A Guide to the Perplexed Interdimensional Traveler
Are you an Interdimensional Traveler?
This guide is written by an Interdimensional Traveler for fellow
Interdimensional Travelers. How can you tell if you're an Interdimensional
Traveler? Look at yourself in a mirror-if you are in some sort of human form
and the looking glass returns any sort of reflection, then, for reasons that
will soon be explained, you are an Interdimensional Traveler. If the mirror
does not return your reflection, then you are definitely an Interdimensional
Traveler and probably know it. You have always been an Interdimensional
Traveler.
Interdimensional Traveler Logo
copyright Jonathan Zap, 2010
and still patriarchal realm you were in another realm, a womb, a metamorphic
wet-world in which you floated and existed like an uncollapsed waveform of
possibilities. And where were you before the womb realm? Well-documented
case histories and evidence suggest that a human being is a multiple-incarnate
entity. I say "suggest" because other paranormal explanations are
possible besides reincarnation. But it is reasonable to take seriously what a
large number of people in various periods and cultures have concluded:
just as we usually pass through many phases within a single incarnation, most
of us seem to pass through many incarnations, and each of these
incarnations can be viewed as its own dimension.
If the idea of multiple incarnations
seems too fantastical and unproven for you at this point, then you can reality
test your status as an inter-dimensional traveler with a very simple
experiment: (For safety reasons the following experiment should be performed
from home and not while driving a car or operating any other heavy machinery.)
This evening when you start to feel tired and your day is winding down,
turn the lights off in your room and lie down on your bed. Once you have
completed these steps, go to sleep. After you have drifted into sleep for
a while you will most likely find yourself in another dimension called the
dreamtime.
This dimension has a different physics
than that of the waking time-gravity is not so relentless and you can fly if
you wish; time drops its linearity, that dread ticking of the clock, and
becomes far more flexible and bendable; objects and bodies are not so fixed as
the waking time, but are revealed to be shape-shifters and changelings, and
manifestation requires no heavy industry for it is only a thoughtform away.
Remembered or not, the daily
alternating rhythm of waking and dreaming is as fundamental to mammalian
incarnation as the systole and diastole of your heartbeat. Interdimensional
traveling is actually more fundamental to your existence than your heartbeat,
because one day your heart will stop beating, but you'll still be an Interdimensional
Traveler. (Note: Even if you don't believe in reincarnation, from the point of
view of eternity once you have ever been an Interdimensional Traveler, then you
always are– in eternity every thing that has ever existed always exists. In
other words, your lifetime doesn't have to persist throughout eternity to be
part of eternity. So just the fact that in this incarnation you alternated
between waking and dreaming dimensions means that you are always an
Interdimensional Traveler.)
But maybe you're the sort that doesn't
remember your dreams, and although you realize that REM sleep is a neurological
necessity, the dreamtime does not seem particularly real to you. If that's the
case, try a different experiment. Have a conversation with someone to whom you
are connected by inner ties. Look into that person's eyes. Can you sense
that this other person is like his or her own dimension, an ever-shifting nexus
of strange elements with its own timeline and unique inner content generated by
a multi-layered psyche? A deep relationship is an impingement and
overlapping of dimensions. Behind the eyes of the other you can glimpse an
individualized culture, an inner climate and weather system of shifting moods,
evanescent feelings and glittering thoughtforms.
It's hard to get through even a single
day and night without interdimensional travel. Interdimensional traveling is
part of your birthright, and whether you'd like to or not you are going to
travel interdimensionally. Oh, and let's not forget that even if we were born
too soon to reach the event horizon envisioned by the
Singularity Archetype, we are hurtling toward a guaranteed interdimensional
portal popularly known as "death," which shimmers before us in the night of
time. We might not be sure what's on the other side of that event horizon, but
it is obviously still another dimension. And so the most concise and accurate
description of our core identity is that we are Interdimensional Travelers.
This is what we are, whether we want to be or not, whether we swallow red pills
or blue, and our main choice is if we are to be savvy Interdimensional
Travelers or foolish ones.
But no matter how savvy an
Interdimensional Traveler you may already be, the journey across
dimensions can still be a rather perplexing process. This guide, which contains
insights gleaned by a fellow Interdimensional Traveler, is offered in the hope
that it can provide some assistance to you on your travels, whether the event
horizon you cross is personal or a species-wide singularity.
Black and white photo of Parallel
Journeys collage © Jonathan Zap
Journeys collage © Jonathan Zap
Emerging from
the Dreamtime
It is before dawn and I only just awoke
from sleeping, dreaming a variety of absurd things. A pathetic
robot, sort of like a rickety torso on a skateboard. I was sending it down
a grassy hill, but I knew that it didn't have the horsepower to make it back up
the hill, and I gradually became aware that I was creating this pathetic
situation. This was just a haphazard little reality my bored psyche was
generating for its amusement, a boy with a box of crayons on a rainy
afternoon. So I left the robot to coast, and withdrew into a darkened
space unbound by gravity where I was rotating slowly, because it felt good to
rotate slowly and feel the fields of charged energies around me. They were mostly invisible, but some
seemed fringed with indigo light, and I sensed that I could go anywhere
from this space and be in any form.
Interdimensional Passport
collage © by Jonathan Zap
My disenchanting bondage of one
body/one psyche had been freed from the tragic magic of the lower densities,
and I was not eager to return to any version of that annoying corporeal heaviness
and the absurd limitations it imposed. There was so much more power and
freedom being an unbound avatar rotating in fields of energy, a
self-contained vortex of awareness able to travel anywhere. It didn't seem at
all appealing to be bound to a single aging body caught in an historical time
track. And this particular time track seemed especially unappealing since it
was an unstable primate-collective possible-endtimes sort of time track where
depressed people took serotonin-specific-reuptake inhibitors, the global
economy was ruled by psychopaths, and politics were ugly and riddled with
parasitic elites. A world of allergens and toxicities of every sort and every
sort of hassle and irritating inconvenience.
And why was I supposed to accept that
absurd set of impositions again? Why was an entity like myself, rotating
in fields of unbound potential and shimmering energy, supposed to shrink
himself back into such a narrow and obnoxious time track? I saw then my bodily
incarnation as an old vinyl record turning on a turntable with the tone arm
removed. The record was somewhat scratched and dusty, but it
reflected enough light to show that its surface was not so flat as it
first seemed. There were a great number of concentric lines deeply etched with
information, vibrational information, and I realized that upon waking I would
be obliged for some absurd reason to shrink myself down to a tiny diamond
needle and put myself back into almost the exact time track of the very same
record, the very same waking situation where I had last left off, only maybe
six hours downstream in time. Then it would be as if the dreamtime had never
happened.
Some insidious power would make the
dreamtime vanish like a soap bubble, like the little man on
the stair who wasn't there. What power of enslavement took the dreamtime
away and forced me to reenter the particular waking life, this flatland of
rotating vinyl, this not-so-golden oldie, this mechanical medium, to turn
with its monotonous revolutions until it plays itself out? Why is that
such an inevitability? In the dreamtime I allowed the shrinking down to occur,
allowed myself to be the diamond needle again, circling slowly in my time track
on the dusty, scratchy landscape of etched vinyl. But when my diamond needle
made contact with the dark vinyl I was surprised to find that it was no longer
a flatland, it was more like an intricate maze of canyons.
A vast and complex landscape surrounded
me on all sides, and it was moving, changing, and I could barely keep up with
the moving and changing. I only had time to observe the smallest part of its
vast and metamorphizing complexity. Also, I sensed that there were other
entities rotating with me, others that were living out parallel time tracks on
the same spinning record. And some of these others were deeply connected to me
by inner ties. We were like planets in strange elliptical orbits with each
other, and there were obligations amongst us, promises to keep.
It was like we were classmates
incarnating together, and somehow our grades and permanent record cards had
become strangely intermingled. We were networked together as if we were nodes
in a single brain, and I realized it wouldn't be fair to the other brain nodes
for me to arbitrarily withdraw from the network. It would be a betrayal
for me to choose my own graduation day and skip off on my own eternal
summer vacation while my classmates labored on. We were brain nodes that had
fired together, and wired together, and there was a certain soulful and loving
sense to it all, a sense to my enrollment in the time track, this absurdly
uncomfortable classroom where I sit slightly slumped, slightly restless in my
seat, part of a modular desk bolted to the floor.
And then I run my hands over the smooth
imitation oak laminate surface of the desk. The desktop is sloped at an angle
convenient for writing. The laminate surface is framed by a smooth, rounded
border of aluminum and can be lifted up. There is space inside the desk, like a
sink without a drain made of beige painted sheet metal, and in it are
notebooks, my notebooks, and some are black and flecked with amoeboid shapes of
white. But the notebook on the top of the pile is not black or flecked with
amoeboid shapes of white. Its cover is a many-colored collage and it is
thicker and held together by a long coil of wire like an unelastic spring.
Words arise in my dreaming mind and I
realize that this is what is called a "spiral notebook." That name seems weird
and uncanny somehow, so I pull this very thick and spirally notebook out of the
belly of the desk and I see that the cardboard cover of the notebook has been
etched with blue ballpoint, designs carved and shiny from the belabored passes
of a steel ball bearing greasy ink.
I open the notebook to a particular
blank page that has been indented by a ballpoint pen pressed between the pages
like a butterfly. Or maybe like a butterfly if a butterfly had a wingless torso
of faceted transparent plastic with a single, central artery of greasy blue
ink. As I take up the pen and press its steel ball to the paper, I see the
vision again of the diamond needle scratching along on the concentric time
tracks of the record, rotating slowly at a rate of thirty-three revolutions per
minute. I see that the diamond needle is reading vibrational information etched
into the record, but at the same time it is also etching new information onto
the record. It is a read/write needle.
