Limits of an Infinite Self

Life is funny.

The conscious game changer for 11.11 was something I really felt was important. I looked past the slick media presentation, the fluffy new-age idealism, the pop bastardization of quantum physics and saw something worthwhile regardless. What I recognized as well, in part, but failed to resolve entirely, was the flaw in my own approach to participating. Namely, the fact that my desire to take part and have others join in was not purely of the Spirit, but carried a strong element of egoic fear under the surface. Fear of the unmitigated depths of hardship, loss, darkness, and uncertainty that appear to be in store as part of a collective awakening process. Desire to avoid the attendant pain and struggle as much as possible. Insofar as my motivation thus sprang from ego, the conscious game changer became an exercise in wishful thinking, tainted magic ritual, self-defeating. I didn't see this right away, but I was troubled and wondering what was wrong. Life being what it is, I was then guided to materials and experiences that helped me understand and remedy the problem.

Laura Knight-Jadczyk's article Truth, Lies, Reality served to remind me of a perspective I'd somehow lost touch with: that there is an objective reality (known in the mind of God) independent of what anyone personally believes, and that our human conscious ability to positively influence that reality through focused intent hinges in some way upon our ability to perceive and accept that reality as it is. This is, of course, a perspective that sheds light on the truth, and not the absolute Truth itself... (in my personal opinion... ^_^ )

Then I was looking for info on the Galactic Underworld of the Mayan calendar and came across this article on Joy and Fear. Another quite useful perspective.

Then I got a nice boost from the latest Smoking Mirrors and one comment in particular. Another comment linked me to Clif High's extraordinary essay Failing, falling, flying, fearlessness - for which he deserves at least three pieces of the most delicious pie!

In between there somewhere, I spent an evening in the company of some really wonderful friends, which, after a week of near-total solitude, transformed my ill ease of mind into full-flowered joy and peace that carried over and deepened through the night as I meditated and rested better than I had in quite some time.

Now this morning, I felt prompted to open a random page in Barefoot Doctor's Handbook for the Urban Warrior: A Spiritual Survival Guide. The insights I received from there on Focus, Worry, and Doubt were exactly what I needed. The Taoist philosophy and humour of Barefoot Doctor never fails to lighten the way...

There's more, but the short of it is that I was blessed with the wisdom of multiple perspectives from others and integrated them together with my own inner and outer experience into a harmonious and practically effortless way (Tao) through and out of the confusion and malaise I'd been in. All in a day's work. (For universe, mostly. Credit given where due, with many thanks.)

Happy Tipping Point!

My intellect wants to take this post in six different directions. None of them works. The more thoughts my brain puts together, the less fruitful it seems for the needs of this moment. It might have something to do with this. With the fact that defining the world and the self is a function of ego which restricts the flow of endless potential that is the source of truest joy. To express that which is most true for oneself in the moment, is what puts one in the flow of life. At this moment I feel a warmth, a breeze blowing through my heart. It's a fragile thing in the midst of all the opposing tensions in my mind and body, but it is the center of truth. Knowing. Being. Accepting. Appreciating. Loving.

In my dream last night, I was walking along a trail through a sunny field of green grass. I was on my way somewhere else, but my mind was right where I was, in the moment, joyfully observing. As I walked, I passed a couple of girls riding a moped through the grass, and I felt how they shared a deep, unbreakable friendship. I saw a pair of lovers lying in the field, totally immersed in each other with such tenderness. I saw a mother with her newborn child, such a profound sense of joy and love, nurturing and trusting between them. There were others, too: a father and young child, a woman with her dog, students full of enthusiasm for learning and having fun. All the while I was floating with each step.

Then I arrived where I was going. It was a college campus, full of busy people rushing here and there with their schedules and deadlines and appointments and assignments, no time to notice and just be in the present, to connect with others in a real way. The atmosphere of control pushed down on my shoulders and I walked heavily, hunched over.

This is the contrast, I imagine, between feeling what is, as it is, and the efforts of the mind to lock onto what is and have it be something in particular according to one's need for control. One leads to effortless joy, the other removes joy.

It's OK to feel gloomy, cut off, depressed. Those feelings are real and valid in their own way and there is no point trying to deny them or artificially force oneself to cheer up and be happy. Accept the darkness. See into it, understand where it comes from. Allow the experience, but know that you are not the content of your experience. You are a being whose essence is beyond all definition. You need not trouble yourself with thoughts of "Who am I?" To ask is to deny what you already know: "I am." Everything else is just part of the game.

