case there’s a lot of passive-aggressive ways the tables are turned in each direction. This corresponds to the ‘anal’ stage, and the first imprints are taken during toilet training.

3rd circuit: Conceptual. This kicks in even before school starts – kids are hungry to learn. This circuit is the ability to make mental models helping you ‘figure things out’ and ‘be clever’. The imprint you take is whether you feel smart or stupid (which is different from BEING smart or stupid!) Note also that there are different KINDS of intelligence- verbal, mathematical, visual/spatial, musical, etc, etc… but as Robert Anton Wilson says, “…the people with the verbal intelligence have control of the language, so they call themselves the intellectuals.” A friend always mentions a particular basketball player (I forget who) whom he claims is a genius in spatial/motor intelligence, regardless of the fact that the guy probably reads at a 7th grade level.

4th circuit: Social/Sexual. Whereas 2nd circuit deals with who bosses who, 4th deals with who is cool. What this comes down to is that depending on whether someone is cool or not, you’d let them get close to you or not, running the gamut from snubbing someone to having sex with them with fifty shades of gray in between. It goes both ways- how cool are you? Are there people that you aren’t cool enough to talk to? The imprint you take here is how cool you feel, and how hard you have to work to feel that way.

The upper circuits deal with mystical, psychic, or paranormal consciousness. They are built on the foundation of the lower circuits, almost as ‘over-driven’ versions of themselves.

5th circuit: Bliss/Healing. When security in the 1st circuit reaches a high enough level, it becomes bliss, and you become aware of the sensation of pleasure and learn to generate those sensations at the source. This feedback loop gets going, and one may remain in this state indefinitely or until an outside influence causes a drop, altering this state. When this awareness is applied to others, the 5th circuit energy works to help the 1st circuit state. This is the principle of healing.

6th circuit: Psychic. This is awareness of the timeless information network in which we swim. It also relates directly to the territorial aspect of the 2nd circuit. Interaction is based on relative gravity and there can be conflict.

7th circuit: Mythical Intelligence. This is the realm of the shaman, of spirit animals, gods and goddesses. It is your dreams and your nightmares. 3rd circuit draws models of specifics in the conscious world. 7th circuits draws models of the patterns of archetype that make up the unconscious world. It does this by telling stories that illustrate the patterns that arise from these archetypes. When 7th circuit awareness is working, one realizes how these patterns are being played out, and instead of just acting in the world, one is at the same time coming into direct contact with the divine.

8th circuit: Alternate consciousness. This enters the far reaches of consciousness. Since 4th circuit has to do with letting others get close and even merging with them, it makes sense that the 8th might have to do with overcoming the obstacle of one’s physical boundaries. Imagination is your trusty companion in this endeavor. It is in this circuit that the puppet becomes the puppet-master. Time expands and contracts. Is that air you’re breathing?

Today’s message explains a very interesting phenomenon in social psychology called Cognitive Dissonance. It’s important that those valuing their liberty understand this phenomenon and how by using cognitive dissonance, an individual’s attitudes and opinions can be manipulated by others without the individual’s awareness of the process. By understanding how it works, you can largely immunize your mental processes against this sort of manipulation.

Cognition is the process of conscious perception. Dissonance is conflict. Cognitive dissonance is a state of one’s perceptions being put into a state of conflict which must be resolved in order to regain a feeling of peace and harmony. A point that must be understood about the functioning of the human mind is that not only do attitudes influence actions (no surprise there), but also that actions influence attitudes. If a person is overtly forced to perform some action, he may be distressed, but he will not be put into a state of cognitive dissonance because the coercion involved is clearly apparent to him. If this same individual is, however, subtly coerced into performing some action contrary to his inclinations, the source of the coercion, in fact the coercion itself, is unapparent. The conflict between his conscious attitudes and his (apparently) inexplicable actions cause the all important dissonance. This mental conflict must somehow be resolved for the subject to alleviate this conflict. The solution to this dilemma is for the unexpecting subject to alter his prior-held attitudes so that they no longer conflict with his current actions. This may become more clear by relating a classic example of social psychology.