Then I notice other diamond needles in
contact with the same record and they are read/write needles as well. I see
that myself and my fellow travelers are all reading and writing from and onto
the same spinning medium, orbiting together in undulating, concentric bands. I
realize that I need to fulfill my role, a particular read/write needle
revolving in a particular time track. I pick up my pen and write a title at the
top of the blank page: "A Guide to the Perplexed Interdimensional Traveler"
The Secret of
Life
In the Sixties, aspiring young
travelers set out to "look for the meaning of life." Unfortunately, as someone
once pointed out, they got the question backwards, because it is life that asks
you in a challenging tone: "What is your meaning?" and you had better be able
to supply the answer. Meaningfulness is what we need far more than survival;
and anyway, as Don Juan put it, "There are no survivors on this earth." Or, as
a wise older man once told me, "Don't do anything you won't remember well on
your death bed." – a razor sharp way to cut out the trivia and superficialities
to get at the meaningful marrow of life.
Concentration camp survivor/existential
psychologist Victor Frankel created a whole school of psychology (Logotherapy)
based on the innate drive for meaningfulness. The ones who could psychologically/spiritually
survive the camps, Frankel observed first hand, were the few who could find
meaningfulness in their experience.
A frequent theme reported by those who
have had transcendent near-death experiences is a revelation of a deep and unexpected
meaningfulness in even the mosaic of small, seemingly unconnected experiences
of life. Also revealed during many NDEs and other mystical epiphanies is that
this plane of existence is something like a school where we signed on for
extremely challenging learning experiences. (See Life
Lessons from the Living Dead.)
This brings me to what I believe are
the two sides of the "Secret of Life" magic coin. The first side is self-development
– to grow, develop, evolve, become more self-aware and conscious in every way
possible. This innate will toward self-development was apparent in you even
when you floated in the dimension of the womb-world. The other side of the
magic coin is to help others, especially with their development. There it is,
both sides of the secret of life.
And notice that, unlike so many other
things in life, this magic coin is always available. But don't take my word for
it, go to the East and seek out a guru (who will probably hit on you and want
you to sweep up around the ashram for twenty years), do whatever you have to
do, but this is the secret of life that works for me and feels solid. I would
also like to point out that the life stance I am espousing here in this guide,
is not my original fabrication (much though my narcissism might
want to take credit for it), but is largely based on my thirty-year study and
practical application of the I Ching, the five-to-six- thousand-year-old Book
of Changes, on which Taoism (and much of Eastern philosophy, martial arts,
medicine and culture) is based.
And the I Ching doesn't want you to
have faith in it (uncritical belief) or doubt, but recommends an open, neutral
stance. Take what resonates with your inner truth sense, what works for you,
and leave the rest. Returning to the two sides of our secret of life coin,
notice that self-development and helping others are two sides of a single,
integrated whole.
But the first side, self-development,
is the foundation, and it is only by developing yourself that you have the
option and capability to help others with their development. In fact, from the
point of view of the I Ching, you have only one obligation in life, which is to
get your relationship to yourself right. Fulfill that obligation and your
relationships to others, to time, money, sex, power, food, mortality, career,
politics, and the universe will all take care of themselves. But neglect or
distort any part of your relationship to yourself and all these other relationships
will accordingly be distorted and diminished.
Inner
Independence
At the heart of healthful relationship
to yourself is a stance known as "inner independence." You (but not necessarily
your ego) are the center of your own vortex, your own ever-changing
equilibrium. Whenever you fall into dependence – grasping for Precious like a
an obsessed Ring Wraith, your center collapses and you become an enslaved
puppet of the Babylon Matrix.
A classic example of this is grasping
for the "hottie" – that all attractive person out there burning holes in your
mind like Sauron's one ring to bind them all. Quentin Crisp put it this way:
"The consuming desire of most human beings is deliberately to plant their whole
life in the hands of some other person. I would describe this method of
searching for happiness as immature. Development of character consists solely
in moving toward self-sufficiency." Codependence or inner independence? The
first step on the path of seeking another to complete you is a supreme betrayal
(the betrayal of your own soul) so don't be surprised if betrayal remains a
central theme of that path.
The Inner
Marriage of Yin and Yang
Getting your relationship to yourself
right means working to evolve the inner marriage of yin and yang, feminine and
masculine within yourself. Get that right and as a whole person you have the
ability to have spiritually transforming, life-affirming relationships. Look to
another person to complete you, however, and you become a wraith forever
grasping for a Precious that forever eludes your grasp.
And of course Precious doesn't have to
be a Hottie, it can be consumer goods, money, power, career, or whatever the
Babylon Matrix can tempt you with that you believe you can't live with out. But
I particularly mention the Hottie because this ravenous craving, which most of
us know so well, is a pillar of the Babylon Matrix.
In Plato's Symposium, Aristophanes states that before we were in our present,
gender specific bodies we were spherical beings containing both genders.
Jealous gods, wishing to punish and disempower us, fractured our spherical
bodies so that we would lose touch with our androgynous inner wholeness. In
this weakened state we were easily conditioned to follow gender stereotypes
which reinforced the ravenous delusion that we needed sexual/romantic union
with others to complete ourselves. Break the power of that ancient ruling ring
(which in the darkness binds you) and you reclaim your own center of power,
self-actualization and ability to love others as a whole person. For more on
this theme see: Stop
the Hottie!, Casting
Precious into the Cracks of Doom-Androgyny, Alchemy, Evolution and the One Ring,
Lessons
for an Entity Incarnating as a Mammal, and No
Tristans Allowed Beyond this Point-Debunking the Western Myth of Romantic Love.
Meeting
Halfway – The Touchstone for Relationship
At the center of relating well to
others, cautiously moving outward from your center of inner independence,
is the I Ching principle of meeting halfway (Hexagram 44). Less than halfway would be, for example, to neglect
others to whom we are connected by inner ties. More than halfway would be, for
example, giving unasked for advice, proselytizing, self-important intervening,
lifeguarding others, etc. So if you go to a party and see someone you're
attracted to, but you're so shy that you hide in a corner and never
approach him or her, then you have met less than halfway. Hitting on him or her
(without some obvious encouragement from the other) would be meeting way more
than halfway.
Even in the course of a conversation
one needs to apply this principle of meeting halfway by keeping attuned to the
moment, aware of the subtle minutiae of openings and closing in the other
person. With the openings we advance, with the closings we retreat and yield
space. When the other transgresses, invades boundaries or comes at us with
false personality, we should never go along with it, should never do anything
that compromises our inner dignity.
We should withdraw energy from the
person who is coming from their false self. This can mean anything from
breaking eye contact (a withdrawal of energy), ending the conversation, or in
some cases, going our own way for a lifetime. When we do withdraw we should do
so lovingly, giving the other space to come to his senses on his own. We do
not, in I Ching terms, "execute" this person in our minds, which would be to
view him as hopeless and unable to improve. This would only help to keep him
imprisoned by doubt.
We also don't indulge excessive
optimism that assumes he will become more conscious in this lifetime, or that
extends trust where it is being abused. We step back to allow the creative to
take its zigzag course. And for our own sake, as well as the other, we try not
to carry ongoing grudges against someone. From the I Ching point of view, we
are responsible not only for what we say or do to the other, but also for our
thoughts, because these are communicated on the inner plane.
Psychic
Filters and Inner Voices
Speaking of our thoughts, we need to
watch them constantly. We need to recognize that different voices, often
generated by distinct subpersonalities, speak in our heads, and we need a
central, witness personality that observes those voices/subpersonalities
without becoming them. Hexagram 27 reminds us not to nourish ourselves on
negative, unnourishing thoughts and fantasies. Yes, that's easier said than
done, but here are a couple of psychic filters to keep online that are
guaranteed to catch all the psychic allergens (the negative thought forms) that
all too easily pervade our inner world. We'll call the first of these the "tone
filter."
As you listen to the voices of your
inner world (or the voices in your outer, interpersonal world) refuse to
believe any voices that aren't calm, compassionate and centered. Listen to
them, understand where they are coming from, but don't become them, don't identify
with them or believe them. If a voice is nagging, carping, bitter, mechanically
repetitious, whining, angry, self-pitying, hypercritical, etc. then it is not
to be believed! By tone, you can easily distinguish the voices of false
subpersonalities and the still, deep voice of the Self.
Gerund Filter
A second filter involves a list of
categories of thought that are indicative of the ego nervously trying to
control the Tao. The position of Taoism (based on the I Ching) is that the
universe is unfolding as it should. But the ego, like a nervous backseat driver
clutching an imaginary steering wheel in its sweaty, white-knuckled grip, never
trusts the nonlinear path of the creative so completely out of its control.
Categories (presented as a list of
gerunds) that indicate the ego resisting the Tao and/or trying to assert
imaginary control over it include: WANTING, WISHING, WORRYING, HOPING, FEARING,
DREADING, DESIRING, ENVYING, COMPARING, SUPERVISING, LIFE-GUARDING, JUDGING,
COMPLAINING, SELF-PITYING, STRIVING, ANTICIPATING, EXPECTING, PRESTRUCTURING,
CONTRIVING, FORCING PROGRESS, HEDGING, RATIONALIZING, CLINGING AND DOUBTING.
Yes, this is an intimidating list! It is an embarrassing revelation of just how
often we default to the ego dominating our psyches. We'll get into some of the
nuts and bolts of how to change patterns of thought and the afflictive emotions
that ride into town with them, but first I'd like to say a few more words about
the ego.