We are immersed in the game. We have forgotten who we are. And that is exactly as it was meant to be. Now and in the coming time, we have this opportunity, if we truly so desire, to awaken and expand to other levels of the game, or even, given a critical mass of harmoniously aligned intent, to affect the conditions of the one we're in.

What unites us? What is our common ground? Does that not far outweigh whatever might divide us?

What can one million people together achieve? A lot. Like, say, shifting the entire course of our planet's future? If they believe in the possibility and put their minds to it, then yes.

That's the idea behind the New Reality Transmission.

I read about it on George Ure's daily Urban Survival report today and thought, man, this is exactly what we need. Imagine going through this apocalypse with the minimum amount of human suffering and the maximum amount of things like enlightenment, world peace, free energy, ecosphere restoration, and no more goddamned lies ever perpetrated upon humanity for the benefit of the selfish few at the expense of the rest, ever (until the next time we screw it all up and have to go through this again, haha, knock on wood)... manifesting in the shortest time possible. Doesn't that kind of sound... well... worth it? Worth a few minutes of your time each day for a few days? Really. I mean, really.

That's all I guess I have to say on that. If you don't know what the "November Tipping Point" refers to, I would point you over to Half Past Human and particularly their latest update. Also, for a curious seeming correlation between the Web Bot, Time Wave Zero, and the Mayan Calendar, check out these short articles on Altimatrix.

You can just smell the self-righteous zeal coming off this post, can't you? Yeah, I know. I'm working on that. But I don't mind, actually. It reminds me of just how human I am.

Oh, and on a relatively unrelated note: yesterday was my birthday and it was awesome. :)

the gods play poker, the gods play dice
lay wagers on the freewill choice
of mortals, watching from above
to see the outworkings of love
within us, or the lack thereof
creating pain or paradise

let the gods themselves amuse
and know that all the world's a ruse
set up within duality
a ring of false dichotomy
exposed for those with eyes to see
with gnostic impartiality
what we might gain, or rather lose

dependent on our heart's desire
for freedom, spirit's holy fire
can burn away what holds us back
but only if we live the fact
of what we are, undo the stack
of karma, penetrate the pack
of lies and seek what takes us higher

create and sing and dance and serve
and learn the place of every nerve
and celebrate what brought you here
the truth that resonates so clear
for all who have the ears to hear
beyond the senses' maya curve

that God is One and All is God
perfection veiled, appearing flawed
evolving through humanity
we manifest the energy
reveal it incrementally
Love is the universal Law.

These are heavy times. Know why? 'Cause we've been accumulating so... much... damn... stuff.

Not just possessions. I mean inside. All this stuff, and most of it just so much dead weight. And who's going to be flying when they're carrying three hundred thousand years' worth of spiritual ballast on their soul?

You wonder why this place feels like such a dump sometimes. Yeah. You don't need that stuff; you should be dumping it. Dump it here while you can!

But it's attached, how do I get it off?

Don't be silly. You're the one that's attached to it. Just let go.

What if I can't?

Then you'll get help.

What kind of help?

Whatever kind you prove yourself in need of. Ignore one kind when it's offered, and you'll get another kind, and another, and another. As many chances as you need. But it gets pretty rough when you keep turning the offers down. That's how you keep yourself down. Say yes to whatever's happening, pay attention to what it's asking you to do. Pain is a good sign. It means you're feeling where the attachment is. Use that indicator. Open up that secret stash of pain and guilt and judgment. See what ugly things are there. Burn them in the fires of love, truth, and forgiveness. Transmute them into their opposites.

The opposite of suffering is bliss. The opposite of cowardice is courage. The opposite of foolishness is wisdom. The opposite of fear is love.

Lose the concrete shoes. How else you gonna swim?

These are deep waters, dangerous and beautiful, deadly and powerful, life-giving and gentle.

Learn to swim, learn to dive.

There's a current and a tide and a huge, huge wave.

Ride it out, surf the wave, don't get dashed against the rocks.

Keep your balance, keep your eyes on the brightening horizon.

Go by feel. Trust what's real.

Lighten up! God, don't take yourself so seriously. You're not who you think you are? You don't know who you are? You actually think you don't know who you are. Who are you? Come on!

I see a smile. I know, you're catching on. The realization is awakening. Shhh. Yesss. Ha! ha! Yes!

You are. The One Perfect Being.

Challenging days. Keep your head, keep your feet, keep your eye on the ball. Be honest. Don't give up the good fight. Don't let the insanity in the world get to you. Don't let circumstances determine your fate for you. Know what it is you depend on and be sure it's something you actually can depend on.