In the 60’s and early 70’s in the United States, many school districts were forcibly desegregated by federal court-ordered bussing. Both blacks and whites opposed this, as neither group wanted its children shipped twenty miles away from home every day to attend school. Rather than engage in armed confrontations and police-state type tactics to overcome the parents’ objections by force, which would just have hardened opposition to the already unpopular plan, federal officials, using the principle of cognitive dissonance and the advice of psychologists well-versed in the technique, used this means to accomplish their end. They announced the bussing, but, to avoid widespread noncooperation, they announced that anyone who was strongly opposed to the idea could have his children exempted, and allowed to remain in his neighborhood school. The kicker was that, when parents attempted to do so, they encountered a deliberately contrived tangle of paperwork which had to be filled out to get their child exempted. The system was designed so that several trips to various offices in different parts of town were required to complete the process. Naturally, few parents went to the great amount of effort necessary to get all the way through this process. They did not, however, realize that the paper tangle was the subtle coercion component of a cognitive dissonance-based scheme. Therefore, they didn’t explain their failure to keep their kids from being bussed by saying that it was too much trouble to fill out a few forms, (which was, in fact, exactly the case), but rather resolved the conflict by deciding that bussing for purposes of desegregation wasn’t a bad thing after all. Through subtle coercion, thousands of members of the population were manipulated away from a very firmly held prior opinion.

The good news is that once you understand the process, you can spot the subtle coercion being applied to you, do what’s required of you, and avoid the trap by correctly attributing your actions to the external dissonance. In this way, you can become virtually immune to the technique so your mind remains your own. Understanding the technique also allows you to understand the cause of your friends’ and relatives’ changes of opinion to fall into conformity with what the puppet-masters want them to think, even though they don’t. The bad news is that as government and other molders of opinion become more skilled in the use of this method, they will succeed with most of the population. The numbers who’ve been psychologically inoculated against this form of control or are just too strong-willed to be influenced, will be a dwindling minority. Your survival in the future might well depend on your ability to both resist such mental manipulations and to understand their effects well enough to pretend convincingly of being influenced like everybody else. Once social control reaches a critical point, the last few heretics are always hunted down and either killed (as in Nazi Germany) or enslaved through less subtle methods (as in the Soviet gulags). Stay aware, stay inconspicuous, and stay alive!

You are what you will to be;
Let failure find its false content
In chaste piety, money spent,
But the Spirit scorns it, and flies free.

It masters time, it conquers space;
It cows the boastful trickster, Chance,
And bids the tyrant Circumstance,
Uncrowned, to fill a servant’s place.

The human Will, force unseen,
The offspring of an immortal Soul,
Hews the way to any goal,
Though granite walls intervene.

Do not be impatient in delay,
But stop as one who understands;
When the Spirit rises and commands,
That God is ready to obey.