Ego Bashing
In New Age and Eastern circles,
ego-bashing and intellect-bashing are the norm, and it is often claimed that
the only path to enlightenment is to eliminate ego completely. Unfortunately,
they're never able to actually show you people who are walking around and
functioning without egos. Their claims are like a diet book filled with endless
horrifying "before" photos, but without any believable "after" photos. To the
extent that they have an "after" image at all, it comes into focus in the
manner of an incompetent watercolor done in an impressionist style. And when
they do claim to have an egoless guru to show you, it inevitably turns out to
be a womanizer with fifty Rolls Royces and an immature, unruly ego so gigantic
and off -cale that the deluded disciples can't see that the Emperor of No Ego
is wearing only a loincloth while their ego projections clothe him in Saruman's
wizard cloak of many colors.
The
Self-Organizing Principle of the Organism
Ego is so basic to our existence that
one transpersonal psychologist defines it as "the self-organizing principle of
the organism." With no ego there is no self-reference which you need to do
almost anything. An amazingly good discussion of the nature of the ego is
to be found in the "What is Ego?" edition of What is Enlightenment magazine. Everyone they interviewed had
something fascinating and insightful to say about the nature of ego except for
one famous female guru from India, who while claiming to be a divine being
without ego, reveals the classic delusions of a sadistic, power-tripping,
gigantically inflated ego.
A Flaw in
Many Eastern and New Age Paths
Eastern gurus with acting out, unruly
egos have become such a classic syndrome that they deserve some special mention
in our discussion of ego. Jung, who helped bring the I Ching and other Eastern
teachings into the West, warned Westerners not to uncritically adapt wholesale
Eastern practices of transformation that were designed in a different era for
psyches very differently structured than what we usually find today in the West
(and increasingly in the modern East).
A classic flaw in many Eastern
approaches to transformation (and also certain New Age and Christian
permutations) is a one-sided emphasis on vertical spiritual transcendence, and
a gross neglect of the horizontal plane of human incarnation – the engagement,
the descent into the worlds of relationship, activity in the world and the
details of how our personalities work and interrelate.
Especially deficient in so many of
these vertical transcendence sects is integration of what Jung called "the shadow"
– the inferior and repressed parts of the personality typically hidden by a
cloud of self-loathing, denial and unconsciousness. Hidden within the shadow
are often unexpected talents and powers cast off with the rest of the unwanted
aspects of personality.
Shadow
Projection and Integration
When the shadow is unconscious and
unintegrated, it must be displaced, projected onto some despised person
or group. For example, the Nazis projected their shadow onto the Jews, who they
said were trying to control the world (while they attempted to establish a
thousand-year Reich). Typically, on the personal level, shadow projection is
experienced as an intense dislike of some irritating person, usually of our
gender and age range.
Repulsion can be like attraction in
reverse, where we are magnetically drawn, like a gruesome car accident we can't
look away from, by the spectacle of someone acting out the inferior traits we
fear and deny in ourselves. Integration of the shadow begins by reclaiming
these despised traits, following the projections back to their source (our
psyches) and recognizing that the shadow is part of us. This takes a great deal
of moral courage and will.
In The
Empire Strikes Back, this is what Luke must do when he is instructed by
Yoda to go into the cave and face fear without his light saber. He ignores
Yoda's advice about the light saber and cuts off Darth Vader's head only to
discover that his own face lies behind the mask.
The
Wayfarer's Path
Most people are not willing to face
their own shadow and unconsciously make the choice of the Wayfarer in the poem
of the same name by Stephen Crane: The Wayfarer, Perceiving the pathway to
truth, Was struck with astonishment. It was thickly grown with weeds. "Ha," he
said, "I see that none has passed here In a long time." Later he saw that each
weed Was a singular knife. "Well," he mumbled at last, "Doubtless there are
other roads."
People who have sought out paths of
one-sided vertical transcendence usually have done nothing to integrate their
shadow, but instead form cliques, sects or cults where they can join with
others in reinforcing each other in the delusion that they're on a path of
transcending their egos. Actually they to tend to form communities of immature
egos, with grossly unintegrated shadows, which run around acting out all the
inferior qualities they believe they have transcended.
Any charismatic leader of the cult or
sect will typically have complete license to act out compulsive sexuality, to
power trip, dominate, seduce and financially swindle followers. The followers
will feel an electrifying desire to proselytize. The need to proselytize is
almost always a classic sign of an imbalanced psyche – the hysterical need to
spread the psychic contagion and gain partners in vice while believing that you
are converting the infidels. At the very least they will reek of spiritual
affectations and more-transcendent-than-thou attitudes.
To be a whole person means integrating
yin and yang, feminine and masculine, horizontal and vertical, shadow and
spirit. This is not as easy as the vertical shortcut, the purchased stairway to
heaven or satori, and that's why Jung felt that crucifixion – being caught
between the horizontal and vertical axes of life is a central metaphor for the
human condition.
Mind and Ego
in the Hierarchy of Psychic Functions
Eliminating the ego to resolve our
troubled relationship with it is no more sensible than decapitation would be as
a remedy for recurrent headaches. Superstitious dread of the ego is almost
always accompanied by a fanatical anti-intellectualism and disparagement of the
mind. Mind and ego are not our enemies. It is where we place our mind and ego,
and how we work with these priceless resources that often makes them our
enemies.
In most I Ching hexagrams the fifth
line is the ruler and the fourth line is the minister. This structure contains
the secret of how to work with the ego and mind so that they become powerful
allies instead of adversaries. In the place of the ruler in our psyche should
not be our ego or mind, but our higher Self and global intuition. (I'll discuss
where the mind and ego should be in a little bit.)
True Will and
Taoism
Taoism is often presented in a way that
makes it seem that you are passively surrendering to an outside Tao. A way to
pierce through this illusion is with a concept such as Aleister Crowley's "True
Will."(Note: I'm not endorsing Crowley's character, only certain of his
concepts.)
Your True Will is the will of your
higher Self, the will that arises out of the depths of your Self. Some object
to his use of spatial metaphor to describe the Self, but it is the most concise
way of cutting to the essence of this concept. True Will speaks
through the still, centered voice of global intuition and is often confirmed by
synchronicities, oracle consultations, etc. It is your inner refraction of the
Tao and is to be followed before anything else.
This might require you to proactively
overcome all sorts of inner and outer obstructions. You are not necessarily
passively led by outside trends. As George Bernard Shaw said, The reasonable
man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying
to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the
unreasonable man." Many would interpret the reasonable man's
position as Taoist and the unreasonable man's position as egoistic and
anti-Taoist. This would be true if the unreasonable man were expecting the
world to adapt itself to his ego. But if the unreasonable man is centered
in his True Will, then his stance is Taoist as compared to a "reasonable"
person whose reason and rationalized ego are oriented toward accommodating the
default parameters of the Babylon Matrix. (See Dynamic
Paradoxicalism-the Anti-Ism Ism for more on my version of Taoism).
The Ruler and
the Minister of the Psyche
With your True Will and global
intuition in the ruling place in your psyche, you can then appoint your mind
and ego as ministers that follow the ruler and work as helpful subordinates. In
this place ego and mind can, among other functions, act as skillful
intermediaries between the aims of your True Will and the outside world.
It is only when the mind and ego are foolishly promoted above their capabilities
into the ruling position that they work at cross-purposes and undermine
everything we do. And yes, they can be foolishly ambitious in the way of the
Peter Principle to rise to their level of incompetence.
The unenlightened ego thinks it should
be in charge. The goal is to develop a more conscious, evolved ego that knows
its place. The mind can also be a brilliant amplifier and translator for global
intuition and primal creativity among other useful functions. Try fixing your
computer with your feelings or transcendent spirit! I'm still working on the
process of aligning these aspects of the psyche in myself.
Consciousness is not something you
arrive at, but that you have to earn and work toward moment by moment. I'll
briefly use myself as an example to ground this in a particular real-life
case. Because I am (according to Jung's typology) a thinking-intuitive type,
raised by thinking types, people often have an understandable (but somewhat
mistaken) impression that I am up in my head thinking of the things they hear
me say or write. More often, the way I experience my psyche working is that
there is a cascade of intuitions and my active thinking function works with
that cascade analyzing, interpreting and typically turning the intuitive input
into complex sentences that may give the impression they were "thought up."
Of course sometimes that's true,
sometimes I am calling up memorized raps on various subjects and reciting them.
But originally these raps were sourced from a melding of intuition and thought.
After the fact I can ask the thinking function to act as information minister
and recite the rap, which has been processed (and sometimes distorted) by
thinking, but not originally created by thinking.
I experience my thinking function as hollow,
boring and incompetent when it works by itself (except when it's
troubleshooting the computer and learning instruction manuals, etc). I can
only feel enthusiastic about using my psyche when intuition, thinking and
(often) feeling are all connected and working together. The difference is
instantly discernable, like the difference between a stereo system where all
the components are working together to create a full, spatial sound as compared
to the tinny, irritating monophonic tone of an AM radio broadcasting a call-in
radio show. Of course, sometimes the ego can play tricks, like putting a
grandiose symphonic sound track behind its irritating, hollow monophonic voice.
But if you pay attention you can tell the difference.
The Power of
Holding Back
Many people feel trapped by their mind
and ego because they find themselves caught in an introspective hell of mental
tape-loops that often focus on alternatively degrading and aggrandizing
self-evaluations. They come to feel that the inner life itself, self-reflection,
and meta-cognition (the ability to think about thinking – a great evolutionary
advance) are what are holding them back from an effectual life.
They may even come to believe that the
way to escape this inner turmoil is to become a thoughtless extrovert, a "man
of action." I came to realize this when I was nineteen and wrote a paper on
Dostoevsky entitled, "Doestoevsky
and the Profound Egocentric." Many Dostoevsky characters lament their
internal consciousness as a liability, feel that reason makes them incapable of
action and decisiveness and seek to become unthinking men of action.