Fear is the mind-killer. There is nothing to fear. Everything is going to be all right. Never mind how it looks at the moment, on the surface. It's going to be all right. It is all going exactly as it must go.

Do what you can do and let the rest take care of itself. Have faith. Hang on tight. Take it one day at a time.

This is what I needed to hear for myself, so I took it upon myself to say it.

Peace, in love and in truth.

I can't do it. I can't go through with what I've thought I was going to do for the past six months. I've dreamed of going solo into the unknown, to put my faith and my wits to the ultimate test by leaving everything behind and throwing myself into the extreme situation of being alone and far from home without any place in the world to call my own. But I can't do it.

My mind is a disaster. It's a war zone. Now I find that I have no choice but to admit defeat in a war that I thought was something other than it was. Thank you, my raging intellect, for going so far beyond the bounds of what was necessary and good for me that you've brought me to this impossibly untenable position between what the world around me appears to know, and what I think I know. It's time to surrender and say, I just don't know. I daresay neither does anyone else, but goddammit, they've got the world on their side. I'm just a kid with delusions of whatever. I've lost my faith in all of that. Not in what's real - I still think God is the only reality - but in all this crap I've picked up and filled my brain with, and for what - to feel special? I'm not special. If I'd accepted my own limitations from the start and stuck to what I could actually know from my own experience instead of relying on all this outside information with no direct relevance to my life - I wouldn't be in this situation. If I'd let all that "wider world out there" stuff be whatever it was and just kept it as a minor curiosity at the most, I'd be fine. But I had to latch onto it, try to make sense of things that were too big for me, beyond my ability to assimilate into a healthy, workable view of reality. And now I find myself... just... lost. And deeply depressed. As if that weren't enough, I've also gone and laid waste to what foundation for a life I did have, materially, and been horribly unfair to those around me in the process. "Back to square one" doesn't quite describe it. More like square zero.

So now I've lost faith in both worlds: the one everyone else seems to live in, and the one I'd built up in my head. But the fact of the matter is that, at least for the moment, the former still has a standing structure. I'm not convinced that it'll hold for long, but it's all there is right now that I can actually see and stand on, if not put my trust in. I don't have the means to prepare in an outward sense for the collapse of this current social order. I look at the mainstream news media in this country, the way it keeps on keeping up the facade, quoting all these paid experts and professional liars, and I don't believe a word of it. Their job, whether they know it or not, is to keep the appearance going and prolong the game for as long as possible. The powers-that-be, on the level you don't see, are convinced that it's all coming down in a less distant future than you know, and their strategy is to milk the rest of us for as long as they can and when the time comes, to retreat into the impenetrable, well-stocked hidey-holes they've built for themselves at our expense over the last 30-40 years, to wait out the virtually-unsurvivable conditions expected for the surface of the planet. That's if the sources I got that from are for real - obviously, I make no guarantees. If such is the case, then I have no interest in engaging that scenario one way or another, except to point it out as a possibility and maybe throw an astral monkey wrench or two into the works, if I feel like it. Not that it'll be necessary, but it'd at least be a gesture of where I stand in relation to their hell-bound matrix of the unreal.

Who is this "them?" It's a whole bunch of "thems," of course, but from what I've been able to discern, they have a definite thread in common: they are in the business of the enslavement of humanity for selfish, senseless purposes, and the higher up the pyramid you look, the more depraved and inhuman they are. The peak cannot be seen, but the upper levels comprise the world's wealthiest white men and women (whose names will never be on a Forbes 500 list) - the top Zionist bankers and the innermost elite of the elites.

Their wealth is stolen in a thousand ways from the blood and sweat of the common people, whom they view as livestock ripe for the slaughter. They have had their way with the rest of us for a long time because most of us have been too ignorant and cowardly to make them stop, and the few who do speak out against them, they have silenced. They have engineered, financed, and profited from every revolution and every major war in modern time. Their tools are the World Bank, the IMF, and all the biggest banks, through whose blood-sucking debt schemes they keep the Third World nations in poverty and are steadily bringing the First World nations also to their knees via controlled demolition of the money economy. And if they control most of the world's wealth, which they do, then I should hardly have to spell out the architecture of worldly power that that wealth has bought them. It is all around us: in politics and legislation, of course; likewise religion, art, entertainment, education, medicine; the courts, the police and military forces; the food, water, and energy supplies; every aspect of human life.