The Law of Self-Knowledge: An obvious derivative of the Law of Knowledge, this law carries additional connotations, as a magician who does not have knowledge of himself does not have knowledge (and therefore control) of his own magic. Know thyself.
The Law of Cause and Effect: A simple scientific understanding – if exactly the same actions are done under exactly the same conditions, they will be associated with exactly the same results. Magicians have at least as much belief in cause and effect as modern physicists do, they just realize that a good ritual, like a good theatrical performance or a good bread recipe, isn’t always predictable. The key to magical success is learning which variables are the most important, and how to control them.
The Law of Synchronicity: Two or more events happening at the same time are likely to have more in common than a temporal explanation. There is no such thing as mere coincidence.
The Law of Association: If any two patterns have elements in common, the patterns interact “through” those common elements, and control of one pattern facilitates control of the other(s) depending (among other factors) upon the number of common elements involved. This is a very important law.
The Law of Similarity: Having an accurate physical or mental representation of something facilitates control over it. This one is fairly obvious in it’s usage – having a model, picture, or other representation of your target (like a voodoo doll) gives you power to effect the target. Appearances give a glimpse into the unseen. Alike is alike.
The Law of Contagion: Objects or beings in physical contact with each other continue to interact after separation. Everyone you have ever touched has a magical link with you, though it is probably pretty weak unless the contact was intense and/or prolonged or repeated frequently. Magical power is contagious. Naturally, having a part of someone’s body (nails, hair, spit, etc.) gives the best contagion link.
The Law of Names: Knowing the complete and true name of an object, being, or process gives one complete control over it. This works because a name is a definition as well as a contagion link, and an association (if you call something the same name over and over, that name becomes associated with the thing). This also works because knowing the complete and true name of something or someone means that you have achieved a complete understanding of its nature.
The Law of Personification: Any phenomenon may be considered to be alive and to have a personality – that is, to “be” an entity or being. Anything can be a person. You can personify the winds and the clouds, for example.
The Law of Invocation: It is possible to establish internal communication with entities from either inside or outside oneself, said entities seeming to be inside of oneself during the communication process.
The Law of Evocation: It is possible to establish external communication with entities from either inside or outside oneself, said entities seeming to be outside oneself during the communication process.
The Law of Identification: It is possible through maximum association between elements of oneself and those of another being to actually become that being, to the point of sharing it’s knowledge and wielding it’s power. This is the law that controls most lengthy or permanent possession phenomena.
The Law of Personal Universes: Every sentient being lives in and quite possibly creates a unique universe which can never be 100% identical to that lived in by another. So called “reality” is in fact a matter of consensus opinions. This law is no where near as obvious as the other laws in it’s applications, but if you can figure some out, you can use it.
The Law of Infinite Universes: The total number of universes into which all possible combinations of existing phenomena could be organized is infinite. Anything is possible, though some things are more probable than others. Magicians are able to ride the wave of alternate universes reaping their knowledge and power. The nearness of these alternate universes is palatable just on a contracted time scale.
The Law of Pragmatism: If a pattern of belief or behavior enables a being to survive and to accomplish its chosen goals, then that belief or behavior is “true” or “real” or “sensible”. If it works, it’s true. Another rather obscure law, but it does have some very useful applications.
The Law of True Falsehoods: It is possible for a concept or act to violate the truth patterns of a given personal universe and still be “true”, provided that it “works” in a specific situation. If it’s a paradox, it’s still probably true.
The Law of Synthesis: The synthesis of two or more “opposing” patterns of data will produce a new pattern that will be truer than either of the first two were. That is, it will be applicable to more levels of reality, and this new pattern may not be a compromise, but may be something rather new indeed.
The Law of Polarity: Any pattern of data can be split into (at least) two “opposing” characteristics, and each will contain the essence of the other within itself.
The Law of Opposites: A sub-law of polarity. The “opposite” of a pattern contains information about that pattern, by providing information on what the pattern is not. Thus, control over a pattern’s opposite (or close to it’s opposite) facilitates control over the pattern itself.
The Law of Perversity: Sometimes known as Murphy’s Law. If anything can go wrong, it will, and in the most annoying manner possible.
The Law of Unity: Every phenomena in existence is linked directly or indirectly to every other one, past, present, or future. Perceived separations between phenomena are based on an incomplete understanding.

All the philosophies, creeds, dogmas and beliefs that humanity has
evolved are variants of three great paradigms, the Transcendental,
the Materialist and the Magical. In no human culture has any one of
these paradigms been completely distinct from the others. For
example in our own culture, the Transcendental
and Magical paradigms are frequently confused together.

Transcendental philosophies are basically religious and manifest in
a spectrum stretching from the fringes of primitive spiritism
through pagan polytheism to the monotheism of the Judeo-Christian-
Islamic traditions and the theoretical non-theistic systems of
Buddhism and Taoism. In each case it is believed that some form of
consciousness or spirit created and maintains the universe and that
humans, other living organisms, contain some fragment of this
consciousness or spirit which underlies the veil or illusion of
matter. The essence of Transcendentalism is belief in spiritual
beings greater than oneself or states of spiritual being superior to
that which currently one enjoys. Earthly life is frequently seen
merely as a form of dialogue between oneself and one’s deity or
deities, or perhaps some impersonal form of higher force. The
material world is a theatre for the spirit or soul or consciousness
that created it. Spirit is the ultimate reality to the
transcendentalist.