The narrator of Notes from Underground, for example, says, "The direct, the inevitable
and the legitimate result of consciousness is to make all actions impossible,
or – to put it differently – consciousness leads to thumb-twiddling…"
The earliest literary example of this
syndrome I can find is in Shakespeare's Hamlet.
Hamlet reproaches himself for being "John-a-dreams." In one monologue he
states, Thus conscience does make cowards
of us all; And thus the native hue of
resolution Is sicklied over with pale
cast of thought, And enterprises of
great pitch and moment, With this
regard their currents turn awry, And
lose the name of action. (Act III: SC I, lines 83-88). Hamlet eventually
tries to rebel against his introverted state and become a man of action: "‘O,
from this time forth / My thoughts be bloody or be nothing worth!'" (Act IV, SC
IV, lines 95-96).
T. S. Eliot's J. Alfred Prufrock voices
similar sentiments. Prufrock says, "Time yet for a hundred indecisions," and,
"There will be time/ To wonder, ‘Do I dare?' and ‘Do I dare?'" Prufrock would
prefer to be thoughtlessly instinctual rather than in a state of ineffectual
self0-consciousness, "To have been a pair of ragged claws/ Scuttling across the
floors of silent seas."
Like many contemporary persons, these
literary characters falsely attribute their ineffectual indecisiveness to
introspection, reason and self-awareness. What is imprisoning them is not
self-awareness, reason or ego, but psychic entropy and the hierarchy of their
psychic functions. They are living in an inner hell world where mind and
ego are in charge of introspection.
If intuition and the self were in
charge of the process, and mind and ego in service of these higher functions,
their experience would be altogether different in kind.
When I was nineteen and wrote my paper
on Dostoevsky I had a breakthrough in this regard. I discovered that light
could break through the shadowy mental prison when intuition took the place of
recursive thinking. The inner process that used to torment me when it was
conducted by mind and ego I now find to be entertaining, enlightening and
forever providing me with exciting new material. Instead of mind/ego alliance
playing the same old anxious tapes, my inner process is led by the muse.
The ego and mind are very much at work
in that process, but as followers, not leaders. Some people who villainize the
mind and ego as the problem, rather than the foolish placement of the mind and
ego, even more foolishly believe they must get rid of mind and ego through a
lifetime of meditation. Other people villainize introspection and believe that
being a thoughtless man of action is the answer.
For example, presidents 41 and 43, Bush
the father, and Bush the son, frequently brag, "I don't psychoanalyze myself."
W. has even said more than once, "I only look in the mirror when I'm shaving."
But Socrates said, "Know thyself." This world is dying from lack of effective
introspection.
Spend that inner time guided by your
intuition, if you spend it alone with mind and ego, then the inner temple will
seem a prison and you will feel like the mind and ego's prison bitch. This
helpful alignment of higher self/ global intuition and True Will with mind and
ego is often especially challenged when we are caught in some dilemma and feel
pressed to make a decision.
The ego can't stand the ambiguous,
ambivalent situations that are so typical of human incarnation. It would like
to force progress, come to some kind of clarifying decision and get on with its
linear goal-seeking. This can lead to some horrible choices. Alternatively, the
ego and thinking function, sensing their incompetence as high-level decision
makers, will take the ambiguous situation and keep gnawing at it like a dog
with a chew toy. Another metaphor is an endless Ping-Pong match where different
thoughts and possible scenarios get bounced back and forth forever.
What is needed here, and mentioned
throughout the I Ching, is the all important ability to hold back, to not go
forward until we have been shown, till we have heard that still inner voice
speak our True Will or until a light has been shown through the unfolding of
events of where we have to go. As Goethe said, "A master first reveals himself
in his ability to hold back." The Zen archer who hits the mark does so because
she holds the arrow back until just the right moment.
Solitude as
Default Position
One aspect of life that is a classic
illustration of this principle is the choice of whether or not to go forward
into a romantic relationship. Some people have an ego identity that requires
them to be in a romantic relationship. It's as if something inside them says,
"I have to be going out with someone, might as well be this person…" Anybody
who finds they are weighing this kind of choice by examining lists of
advantages or disadvantages of possible mates is playing this sort of game. This
is the merchant mind trying to evaluate where it can get the best deal.
My personal point of view is that for
the conscious person the default position should be solitude, but with a
willingness to enter into romantic relationship and give it all the infinite
care it deserves if, and only if, that is the person's True Will, and he is
called from the depths of his being to have a relationship with a particular
person (and not an idealized projection). Although I am fanatically opposed to
one-size-fits-all formulations, especially about something as fantastically
varied as human eros, this is what I believe can spare the conscious, evolving
person from the suffering of messy karma. Hold back until you know.
Reticence
A woman I know has been practicing a wonderful
inner discipline that accords with the I Ching principle of holding back. She
calls the practice "inner yes." Until a choice lights up in her whole body and
being, an inner yes, then the answer is no and she waits. This takes patience,
but saves her from many costly mistakes.
Similarly, the I Ching puts a high
value on reticence, holding back with spoken words and other actions, until you
are sure you have the inner yes. When you are dealing with a captive audience,
for example while riding in a vehicle, I believe that a moral person should
have strong inhibitory filters before they speak. If I speak to a captive
audience I am usually blocking any members of that audience from being able to
effectively concentrate on their own thoughts. So before I encroach on the
perceptual space of the other, I ought to be convinced that what I have to say
is something they need to hear, or that it at least has sufficient
entertainment value, as compared to me venting or indulging the
narcissistic urge to capture attention.
Emotional
Alchemy, Dealing with Afflictive Thoughts and Feelings
Earlier I promised that we would get
more into the nuts and bolts of how to deal with negative thoughtforms and the
afflictive emotions associated with them. The most comprehensive and effective
approach I've found is in a marvelous book entitled Emotional Alchemy by Tara Bennett-Goleman. Tara, a Zen Buddhist
psychotherapist, and her husband, Daniel Goleman, wrote the best-selling book
entitled Emotional Intelligence.
They've also collaborated with the Dali
Lama on a book about overcoming afflictive emotions. If you like this approach,
I would certainly suggest reading Emotional
Alchemy, which is now available in paperback at almost any large bookstore.
The book is rather repetitive, however, and in a few pages I can probably tell
you 80% of what's in it.
The Golemans bring together Buddhist
psychology, cognitive psychology and some recent findings from neuroscience
into their groundbreaking work on afflictive emotions. "Afflictive emotions" is
a Buddhist term that describes a general phenomenon that most of us are all too
familiar with – the suffering, the affliction of negative emotions. There is
nothing new about this problem, but it has also never been timelier with depression
and anxiety disorders dramatically on the rise in the West, particularly in the
U.S.
Through a synthesis of the three
disciplines mentioned above (neuroscience, cognitive psychology and Buddhist
psychology), we'll examine how afflictive emotions work and how they gain
hold and easily dominate our inner experience. Then we will discuss the alchemy
part, how to transform our relationship with afflictive emotions through
methods that can dramatically reduce suffering. (I can testify from my own
personal experience to the effectiveness of this method.)
Neurological
Materialism
Part of the reason that afflictive
emotions are so virulent, and so hard to change, may have to do with our neural
architecture. I say "may" because neurology is in its infancy and has never
been able to successfully explain the association of consciousness and the
brain. A terrible delusion which I've written about elsewhere, and which I wish
the Golemans had acknowledged, is the philosophical and pseudoscientific
position known as "neurological materialism."
A neurological materialist believes
that consciousness (if they admit consciousness exists at all – many don't) is
an epiphenomenon (a secondary effect) of biochemical processes in the brain.
Neurological materialism dominates the psychology departments of most colleges
and universities in the U.S., and many ordinary citizens have picked up on this
and taken it as a given, proven by "science." But it has not been proven by
science, quite the contrary.
There is much scientific evidence
pointing away from neurological materialism. Part of the problem is that in the
"soft" sciences of biology and psychology, many have not been able to integrate
the findings of quantum mechanics and are still pretending to do science while
inhabiting an archaic Newtonian universe where everything is governed by
causality.
Physicists like Danah Zohar, Roger
Penrose, Amit Goswami and Fred Alan Wolfe have proposed quantum mechanical
models in which neurological process is a correlate, an analog, an acausal
parallelism to a consciousness that is hyperspatial, nonlocal, not "in" the
brain. Those who have had OBEs (out-of-body experiences-I've had numerous) and
NDEs have experienced that consciousness can exist outside the body and is
actually greatly enhanced by being out of the body. (For a highly detailed case
history of an NDE that is inexplicable via neurological materialism see: Life Lessons
form the Living Dead.)
Neural Architecture
and The Emotional Body
You do not, however, have to buy into
the fallacy of neurological materialism to recognize that neurological
realities – such as neurotransmitter levels and neural architecture – are huge
players in human experience. So after this long disclaimer about neurological
materialism, let's take a look at what neuroscience can tell us about
afflictive emotions.
The Low
Resolution Amygdala
Now that we have the technology to do
real-time body imaging of live people, scientists are able to map out activity
levels of different brain structures moment-by-moment. What's been observed is
that when people are exposed to an emotional trigger event, the amygdala, a
brain structure somewhere behind the frontal lobes, goes "hot." When strong
emotional response is aroused, the amygdala lights up on the computer screen as
its metabolism intensifies. Neuroscientists believe that the amygdala evolved
as an environmental threat-detection monitor. They believe that it stores
threat patterns (such as snakes, spiders, fire, predators) and when a trigger
event occurs, when something is perceived in the environment that matches or
seems to match these patterns, the amygdala turns on and triggers
fight-or-flight readiness throughout the body.