But all this is only the outer manifestation of what is, at its core, the war for our minds and hearts. They can't touch us there, but they can set things up outwardly in such a way that most of us will, contrary to our divine nature, tend to play the part they intend for us: we become unthinking consumers of a ready-made culture, investing our efforts and emotions in the things that feed their agenda and their demonic masters' thirst for human fear and suffering. Their greatest pleasure is to so pervert our ways that we become like them: we forsake our divinity and join the morbid march of their cult of death.

From this perspective, perhaps, you may understand why I've found it so hard to make a place for myself in this society. I don't believe in the existing structure as any kind of sustainable foundation for the happy, healthy kind of life I desire for myself and those around me. I can't bring myself to play by the stinkin' rules. I'm an uppity slave, haha. Freedom? Dream on! Well, it was a nice dream while it lasted. Too bad I never made a workable plan to attain it. I realize now that freedom has a price. It's earned. I haven't earned mine. I'm not yet ready to claim it. It's that simple.

My heart is undefeated. I will play the game for a while longer, but only until I sense my time has arrived to step forward and play a different part, the part I feel I am destined for. As long as there is time on the clock, I will play the game. I have a life to rebuild, such as it is, and thank God for the resources at my disposal even within such a system as this. There is a sanity to it, if you don't dig too deep. :D

So I'll make use of what's here now in preparation for whatever is to come after. My primary concern is to learn a practical trade. Since I left high school eight years ago, I've only managed to hit dead end after dead end. I've never really had a clear idea what I wanted to do for a living. I have a better idea now, and the will to do what it takes to find out for sure what it is, get that education, and finally gain a useful skill set so that someday I'll be able to support not only myself, but my future children as well.

Running away was a pipe dream. There's no "away" to run to. Everything I need is right here. It's a tough pill to swallow, to admit that I've been on the wrong track all this time. Not that adventuring in itself is wrong - God forbid! - but I see now that I have not been in a position where I could do that and still be leading a responsible life too. And I think some kind of adventure may find me anyway, before all is said and done. No need to seek it out!

Sometimes the very hardest thing to do is exactly what a person must do. In my case, it's to humble myself down to my own size, bite the bullet, and play the game for as long as need be.

But I won't be singing their song while I do it. ;)

Professor Tolkien never intended his saga of Middle-Earth as an allegory of our world. He did, however, hope it would be applicable towards discovering something of the nature of this world and ourselves.

I am no literary scholar, but I can spot an archetype when it's highlighted in no less than the title of a book. Return of the King portrays many archetypes, but the one that concerns me most at this time is the inner meaning of the titular exile-King's return to the throne of the world of Men. No doubt much has already been written on the subject, but as I said, I am no scholar. I will merely tell what I can perceive: that the restoration of the true King's authority, over the resistance of the Steward, speaks directly to the most fundamental conflict of human existence: the personal self of ego-consciousness versus the ultimate supremacy of the Impersonal Self of God-consciousness.

Denethor, Steward of Gondor, embodies many qualities typical of the ego. In fact, he is entirely ruled by it, by the illusion of separateness it engenders, and by the fear that is its fundamental first fruit. He is a prisoner of his own limited thinking; he knows neither true love nor true peace. His faith in appearances hinders him from awakening to the Truth behind appearances; and so he can never have true faith. In the face of the apparent loss of all he ever held dear, he surrenders not to a transcendent Power that would transform all things for the highest good, but surrenders instead to despair, delirium, and death.

Aragorn, like Denethor, is merely a man. The difference between them lies in the fact that Aragorn, when tried, chooses the upward path. He likewise carries a limited ego personality, but chooses to place his trust in something greater. He sees his own faults and weaknesses; he doubts himself and dares not claim the throne before he has passed through the cleansing fires of purgatory in his life's journey up to and through the War of the Ring. His will to transcend ego and rein it in at every turn in favour of right action in the service of the One-in-All is what drives him to the completion of his noble destiny in spite of the frequent appearance of loss and impossibility. Having chosen the true Master within as his guide, he reaps the fruits of Spirit and embodies ever more the qualities of the Divine, chief among them being Power, Wisdom, and Love.

I don't think Aragorn was necessarily aware of all this in the terms I've used here. I have read somewhere that transformation is always unconscious while it is taking place; it's only in looking back that we can have a concept of it. His process was an unfolding, moment by moment. To examine one's own process intellectually is of limited use to the process itself. But it can be good to form a conceptual framework. Words are but the promise of Wisdom; experience of choices made and their consequences is the mechanism by which that promise is gradually fulfilled. We can begin by thinking the truth, recognizing it in the outer form of words, and progress toward Knowing by consistently endeavouring to live that truth.