In the Materialist paradigm the universe is believed to consist
fundamentally and entirely of matter. Energy is but a form of matter
and together they subtend space and time within which all change
occurs strictly on the basis of cause and effect. Human behavior is
reducible to biology, biology is reducible to chemistry, chemistry
is reducible to physics and physics is reducible to mathematics.
Mind and consciousness are thus merely electrochemical events in
the brain and spirit is a word without objective content. The causes
of some events are likely to remain obscure perhaps indefinitely,
but there is an underlying faith that sufficient material cause
must exist for any event. All human acts can be categorized as
serving some biological need or as expressions of previously applied
conditioning or merely as malfunction. The goal of materialist who
eschews suicide is the pursuit of personal satisfaction including
altruistic satisfactions if desired.

The main difficulty in recognizing and describing the pure Magical
Paradigm is that of insufficient vocabulary. Magical philosophy is
only recently recovering from a heavy adulteration with
transcendental theory. The word aether will be used to describe the
fundamental reality of the magical paradigm. It is more or less
equivalent to the idea of Mana used in oceanic shamanism. Aether in
materialistic descriptions are information which structures matter
and which all matter is capable of emitting and receiving. In
transcendental terms aether is a sort of “life force” present in
some degree in all things.  It carries both knowledge about events
and the ability to influence similar or sympathetic events. Events
either arise spontaneously out of themselves or are encouraged to
follow certain paths by influence of patterns in the aether. As all
things have an aetheric part they can be considered to be alive in
some sense. Thus, all things happen by magic, the large scale
features of the universe have a very strong aetheric pattern which
makes them fairly predictable but difficult to influence by the
aetheric patterns created by thought. Magicians see themselves as
participating in nature. Transcendentalists like to think they are
somehow above it. Materialists like to try and manipulate it.

Now this universe has the peculiarly accommodating property of
tending to provide evidence for, and confirmation of, whatever
paradigm one chooses to believe in. Presumably at some deep level
there is a hidden symmetry between those things we call Matter,
Aether and Spirit. Indeed, it is rare to find an individual or
culture operating exclusively on a single one of these paradigms and
none is ever entirely absent. Non dominant paradigms are always
present as superstitions and fears. An analysis of the radically differing concepts of time and self in each paradigm is offered to more fully distinguish the basic ideas.


Transcendentalists conceive of time in millennial and apocalyptic
terms. Time is regarded as having a definite beginning and ending,
both initiated by the activities of spiritual beings or forces. The
end of time on the personal and cosmic scale is regarded not so much
as a cessation of being but as a change to a state of non-material
being. The beginning of personal and cosmic time is similarly
regarded as a creative act by spiritual agencies. Thus reproductive
activity usually becomes heavily controlled and hedged about with
taboo and restriction in religious cultures, as it implies an
usurpation of the powers of deities. Reproduction also implies that
death has in some measure been overcome. How awesome the power of
creation and how final must earthly death subconsciously loom to a
celibate and sterile priesthood.

All transcendentalisms embody elements of apocalypticism. Typically,
these are used to provoke revivals when business is slack or
attention is drifting elsewhere. Thus, it is suddenly revealed that
the final days are at hand or that some earthly dispute is in fact a
titanic battle against evil spiritual agencies.

Materialist time is linear but unbounded. Ideally it can be extended
arbitrarily far in either direction from the present. To the strict
materialist it is self-evidently futile to speculate about a
beginning or an end to time. Similarly, the materialist is
contemptuous of any speculations about any forms of personal
existence before birth or after death. The materialist may well fear
painful or premature death but can have no fears about being dead.

The magical view is that time is cyclic and that all processes
recur. Even cycles which appear to begin, or end are actually parts
of larger cycles. Thus, all endings are beginnings and the end of
time is synonymous with the beginning of time in another universe.
The magical view that everything is recycled is reflected in the
doctrine of reincarnation. The attractive idea of reincarnation has
often persisted into the religious paradigm and many pagans and even
some monotheist traditions have retained it. However religious
theories invariably contaminate the original idea with beliefs about
a personal soul. From a strictly magical viewpoint we are an accretion
rather than an unfolded unity. The psyche has no particular centre,
we are colonial beings, a rich collage of many selves. Thus, as our
bodies contain fragments from countless former beings, so does our
psyche. However certain magical traditions retain techniques which
allow the adept to transfer quite large amounts of his psyche in one
piece should he consider this more useful than dispersing himself
into humanity at large.