The amygdala, however, is no rocket
scientist; its pattern recognition ability is primitive and low
resolution. As a survival strategy it's safer to get a lot of false positives
rather than to miss a single actual hazard. Better for a scaredy-cat (a domestic
cat with overly strong startle reflex) to jump away from imaginary hazards than
to miss one car. (The big cats I used to work for at the Prairie Wind Wild
Refuge didn't have this type of startle reflex because no one sneaks up on a
six hundred pound tiger…)
So, for example, an animal or person
could have a powerful startle response to, say, a piece of rope dangling from a
branch at the edge of peripheral vision that the speedy but imprecise amygdala
may read as a dangerous snake. Also, to put the amygdala in the context of
neural architecture, it has strong neuronal connections to the neocortex in
human beings.
This may explain how the amygdala,
which is fast but low-resolution in its discriminations, can easily dominate
our higher thinking, which has higher resolution but much slower reaction time.
Therefore we experience a second or two when we actually think we've seen a
snake until our neocortex can reassert itself and reinterpret the sensory
information with higher resolution discrimination. It is also believed by
neuroscientists that in this phase of evolution, where most human beings are
more threatened by emotional trauma in early childhood than by snakes or fire,
patterns of emotional trauma are now what is primarily stored in the amygdala.
Schemas: Stereotyped
Patterns of Emotional Reactivity
Following that glimpse at the amygdala
from neuroscience, we switch to cognitive psychology, which holds that there
are classic, stereotyped patterns of emotional reactivity known as "schemas."
These schemas (and here you would do well to go to Emotional Alchemy, where they are individually discussed) include
very familiar afflictions such as: abandonment fear, low self-esteem,
deprivation and entitlement.
When trigger events occur, these
engrained patterns of emotional reactivity take over and we typically have
disproportionate, inaccurate, stereotyped responses, while the higher
resolution discrimination and more reflective aspects of higher thinking are
overridden by an intense emotional funk.
Trigger Events and Storylines
Let me ground this approach in a
specific example. Our case involves a young woman, an office worker, who
was raised by narcissistic, rather unloving parents. As a consequence of her
early childhood experience, she is especially governed emotionally by the
deprivation schema with generous helpings of the low self-esteem and
abandonment schemas thrown in. One of her coworkers goes out on a coffee run
for everyone and when he returns, as a random accident, her coffee was
forgotten.
This minor accident is a trigger event
for her deprivation schema. Almost instantly, in less than a quarter of a
second, her amygdala lights up and catalyzes a cascade of pronounced
physiological changes – her face flushes as capillaries dilate, heart rate
increases, body temperature elevates and breathing becomes fast and shallow.
The amygdala sends strong signals to her neocortex causing her thinking to fall
into line with disproportionate, inaccurate, stereotyped thoughtforms that
coalesce into a storyline which helps to perpetuate the trauma and reinforce
the schema: They forgot mine on purpose.
I'm always left out. No one ever gives me my fair share. I knew they didn't
like me. He's just like my father…
This funk could continue for hours, or
continue almost perpetually in the background, especially as internal
perturbations – traumatic memories, negative thoughtforms and fantasies-are
internally generated as trigger events that perpetuate the misery.
The Law of
Dependent Causation
Buddhist psychology now comes into play
with suggested methods of self-liberation from afflictive emotions. The
Buddhists have a concept variously translated as the law of "dependent
origination" or "dependent arising." There is a chain of dependent, causally
related events that creates the suffering of afflictive emotions. In the case
of the schema attack described above, we have trigger event linked to
neurological response linked to physiological response linked to cognitive
response (the storyline). Break any part of this chain and you can break the
whole cycle.
Breaking
Inner Tape Loops with Numbers Exercises
An elegantly simple method to break the
cognitive link involves occupying your mind with simple numbers exercises. This
method is not in Emotional Alchemy,
and these particular numbers exercises come from a book of psychological
techniques and exercises designed to support a Gurdjieffian approach to
consciousness. Use this method especially when you find
that your mind is "looping" – playing the same negative storyline tapes again
and again – "he said, she said" etc.
When you focus your mind on the numbers
exercises, you will stop the looping, stop the storylines stone cold dead in
their well-worn tracks. True, numbers exercises may not be very entertaining,
but I'll take nonentertainment over looping storylines that create the
suffering of afflictive emotion and thereby degrade bodily health as well.
The first numbers exercise is to count
up by 2s from 1, and down by 2s from 100 in an alternating sequence: 1, 3, 100,
98, 5, 7, 96, 94, 9, 11, 92, 90, 13, 15, 88, 86, etc. This gets a little tricky
when the two streams of numbers cross, but you'll find that you get into a
rhythm with it and it gets a lot easier with practice. Your mind will want to
default back to storylines, daydreams or other distractions, and if it
succeeds, it will break the numbers exercise at which point you just pick it up
again, from the beginning if necessary.
The second numbers exercise is much
easier and can be done partly on autopilot which presents a great temptation
for your attention to wander and for you to lose track of the numbers. It's
designed that way to train you to maintain focus, to have power over the
default mechanism that wants to switch you back to storylines, daydreams, etc.
It also trains you to divide attention, as you can easily do this exercise
while doing laundry, driving, manual chores, etc.
This time you count up by twos in an
ascending/descending sequence that keeps growing like a ladder that you climb
up and down while adding a new rung with each ascent. The top number is always
repeated and is 2 higher than the last top number. It looks like this: 1 3 3 1
1 3 5 5 31 1 3 5 7 7 5 3 1 1 3 5 7 9 9 7 5 3 1 1 3 5 7 9 11 11 9 7 5 3 1 Etc.
One more part of this easy sequence is that whenever you hit the number 11,
coming up or down the ladder, you do some sort of bodily movement – snapping
your fingers, blinking an eye, etc. You're doing well with this exercise if you
can make it into the 70s without losing the number stream by defaulting into
tape loops or daydreams. Like push-ups and sit-ups, numbers exercises may not
always be fun, but they are an effective and direct way to become stronger.
Heisenberg's
Uncertainty Principle and Self-Observation
Now we'll return to the Emotional Alchemy approach that centers
on the Buddhist practice of mindfulness. I've been practicing mindfulness
techniques for years and have found them to be very effective in everything
from dealing with bodily pain (mindfulness pain management), every day tasks
and even getting more enjoyment out of eating food. We know from physics
(Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle) that to observe a thing is to change a
thing. The maximal case of this effect is when the human psyche is observing
itself.
Mindfulness
Pain Management
Mindfulness involves sustained
investigative awareness, a persistent witness consciously observing what's
going on (inner and/or outer) with great moment by moment presence. To
practice mindfulness pain management I focus in on the pain sensations. The
pain I feel in my recently dislocated thumb seems to radiate outward in pulsing
concentric waves from the center of the knuckle. I observe and map out its
periodicity, its ebb and flow, when it is peaking and when it is subsiding. I
don't shrink from it, I welcome it into perception and carefully observe its
modulations. When I do this it becomes an interesting energetic phenomenon
happening in my perceptual universe. Emotional funks and negative thoughtforms
can also be studied with this careful, impersonal observation.
Mindful
Self-Observation
When I hear a voice speak in my head I
can welcome it into my perceptual field, the inner theater of my mind, and ask
it to step into the spotlight of attention and show me who it is and what it
really wants. By mindfully observing the emotions and storylines, we cannot be
identified with them. We become an outside witness to them, so they cannot
think us, as they did to the young woman office worker in her schema attack.
You can observe them with a cool, neutral, compassionate stance.
Instead of shrinking from them, welcome
them into attentional space. The metaphor I've used for myself is that I am a
butterfly collector in the Amazon, where a rare, interesting butterfly has
flown into my net. Aha, here's a live one
I can study. As you work with this practice you will find that your
mindfulness will have less discontinuities and you will catch schema attacks
sooner.
At the early phase of the practice you
might notice that you had a schema attack after it's over. Why did I get into that silly argument? Oh, I see, it was my
deprivation schema triggered when she said… Another time you might catch a
schema attack while it's happening, while the butterfly is in the net. If it is
happening just internally (not an interpersonal argument) you can observe
without direct interference and learn something about what type of schemas you
have and what type of subpersonalities come forward to speak for them. See how
long the schema attack lasts. When does it peak? When does it start to taper
off? What was the trigger event? How is your body being affected – breathing,
muscle contractions, etc?
After you have felt that you've
sufficiently studied who the voices are and what they want, you can choose in a
later stage of the practice to actively intervene. The numbers exercise is one
way to do that. The frightening-looking deities seen outside of some Buddhist
temples are supposed to be entities of "wrathful compassion."
At this phase of the practice you can
be wrathfully compassionate and intervene with a ferocious act of will. I used
to visualize a glowing magical sword hovering above an old reel-to-reel tape
recorder I used to have, the moving reels of tape playing the annoying
thoughtforms. When I summoned my will the sword would come slicing down into
the tape, cutting it in two so that the reels would begin to spin quickly in
opposite directions.
Another visualization I've used comes
from the first two Lord of the Rings
movies where we see Gandalf facing down the Balrog on the Bridge of Kazadum. I
see Gandalf activating his staff and luminescent sword, Glamdring, and saying
with all his might, "You cannot pass. I am a servant of the secret fire… You
cannot pass." A simpler technique I recently came up with that seems quite effective
is that when I notice my mind picking up a dumb tape loop I just say to myself
in the tone of an irate, protective mother watching her two-year-old pick up a
dog turd and begin to put it in his mouth, DROP
IT!!! DROP IT!!!!! Get creative and use whatever works for you.