I've been reading a few words of this nature from Joseph Benner's 1914 treatise The Impersonal Life. Written from an esoteric Christian perspective, it is as succinct and powerful a book concerning the nature of the Divine and how to approach it as I've ever encountered. I find it more accessible and readily applicable than his detailed guide to the Gnostic spiritual path, The Way to the Kingdom, which, of course, may also be useful to those earnestly seeking communion with God. Below are a couple of quotes selected from The Impersonal Life. The first ties in with this image of the King, and the second sheds a bit more light on the book's core message.

From what I have understood of this book, all paths are guided by and lead back to the One. All beings serve the One, whether their works be righteous or not. Yet the nature of one's path and the quality of one's experience are determined by one's choices of what to believe and how to act. To persist in error and cling to illusion is to prolong and multiply suffering, however profitable it might seem in the short term to the separated personality, however undesirable the truth may appear. An individual soul-being who insists on perpetuating disharmony and disease through embracing the falsehood of its own separation will, if it does not turn back, ultimately be cast into oblivion, perhaps to be recycled back to the level of consciousness of base matter with no free will whatsoever. That is my own speculation. But I have no desire to go that way to see what happens. I think most beings eventually are turned through the pressure of accumulated experience to the upward path, toward conscious, joyful Union with their Divine Source.

The fact is we are not separate from God and never have been. We have no will that is not an extension of Divine Will, no breath that is ours except by the breath of the Living God. It is only our thinking we are separate that subjectively makes it so for us. Because We are God, and God is all-powerful, and for God to think is to create, it is literally true that whatever we are, whatever position we are in, is entirely of our own creation. Not the creation of our personality, but the creation of God acting through our personality. To transcend personality is to access the Truth of who we are. From the Impersonal Source, Giver, and True Self of God alone can we hope to receive any Power, Wisdom, or Love. To the extent that we have proven ourselves capable and willing to use our gifts in selfless service to the Divine within us and in all beings, will we be granted further such gifts and a deeper communion with that Self. If we seek to use our gifts for personal gain, we reap only disaster and humiliation, that we might grow beyond such base desires and know what it was we really desired all along. The true Desire of the Soul is to be One with God, to be a pure vessel, a clear channel, and a perfect tool for the Heart, the Mind, and the Will of God. Therefore the Soul causes the personality to go through the painful process of realizing that it must yield; that it is not, as it imagines itself to be, the worthy ruler of its own existence, or anything close to self-sufficient in the hour of need. The true Master appears within only when the ego is subdued and properly prepared for its presence. The ego and its child, the intellect, must be silent ere the voice of the Master can be heard.

The King will return to the throne of the Self, that much is for certain. The question is, how much longer do we want to wait? Are we willing to do what it takes to see that day arrive for us? What if that day were tomorrow? Would that mean Life... or Death? A silly question, I beg your pardon. But in all seriousness, I know from my own humble experience that the Christ is there within us. It can reveal itself to us in whatever aspect or portion we are able to receive at the moment, if only we allow it to do so.

Soundtrack: Deep Forest - Boheme

A richly woven carpet of sand, reindeer lichen, heather, bilberry, lingonberry, pinecones and needles caresses my bare feet as I wend my way over the rises and falls of the forest floor. I marvel at the abundance of tiny, smoke-purple-winged butterflies in these high-summer woods, and taste the first bilberries of the season. I bury my face in the soft, fuzzy green leaves of a waist-high sapling and give thanks for the ever-loving, ever-giving nature of trees.

During my walk, I realize that this rebirthing that I'm going through is a continuous process. Little by little, that which is unreal within me dies away, so that the real can arise. Or, to put it another way, the power of the unreal over me diminishes as my awareness of it grows. I become more able to choose the real over the unreal. But this is all very vague and abstract.

In more specific terms, what I've gone through in recent days has been a painful stripping away of my denial of some very ugly aspects of myself. Narcissism. Hypocrisy. The list goes on. I begin to awaken to the full reality of the deep karmic debt which I've incurred in this life. The people I've treated as objects for ego gratification. The parasitical behaviour, taking everything that's offered and giving only when it's convenient. The refusal to take responsibility for my own situation and change it. The attitude that this world somehow owes me for being so alien to what I'd prefer it to be. The idea that I can just go on doing whatever I feel like with no regard for other human beings or the reality in which I live. Playing games to get what I want. Bending the truth, glossing over inconvenient facts. Gossiping behind people's backs. Using my spiritual and intellectual gifts as a cloak for all of the above, instead of truly devoting and applying them for the good of all beings. I've known all this on some level already, but it took two destroyed relationships in one day, and the frank rebuke of both individuals concerned, to finally break through my denial.