Each of the paradigms take a different view of the self.
Transcendentalists view self as spirit inserted into matter. As a
fragment or figment of deity the self-regards itself as somehow
placed in the world in a non-arbitrary manner and endowed with free
will. The transcendental view of self is relatively stable and
non-problematic if shared as a consensus with all significant
others. However, transcendental theories about the placement and
purpose of self and its relationship to deities are mutually
exclusive. Conflicting transcendentalisms can rarely co-exist for
they threaten to discomfort the images of self. Encounters which are
not decisive tend to be mutually negatory in the long run.

Of the three views of self the purely materialistic one is the most
problematical. If mind is an extension of matter, it must obey
material laws and the resulting deterministic view conflicts with
the subjective experience of free will. On the other hand, if mind
and consciousness are assumed to be qualitatively different from
matter then the self is incomprehensible to itself in material
terms. Worse still perhaps, the materialist self must regard itself
as a phenomenon of only temporary duration in contradiction of the
subjective expectation of continuity of consciousness. Because a
purely materialist view of self is so austere few are prepared to
confront such naked existentialism. Consequently materialist
cultures exhibit a frantic appetite for sensation, identification
and more or less disposable irrational beliefs. Anything that will
make the self seem less insubstantial.

The magical view of self is that it is based on the same random
capricious chaos which makes the universe exist and do what it does.
The magical self has no centre, it is not a unity but an assemblage
of parts, any number of which may temporarily club together and call
themselves “I”. This accords with the observation that our
subjective experience consists of our various selves experiencing
each other. Free will arises either as an outcome of a dispute
between our various selves or as a sudden random creation of a new
idea or option. In the magical view of self there is no
spirit/matter or mind/body split and the paradoxes of free will and
determinism disappear. Some of our acts arise from random choices
between conditioned options and some from conditional choices
between randomly created options. In practice most of our acts are
based on rather complex hierarchical sequences of all four of these
mechanisms. As soon as we have acted one of our selves proclaims
“I did that!” so loudly that most of the other selves think they did
it too.

Each of the three views of self has something derogatory to say
about the other two. From the standpoint of the transcendental self
the materialist self has become prey to pride of intellect, the
demon hubris, whilst the magical view of self is considered to be
entirely demonic. The material self views the transcendentalist as
obsessed with assumptions having no basis in fact, and the magical
self as being childlike and incoherent. From the standpoint of the
magical view, the assorted selves of the transcendentalists have
ascribed a grossly exaggerated importance to one or a few of the
selves which they call God or gods, whilst the materialist has
attempted to make all his selves subordinate to the self that does
the rational thinking. Ultimately, it’s a matter of faith and taste.
The transcendentalist has faith in his god self, the materialist has
faith in his reasoning self and the selves of the magician have
faith in each other. Naturally, that raises further questions.

Every passing minute is a chance to turn it all around.

Traveling somewhere,
Could be anywhere
There’s a coldness in the air
But I don’t care
We drift deeper life goes on
We drift deeper into the sound

Tender love is blind
It requires a dedication
All this love we feel needs no conversation
We ride it together, ah ha
Making love with each other, ah ha

Guest Poster Emmy Lynn

Guest Poster Emmy Lynn

Guest Poster Emmy Lynn

I don’t love you as if you were a rose of salt, topaz,
or arrow of carnations that propagate fire:
I love you as one loves certain obscure things,
secretly, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that doesn’t bloom but carries
the light of those flowers, hidden, within itself,
and thanks to your love the tight aroma that arose
from the earth lives dimly in my body.

Let us know no bounds between our love in this world and the next. Promise me that. Promise three times.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where,
I love you directly without problems or pride:
I love you like this because I don’t know any other way to love,
except in this form in which I am not nor are you,
so close that your hand upon my chest is mine,
so close that your eyes close with my dreams.