The Magic
Quarter Second
Finally, if you really want to go for
the Olympic level of this practice, you will try to derail a schema attack in
what neuroscientists call "the magic quarter second." If you were able to
recognize that a trigger event is catalyzing your amygdala to launch a schema
attack in the first quarter second, before it has gained a physiological hold
on you, then you could knock it off its tracks, nip it in the bud before it can
do any damage at all.
Usually you don't know if a trigger
event is coming. But in some cases you do, let's say you have to make a phone
call to that difficult parent or problem person you know is likely to trigger
you. I had a great opportunity to try the Olympic version when I was canvassing
for a wildlife refuge. In certain yuppie neighborhoods I knew there was a high
probability of getting a nasty response.
As a former, recovering New Yorker, who
was also a school teacher for fourteen years, six in the South Bronx, my whole
being is conditioned for the high-speed come back. I might have needed that
skill back then, but when canvassing, such a reaction can get you and your
organization into trouble. So what I would do is ring the bell, take a couple
of deep breaths, center myself in my body and wait like a tennis player for the
ball to come across the net and a golden opportunity to catch the magic quarter
second. But even though I knew the trigger event was coming I often couldn't
help but to react anyway.
It should go without saying that what
you especially don't want is to allow a schema attack to control your actions,
decisions or spoken words. There is a well-known Samurai story where the
Samurai has a duty to assassinate the assassin who killed his master.
Methodically he stalks the assassin and at the right moment approaches with
drawn sword. The assassin spits on him. The Samurai sheaths his swords and
walks away. The idea is that he became emotionally agitated when he was spit on
and now if he used his sword it would no longer be a pure, impersonal act.
Words are often swords. When we are emotionally agitated we should sheath our
tongues and hold back from actions and decisions.
Dealing with Shock
Since I'm undergoing a series of shocks
in my own life right now (and shocks, like earthquakes and their aftershocks,
tend to come in a series), this is no academic exercise, but a challenge to see
how well my philosophy of shock can hold up to the real thing.
The
Necessity of Shock and the I Ching
First, in order not to take shocks personally,
we need to acknowledge that they are both inevitable and necessary. Shock is
such a well-recognized principle in the I Ching that it is not only one of the
64 hexagrams (hexagram 51, Shock, Thunder, the Arousing) it is also one of the
8 trigrams out of which the 64 hexagrams are built. Shock is a crucial
alchemical ingredient needed for evolution.
Homeostasis
and Punctuated Equilibrium
Why is shock so crucial? One reason is
that all organisms are conservative. They dial in an equilibrium, what
biologists call homeostasis, and they seek to maintain it. This is a crucial
life function because organisms are generally complex, fragile processes that
require relatively narrow parameters of environmental conditions – such as
oxygen levels, temperatures, food sources.
Inevitably, the environments in which
they occur have destabilizing, chaotic elements that frequently threaten
death or even extinction. Organisms work indefatigably to try to dial in their
niche, to maintain the homeostasis that keeps them going. You don't want your
liver enzymes, heart rate or blood sugar to fluctuate wildly. That would
threaten your survival. You want them dialed in, rolling along on an even keel.
The human psyche is an organism, the most complex we know of, and complexity
often means fragility. What both Freud and Jung recognized, what anybody
looking around himself should recognize, is that the human psyche is also
highly conservative.
Contra
Naturum Development
Conservatism can be good for
homeostasis, but can also, if it is excessive, put a ceiling on development and
evolution. To evolve means to change, and we don't always want to change. Two
fairly conscious and compassionate people I met recently told me, and without
mincing words, "I don't like change." I told them that I could sympathize
because change is usually precipitated by shocks, often unpleasant shocks. But
to dislike change is to create inevitable suffering because change is the only
constant we have.
"It is said an Eastern monarch once
charged his wise men to invent him a sentence to be ever in view and
appropriate in all times and situations. They presented him the words, ‘And
this, too, shall pass away.' How much it expresses! How chastening in the hour
of pride! How consoling in the depths of affliction." – Abraham Lincoln, in an
address to the Wisconsin State Agricultural Society in 1859.
But when we inwardly resist the
passing, the change, we are more likely to interpret it as an outward shock
acting as fate. The conservative tendency is so strong that many will resist
change even if they are in a bad situation and an opportunity for improving
change presents itself.
You may remember the Morgan Freeman
character in Shawshank Redemption who
is unable to adjust to life as a free man (after decades in prison) and
wants to get locked in at night. I'm also reminded of a newspaper photo I once
saw of a young girl who had been horribly abused by her mother who had broken
many of her bones. The photo was of a court hearing and shows the little girl
being led away by some kindly-looking matron while she is screaming to be
reconnected with her mother. Better the devil we know, than a devil, or even an
angel, that we don't.
The conservative, homeostatic tendency,
once again, is almost always beneficial for any organism. Organisms like
homeostasis. For example, your dog or cat would love for his bowl to always
remain in exactly the same spot, and for feeding to always happen on a fixed
and predictable schedule. Your body does better with a consistent diet and
bedtime.
However, if there is one organism we
know of that has a deeply conflicted relationship to the conservative,
homeostatic tendency, it is the human psyche. It's not good enough for our
psyches to stay the same. We need them to evolve. Bob Dylan, in a song lyric,
summarized this essential situation: He
who's not busy being born is busy
dying A person with a commitment to conscious is, by definition, a person
busy being born. Consciousness is never a static, permanent attainment. It is
quite often a moment-to-moment struggle as you fend off tape loops, schema
attacks, etc. that would like to own your consciousness.
On the positive side, the commitment to
conscious can bring you many moments of being born again into beginner's mind
or self-remembering. It can bring the new dawn of a revelation that opens a
whole new vista of awareness. Another type of person is busy being born by the
struggle to live a righteous life and the courageous attempt to bring a
high degree of compassionately engaged impeccability to bear on every moment.
Although this person may not employ the same consciousness practices I have
suggested here, he probably has his own versions.
When afflictive thoughts and feelings
arise, instead of doing a number's exercise, this person may repeat The
Lord's Prayer in his head. He is are busy being born through the
continuous growth of both character and soulful relations with others.
Many other types of people are busy dying. Aside from the obviously
self-destructive types, consider how many people are psychologically stagnant.
The main transformation is that all their quirks and neurotic symptoms and
distorted thoughts only become more defined and rigid as they age. Essentially,
they are becoming more mechanical as conditioning seems to rule their thoughts
and actions.
For a great many people, being
dominated by acquired conditioning is the default state, and may encompass
nearly their entire incarnation. Consider how many people are born, live and
die within the thorny confines of a fundamentalist religion. That's from my
point-of-view of course. From their POV, they may be having a very fulfilling
life that is given needed structure and mythical dimension through
fundamentalist religion.
The degree of structure and mythical
dimension that they inherit may be stronger than anything they could have
created for themselves. This may depend on an innate level of
development. It is a very particular blessing, from my POV, if a person
is strong enough to generate his own structures, and a life of moral and
mythical dimensions, without the help of fundamentalist religion or any other
such instituion. The average person tends to tread water, seeks to maintain
status quo, homeostasis, and will change inwardly only in response to drastic outside
shock.
When shocks occur, the average person
takes no responsibility for them (especially if they are negative
shocks), choosing instead to believe that he is the victim of "bad luck"
or forces beyond control. Of course, sometimes circumstances really are, as far
as we can tell, independent of individual will. When there are
earthquakes or volcanic eruptions, most of us assume that these are caused by
geophysical forces and not because there were too many sinners in the land, or
that God was upset because we failed to massacre the Hittites as instructed, or
something like that. (see Dynamic
Paradoxicalism-the Anti-ism Ism for a discussion of the paradox: you create your own reality/outside reality
creates you.)
Many shocks we create ourselves — for
example, an illness brought on by our willful neglect of health and the active
abuse of body. Especially with self-created shocks, you must get busy being
born or else you'll be busy dying. Our lives are extremely complex processes.
When a process hits a bifurcation point, it goes toward a higher state of
organization or a lower one. Initiation is a type of shock created by
human beings with various degrees of conscious intention.
Initiation is a vast topic and I'm only
going to touch on a couple of key points. I've had a couple of interesting
conversations with Stanislav Grof on initiation and it felt like we saw it in
very parallel ways. Although I haven't read it myself, I believe he has written
about initiation in one of his books and that would probably be great source
for learning more about intiation.
Initiations used to be structured in
traditional cultures as a way to awaken people from the immaturity of youth
into adulthood. Tribal initiations often involve life-threatening shocks and
trials such as ordeal poisons. In modern culture we don't offer much in the way
of sufficiently strong initiations. Joining the military and going through boot
camp is certainly an intense initiation. Of course, it is an initiation aimed
at producing soldiers, not highly individualized psyches.
In our society, a person with a strong
will toward individuation will attempt to spur development with
self-initiations. These could take many forms such as travel, wilderness
experience, experimenting with hallucinogens, etc. Initiations usually
need to have a perilous intensity. You need to feel that sanity as well as life
and limb are at stake.
In Casting
Precious into the Cracks of Doom…. I described it this way:
A few years ago a very
enthusiastic young woman told me how she was involved in a new education
program for kids which would involve "tribal initiations in the wilderness."
Although not wishing to deflate her enthusiasm, I felt forced to tell her that
actually she was talking about arts-and-crafts in the woods, that tribal
initiations were impossible for any legally constituted school in our society
because you would have to be willing to have some initiates die or go insane.