Whatever else this blog has been to those who read it, for me it's been a toy. A game. A diversion. All ego, with just enough Spirit to have some small justification for its existence. I've been playing a role that's only part of who I really am. And this idea that I'm on some kind of spiritual path, that's bullshit. I've done all that, it's not what I need to concern myself with in this life. I've got gifts, and I sure as hell ought to use them when the opportunity presents itself, but this monologue is the least of the ways I can do that. Practically insignificant.

If you want to talk about spiritual or esoteric topics with me, you're more than welcome to send me an email. Whatever insight I have to offer is at your disposal.

I've recently had the opportunity to begin reacquainting myself with my inborn energy-healing abilities. This is an area in which I see myself developing and being of service in the future.

I don't know what the future shape of this blog will be. I will leave it up, and I will post whatever I feel prompted to post, as I've always done. The blogs you see listed on the right are all excellent and worth checking out.

My immediate future appears to hold a trip to southern Spain. During my stay there I will get back into a balanced lifestyle and weigh my options for what to do next. I must ultimately follow my heart. Signs have seemed to be pointing to Africa, but that could just as well mean nothing. I expect to return to both Finland and Canada. I have karmic debts to repay in both places.

A new world is coming. At some point, some of us may find ourselves moving between different dimensions within that new world, or even between planets. All of us who survive will, in whatever capacity, contribute to building that new world. That new world is already here as a blueprint, waiting to be made manifest. The transition is ongoing. It began a long time ago. Everything is under control. There is no need to try to anticipate or stress over what's coming down the pike. All we need concern ourselves with is following the still, small voice within, making the sometimes drastic and difficult changes in our own lives that we need to make. You have a role that you came here to play. It's up to you to discover it and play it to the fullest. And the fact is, you will, whether you consciously decide to or not.

So I indulged in a little sermon after all. Take it as you will, or don't. It's a fart in a hurricane, a desperate cry to have my significance acknowledged. Don't encourage me and for heaven's sake, don't assume that I'm right. Listen to your own truth. It's inside you and nowhere else.

From here on in, I stick to what I know. If I do start spouting nonsense that I can't back up, I pray for someone to write me a comment saying the emperor has no clothes.



Blessings to all.

Over and out.

On the one hand, this is a superfluous entry, because I have nothing to say. But then, would that be so very different from any other entry? Anything in this blog actually worth the bits and pixels it takes up isn't from me, but merely passes through me on its way here from somewhere else. And I'll be first to call bullshit on that and admit that it's all ego, all the time... except for what isn't. Make sense? Good either way. It is what it is.

So I'm leaving everything I know behind in just a matter of days now. Certain details are probably best left unbroadcast in order not to attract the wrong kind of attention, but if I've got it coming, then there's nothing I can do to stop that either. "Irresponsible" and "reckless" would be the judgment pronounced upon me by most people, but I'm just doing what I have to do. Playing my part, from the heart. To do anything else would be unthinkable.

I've been doing a great deal of soul-searching, shining light on some deep, dark issues of the psyche. Issues of self-doubt versus self-confidence, intellect versus intuition, demanding versus allowing, my relationship with the Divine (most acutely with its Feminine aspect), and most confusing of all, sex. I have no idea how these issues are going to be resolved, or how quickly. It will be a natural process of unfolding, more likely longer than shorter. My impatience to be done with all these things helps not at all. And that's another issue in itself.

Self-acceptance, embracing the moment as the perfection that it is from the viewpoint of the Absolute... the presence of the One... gratitude and love. These are the things of which I must constantly re-mind myself. And quite often am re-minded through no effort of my own, but by the grace of God manifest in my life and in the world around me. A glorious sunset, arrayed like a masterpiece of Classical hyperreality and utterly indifferent to my petty thoughts of melancholy self-pity... little things, even insects, so full of significance. The invisible speaking through the visible, revealing itself moment by moment, piece by piece. I need this. I cannot live without it. And to live is to strive toward it.

To my old friends, I say thank you for all that we've been able to share. You'll always be with me in my heart, and I with you. To those new friends whom I have yet to meet, I welcome you in advance and look forward to the fun and the learning we will have together.

That's all for now. There will be more.