Choosing
Shock through Self-Initiation
Some people seek to generate their own
shocks to stimulate development. Since we live in a culture that does not
provide the developmental shocks that in traditional cultures are provided by
initiation, we may seek to create our own initiations. Self-initiations,
voluntary shocks, include things like fasting, heroic doses of hallucinogens,
mountain climbing and extreme forms of travel, sports or adventure.
These self-initiations can go amiss if
they serve to build up false ego rather than collapse it. I might, for example,
undertake these extreme practices so I can build up a prideful identity for
myself as a master of asceticism, an hallucinogenic test pilot, a daring
mountain climber, etc. If the means of initiation becomes an end in itself,
then it is being abused and has depotentiated as a developmental shock.
Traveling, for example, can be a great way to stir up change, to shock your
complacent equilibrium, but as Emerson put it, "The problem with traveling is
you take yourself with you."
Traveling can be a real secular
pilgrimage, a transformational journey, but only if we are integrating it as
inner change, not just as a changing glamorous backdrop for ego-identity and
dramas. Some people try to push the self-initiation option too far, which
amounts to the spiritual self-violence of forcing progress. Some people have a
Germanic death wish and fall for the glamour of excessively risky behavior. One
of Nietzsche's moral superman notions was, "What doesn't kill us makes us
stronger." But that notion can be pushed too far, and Nietzsche ended his life
completely insane.
So taking a hundred tabs of acid, for
example, my neither kill you nor make you stronger. You want to learn from
subtle shocks if you can, and don't necessarily need to whack yourself on the
head with a two-by-four. Self-initiations usually need to have a perilous edge,
but hopefully stop short of self-destruction. If the self-initiate is
fortunate, the danger proves lethal to ego structures but allows other healthy
tissue to survive and reconfigure. But many self-initiations, just as those
induced by the tribal collective, are shattering to the body and/or sanity of
the initiate.
There is always the danger that the
self-initiate has presumed upon his inner strength, and like the young, naïve
hero, he ends up devoured. Because young people are not being provided
initiations for the most part, they will often seek out their own, but many of
the initiations they find or create are of low quality and wantonly
destructive.
For example, the initiation of a street
gang, which may ask you to murder someone to prove your street cred. Many sorts
of adolescent risk-taking are unconsciously intended as self-initiations. Since
most such initiations are unguided, there tend to be a lot of tragic outcomes.
Shock
as Evolutionary Catalyst
Shocks can be "good" or "bad."
Winning the lottery or suddenly falling in love are shock just as much as a car
accident or economic crash. Shock just means the equilibrium has experienced a
perturbation or disturbance – a sudden disequilibrium. Don Juan said (I'm
paraphrasing) that for the average man everything is either a blessing or a
curse, but for the Warrior everything is a challenge and a learning experience.
The psychic inertia that resists change is so strong that Jung described the
path of individuation, or unique individual development, as "contra naturum" –
contrary to or against nature. Gurdjieff, who so eloquently described man's
mechanical nature, called the change to unmechanicalness "against God."
Their point was that to generate your
own internal change meant pushing against such vast inner and outer inertial
force that it was as if you had a whole universe resisting you. Often it is us,
our own neurotic homeostasis and passivity, our false ego, that provides the
resistance. And as Jung said, "Man's greatest passion isn't sex, love, money or
power – it's laziness."
So shock can be like a divine gift, a
catalyst for evolutionary change. After all, if it wasn't for shock in the form
of a giant asteroid hitting the earth sixty-five million years ago and
flattening everything larger than a chicken, there might be a velociraptor
strolling through tropical foliage instead of you sitting there reading this
over the internet. Our incarnation began with birth shock and ends with a shock
too. Shock is our often unwelcome and constant, if unpredictable, companion.
Thought
Experiment In Subcreation
Try this thought experiment. You are
the author (the equivalent of God) of a novel about a young person who in the
course of your story is going to develop greatly as a person – psychologically
and spiritually. Would you as God/author provide him with the perfect, peaceful
relationship, the perfect career and a tranquil, happy "successful" life? Not
unless you wanted to create a boring story and a boring character. What you
will probably find is that as God/author you are going to have to create
"evil," you are probably going to have to hurl some gigantic shock at that
young person, right at the limits of what he can handle, to get him out of the
door and on his quest.
If you are writing a screenplay you
better do this in the first ten pages (the equivalent of the first ten minutes
of screen time). This is called the "inciting incident," and if you don't have
it, unless you are an absolute master with a cult following, you will probably
lose much of your audience. There are classic, archetypal elements to story
structure because story structure parallels life structure. Tolkien called
fantasy writing "subcreation" because the author is acting as a subset of God
in creating his own world. What would The
Lord of the Rings be if Tolkien hadn't sub-created evil in the form of
Sauron, Saruman, Ring Wraiths, orcs, etc? Hobbits going on dates with other
hobbits? Boring. Nobody wants to watch Frodo eating second and third breakfasts
every day while getting fat and complacent in Hobbiton. No, we want to see him
at the Cracks of Doom tormented by evil temptation.
We want development in our stories, not
stagnation; we want shock, change and lots of it. But when it comes to us, no
way, we want predictability, we want a world where we get what we want when we
want it – and what we want is to get dealt the royal flush with no jokers or
wild cards. The message of hexagram 51 is that shock can be developmental. What
counts is our stance in relation to the shock. We need to accept shock, even
welcome it as a learning challenge.
Many shocks we experience involve
relationships. Our voluntary relationships (such as romantic relationships), by
an almost invincible psychological principle, reflect where we are inwardly. So
instead of going into he said/she said mode and creating a schema-driven
storyline bound up with the particulars of that episode of the soap opera, you
can instead ask yourself this question: When have I been here before? When have
I felt, in different circumstances, what I am feeling now? If you are honest
with yourself, you'll probably recognize that this isn't the first time. So
pull your gaze off the present overly-charged situation and look at these
parallel points on your inner map, especially if they are points involving
other relationships. Take a step back and see if you can find a pattern. Is
there a mistake here you've made before? Are certain schemas activated?
Remember the principle that those who don't learn from history are doomed to
repeat it, especially if it is relationship history!
Subtle
and Gross Shocks
The way things often work is that we
are first given a chance to learn from a subtler shock, but if we don't learn
from it, don't answer its demand for change, we get more powerful shocks. Our
bodies teach us through shock, and so do our psyches as well as the force
vectors of seemingly outside fate. For example, a man poisons himself with too
much alcohol and his body sends him a self-protective shock. He finds his head
in the toilet in a violent spasm of vomiting and he wakes up with a horrible
hangover. That's actually a subtle shock, way too subtle for some people. The
man works through that subtle shock and a few more like it while he develops
his "acquired taste" for self-inflicted punishment and he even comes to take pride
in his tolerance for poison, "I can really hold my liquor. I may be fat and
impotent, but I can drink these young punks under the table." When subtle shock
doesn't work, then you get big shock. Instead of nasty symptoms, your body
presents you with a major disease like cirrhosis of the liver. Still, some will
disown responsibility for the shock: "I ought to sue those liquor companies."
Feeling a victim is indicative of refusing to rise to the learning challenge of
shock. If you are a victim of your personal history, then you are bound to
remain one as history repeats itself, because a victim is the opposite of a
learner/Warrior.
Catching
Things Before they Exit the Gate of Change
The conscious person prefers to learn
from the subtle shocks rather than get hit over the head with a two-by-four.
Instead of waiting till we have a major diseas,e we can pay attention to our
bodies, notice the subtle shocks that tell us we're doing something harmful,
and make corrective adjustments. in I Ching terms, the idea is to "catch things
before they exit the gate of change." If you can notice the subtle pre-signal
shocks, you can sometimes avoid the need for full-scale shocks. For example, if
your observation of body language tells you that your approach toward a certain
person is creating resistance in him, you can back off and avoid the shock of
argument and conflict.
Attuning
to Subtle Shocks
Some ways to become attuned to subtle
shocks include paying attention to intuition, considering synchronicities as
possible signs or portents, remembering and interpreting dreams and consulting
with the I Ching or other oracles. In his potentially life-saving book, The Gift of Fear, security consultant
Gavin de Becker provides numerous case histories that demonstrate that most
victims of violent crime rationalistically overrode distinct intuitions warning
them of impending danger. Our intuition is much more acute (and so much faster)
than our conscious thinking, especially in rapidly unfolding life-or-death
situations.
Many of Gavin de Becker's clients,
often celebrities, are being stalked or harassed by anonymous threats. Gavin
discovered an intriguing and effortless way to find the identity of an
anonymous harasser. I don't have the book in front of me, but it goes something
like this: Gavin: Who do you think it could be? Client: I have no idea. Gavin:
OK, just as a game I want you to pick the name of anybody you know, anybody,
right off the top of your head. Client: OK – Bob. Gavin: Any reason to think it
might be Bob? Client: Oh, no way, it couldn't possibly be Bob; he's such a nice
guy, so polite. He sent me a dozen red roses last week.
Almost inevitably the person they pick
off the top of their head will turn out to be the harasser.
Dreams, especially nightmares, can be
subtle shocks seeking to awaken us to inner (and much more rarely, outer)
problems, giving us a chance to learn and make adjustments so that we don't
have to get whacked over the head by fate or develop full-blown diseases,
"mental illnesses," etc. Oracles, especially the I Ching, The Book of Changes,
can give us a heads up about a problem that if neglected may become shock.
Sometimes it can give us an early warning radar blip that shock is coming. If
the shock has already arrived it can advise us on how to weather the storm.
Avoid
Presumptions about the Shocks of Others
Also, we should adopt a learner/Warrior
relation to shock for ourselves, an inwardly independent stance, but not
necessarily apply it across the board to the shocks and misfortunes of everyone
else. In twelve-step programs they're fond of saying, "God only gives you the
burdens you need to bear." Fine, I accept that for myself, but I wouldn't want
to tell that to a baby dying of AIDS. I don't want to smugly look at a
continent of people dying of famine and presume they are getting the burdens or
learning experiences they need, or that their karma is punishing them.
It's not so clear (without having to
resort to reincarnation and multiple lifetime karma) if the shock as learning
challenge applies to those who, for example, don't seem to have enough
neurological/cognitive function to learn from what's happening to them. I
accept this stance for myself because I know that I have (and probably anyone
able to read this has) the inner resources to learn from the shocks I am
experiencing. If I don't choose victimhood for myself, that doesn't mean that I
assume there are no victims anywhere. What about mistreated animals and abused
children? Is God giving them the burdens they need to bear? I'd love to have a
pat formula to explain these horrors away, but I feel like it would be a
self-serving disrespect of the authentic suffering of the world.
Are
Shocks Good News or Bad News?
One lesson of shock is that we're not
in control of the Tao, and there are lots of unknown, unknowable variables in
play that make life the unpredictable experience we all know it to be. From our
limited vantage, it's also hard for us to know if the unpredictable shocks are
"good news" or "bad news."
You've probably heard the old Chinese
story about the farmer whose neighbor asks him, "What's new?" "One of my horses
ran away." "That's bad news," says the neighbor, "I'm sorry to hear that."
"Well, actually, the mare that ran away came back with a stallion so we ended
up with another horse." "Great news," responds the neighbor. "Well, actually,
when my son went to train the stallion he broke his leg." "Oh, that's terrible
news." "Well, actually, the army came through to conscript young men into the
draft, but because my son had a broken leg they didn't take him." And it keeps
going like that…
Every event is connected to a vast
unknown web of antecedent and consequent events and therefore we are
unable to judge the overall effect. On the other hand, we should also resist
the New Age fuzzy-headedness that insists that we be nonjudgmental about
everything. The warnings about being judgmental are about using bad judgment,
especially to stereotype people based on religion, race, orientation, etc. We
have to be judgmental. To say that it's bad to be judgmental is a judgment!
Shocks demand that we make good
judgments. So although we don't know where everything is going, and don't
presume that negative shocks may not be developmental, we also don't surrender
our judgment by adopting glib sayings like, "It's all good," or, "God only
gives you…" It's not all good, and there are things our True Will may demand we
make judgments about and work to change.
When
in the Belly of the Beast
Finally, it's one thing to have a
philosophy of shock, it's quite another thing to be in the belly of the beast.
When I look back at my own efforts to walk the talk during my last fortnight of
shock (these events which precipitated the writing of the guide are narrated in
The
Path of the Numinous – Living and Working with the Creative Muse) I
see cases where these principles helped me handle things well, and other times
when I was on the ropes. The shocks triggered huge schema attacks, and it was a
titanic struggle to regain my inner independence. When you're feeling
overwhelmed it can be good to third-person yourself for a minute, consider your
situation from an outside vantage and ask yourself, "What would I advise this person
given this set of circumstances?"
There is an advanced martial arts
technique where if you are being attacked by multiple assailants you create a
remote POV, like an eyeball on the ceiling, mapping the action out from above.
Writing this guide has been an exercise in remote POV for me. Sometimes, under
the acute stress of shock, it's easier to be a Warrior than in ordinary
circumstances. Don Juan said, "It is much easier for Warriors to fare well
under conditions of maximum stress than to be impeccable under normal
circumstances." Use the shock as an opportunity, rise to the occasion.
The Chinese ideogram that means crisis
also means opportunity. Although I may not have walked the talk perfectly (who
ever does?), I did use this occasion of shock as an opportunity to examine and
write out my "Weltanschauung" or philosophy of life. Shock can be an
opportunity for you to do the same. If for no one else this is a guide for me,
this perplexed Interdimensional Traveler, as I try to find my way through the
labyrinth of the Babylon Matrix into greener worlds than these…
Never
Surrender
At all costs, the Interdimensional
Traveler must never surrender multi-incarnate identity and essence to the
Babylon Matrix, or any other such matrix. Since so many readers are most
familiar with the hideous strength of the Babylon Matrix, we will give it
particular emphasis. From a thousand-thousand angles, the dark magnetisms of
the Babylon Matrix would love to pull travelers into the wrong ends of
telescopes.
Essentially, the Babylon Matrix has a
tunneling effect that can easily shrink your incarnation until it is like a
twisty wormhole burrowing into the festering tissues of a rotten apple. When
you choose the BM wormhole over the rabbit hole of the self-aware
Interimensional Traveler, your incarnation shrivels and descends like the
slow intestinal twisting of an endless, monotonous colonoscopy, winding its way
down the wrong end of a telescope.
The Babylon Matrix seeks to remake you
in its own image. It would like to play you out as a tragicomic retread, the
six billionth remake of Honey, I Shrunk the Interdimensional Traveler. The
Babylon Matrix churns out remakes by shrink-wrapping hominids into stock
characters. It would love for you to be a frat boy, a homeboy, a drama
queen, a geek, a couch potato, a yuppie, a workaholic, a celebrity, a celebrity
stalker and so forth. Surrender to its shrinking rays and you might find
yourself living out your incarnation as one of these diminutive caricatures, a
skin job with a limited shelf-life.
In the Eighties, in the early hours of
a smoggy and overcast Monday morning on the Cross Bronx Expressway, I first saw
what would become a ubiquitous bumper sticker. It read, "I owe, I owe, so off
to work I go." It was as if the veil had pulled back right there on the
Cross Bronx Expressway, and something I wasn't supposed to see, one of the
underlying black magical spells, actual source code of the Babylon Matrix,
suddenly became visible in the manifest realm. What potency such spells of
darkling magic have!
A spellbound victim, the owner of the
bumper sticker, laboring under the power of malign enchantment, discovers the
spell, the actual contract the devil made him sign in blood, and yet cannot
break from it.
There it is, the devil's contract, turning
slowly in the spinner rack of a convenience store, rendered word for word onto
self-adhesive vinyl. The victim purchases this perfect copy of the spell that
rules him and attaches it to the bumper of his car where he sees it every day,
and yet he never awakens from its power.
An Interdimensional Traveler must never
surrender to such spells! These spells are swirling around us like sheets of
self-adhesive shrink-wrap spun by a tornado. We live within a tornado of memes,
a dark and smoky twister spinning fragments of culture. Spinning within the
twister are newspaper headlines, faces, fragments of video, sound bytes of
neurotic conversations, glossy magazine torsos-a swirling shrapnel of sticky
cultural fragments. Lose your footing and the twister rips you out of Oz,
out of agrarian Kansas, out of all the infinite places you could be, and
shrinks you into an anxious meat puppet, stuck in traffic, worried about being
late for the florescent-lit cubicle, unpaid bills and debts stinging like pale
scorpions at your shrunken kernel-like mind animated by coffee with non-dairy
creamer, kept afloat by serotonin-specific-reuptake-inhibitors and propelled by
spell-induced fears.
Is there an engine driving the twister
that eludes us, adding invisibly to its torque and stickiness? The
Interdimensional Traveler will at least keep that an open question. He knows
that there are other worlds than these, and who can account for all the forces
that interpenetrate the Babylon Matrix? Certainly there is no ambiguity about
the existence of the agents of the twister, the enforcers and minor black
magicians of the Babylon Matrix. They are all around us, uttering their obvious
and yet potent and insidious spells from school yards, televisions, street
corners, classrooms, boardrooms and bedrooms, from the thousand-thousand blind
alleys of the Babylon Matrix.
The Interdimensional Traveler must
not step through the wrong ends of telescopes! The Interdimensional
Traveler must not let anxious voices, inner or outer, hurry them down
narrowing corridors. The Interdimensional Traveler must not step onto
the conveyor belts of degrading and dreary timelines!
Some foolish Interdimensional
Travelers will perceive these injunctions through the exciting,
intoxicating and scintillating distortion fields of the archetype of the
eternal youth. These archetype-possessed travelers will see the injunctions of
what not to do as an infinite license to indulge, and though they emulate Peter
Pan on steroids, they end up as flabby Peter Pans with kidney damage, divorcing
the Babylon Matrix only to marry flaccid Never Never Lands where obese lost
boys play video games in their mothers' basements.
The path of the Interdimensional
Traveler is not a license to indulge, it is a space that opens when the
imagination of the eternal youth and the impeccability of the Warrior
meld. It is a path that demands prodigious will and discipline. If you try
to follow the path of the Interdimensional Traveler without will and
discipline, you will end up as a pathetic lost boy of some sort, sucking weakly
at the soured edges of the Babylon Matrix, caught in a grey limbo where
embittered contempt for the realm of shrink-wrapped, spell-driven drones melds
with a parasitic dependence on the fruits of drone labor. Portals open for the traveler
on a mission of compassion who is aligned with his or her True Will.
Different portals open for a dark
traveler possessed of and by a dark will. Still another set of portals
open for the young fool traveler who may, for example, step through the wrong
end of a kaleidoscope. Certain intentions beckon certain matrices, for better
and for worse.
An Interdimensional Traveler must be a
Warrior, must have a moral purpose, and must be aware of all the shrinking rays
that press upon us. The price of freedom for the Interdimensional Traveler is
eternal vigilance about the sticky enchantments that would like to bind us to
the Babylon Matrix and turn individualized travelers into hordes of automatons
and hungry ghosts. To step across the event horizon you need to molt the many
layers of malign enchantment encasing your soul. Go then, there are other
worlds than these…
Teaser image: Interdimensional
Passport collage © by Jonathan Zap
© 2003, 2008 Jonathan Zap
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