sleepless in Seattle

Though it's 5:00 am, and I've been up all night, I find myself unable to sleep, and rather introspective about what comes next. Today will be my last full day in Seattle. Then we head South to spend a week in California, and then begin the great trek East, where I will return to Asheville. Asheville means a lot of things to me. Most of all, it is the people, the community. Connections that run very deep. An incredible creative family. And it means the mountains. The environment, so lush and fecundant. It means familiarity. It means home.

My time here has been unique in my life. We arrived in Seattle around Fall Equinox. We're leaving around the Solstice. It's been an Autumn of internalization, but internalizing with another. Ilsa and I have very much taken this time as an opportunity to become a family. We have gotten to share a home, to do a sort of test run on our life together. It's been a very positive experience. We've proven to be very good at living together. We work well, and we give each other enough space. At the same time, it's been an isolated experiment; we have not had the influences of jobs, friends, or external projects (except in very marginal ways). Asheville is ripe with these things (well, not jobs, but friends and projects). Actually, I'm really looking forward to living there with her. I think this time has been crucial; I feel very confident in our stability, our happiness, and our ability to not get pulled out of ourselves in the immersive chaos that is Asheville. And I'm seriously looking forward to having a bigger place, one where the music room can be its own room, without annoying neighbors.

My summary of this journey is as follows: We departed as summer began. We visited the Grand Canyon on Summer Solstice, and were reminded of the vastness and infinity of creation. This was the first passage; the immersion into beauty.

Then we were purified in the desert. This consisted of forty days and nights in Las Vegas. My demons came out of me and made themselves known. The greatest of these was Anger, and his face was that of a bitter old man. But the desert is always a place of vision. I saw visions there. The vision of Lucifer (Luxor), the all-seeing eye in the pyramid. This was the second passage; the trial by fire.

Then there was the release into ash and water, the crystal clear waters of Mt. Shasta, the holy mountain. First by ash, then cold water, then hot water, and finally by the sheer, all-consuming waters of love in the redwood trees. This was the closure of the third passage.

On a morning, as the sun began to shine into the room of our loving, and we had only that very night accepted the perfection of all that had happened to us, a call came in. It was the call of Chaos, in the disguise of the agents of order (the Las Vegas police; surely sorcerers of chaos if ever such beings were). And chaos ensued. After a whirlwind of planes, car adventures, covert operations, medieval pageantry, an Italian villa, mead drinking, short celebratory gatherings, floods and deluge, mud, lots of mud, strange surroundings, moving through cities at the dark of night, freaking out on the highway, vampire tales, car fires, and one very long night in a Wal-Mart parking lot, we were finally prepared for the true bastion of choatic experimentation: Burning Man. The burning of the Man and the temple marked the culmination of our journey into Chaos. This was the fourth and final passage of our journey.

What followed was a phase of introspection, of taking these experiences into hibernation, and as Fall Equinox heralded the dying of the sun and the changing of the colors of the trees, it meant for us a time to go into a sort of cocoon. It has been a wonderful period of gestation. I can't say I've gotten a damn thing done. I've saved no money. I've completed no musical works. At best, I've completed watching every episode ever made of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (at seven seasons, no small task, I'll add). I've not gotten into shape, nor mastered the art of tantric sex. But I have spent three months in the bliss of my lover's arms, living, dancing, creating day to day. My most estensive creative acts have been meals I've prepared. I played a set of music at a coffeehouse. I drank some good coffee, for that matter. I went to a couple of outstanding parties, as well as a couple of not-so-outstanding ones. I've made a couple of friends. But most importantly, I've laid a foundation with Ilsa for the rest of our lives. And the value of this can not be overstated.
There is much work ahead. This very moment is the calm before a storm. What lays beyond is a great deal of work that will lead me down a trajectory into the future. I am ready. I am prepared. I am happier and stronger and freer than I have ever been in my life. The future is very exciting.
PanDoor

About the holidays...

My friend M. just forwarded an email to me about Thanksgiving, and how messed up it's origins are. Here's my response to it.

M., have you seen the Thanksgiving episode from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, where the Indians come back to seek revenge, and the characters all have this debate about whether to kill them, or who's responsible to them. It's a fucking brilliant episode. Personally, I think it's cool that there's a holiday about giving thanks, and I think people should be more grateful in general, especially those of us who do enjoy a disproportionate amount of wealth. Yes, it sucks that the Puritans killed off a bunch of Indians, but then again, I don't see that that has much to do with us. We didn't choose that, we didn't have anything to do with it. Most of us didn't even have ancestors that were involved with it. Even if we did, so what? Is it my fault if my great-great-great-great-grandfather was a murderer? Invading people kill each other off. Plenty of Native American tribes did the same shit. They fought and killed each other too. History is full of tales of people coming in, trampling the indigenous people they find, stealing their land and setting up camp. The Indian culture (as in India) we all like to draw from in our rituals and our mystical practices was one of these cultures. Shiva and company were the gods of warrior horsemen who came to the Indus valley, slaughtered hordes of the goddess-worshipping agricultural peoples who lived there, and stayed. But they also absorbed a lot from the culture they invaded. As sad and brutal as this process is, it's one that is by no means unique to European white guys (though admittedly, they've made quite a science of it). Hopefully though, we can also absorb some of the more positive aspects of the native peoples. I feel like we do draw a lot from tribalism and shamanism, at least among a certain subset of the greater population. I'm just saying, I think we need to stop beating ourselves up about a genocide that happened a couple hundred years ago. Now, what's going on in Iraq, that's a different story. We do have an effect on that, and we should all be asking ourselves if we're doing enough to stop it. But sadly, most of these things are beyond our control. Like most people throughout history, we don't get to affect that much of what is being done in our name. Our struggles, most of the time, are personal and immediate. It's about doing what you can right here and now to make the world better. It's about giving thanks. It's about embodying the culture we would like to see, rather than the one that is. And eventually, these things do affect the greater culture. I love the holidays. I love them because I think parties are fun. I like eating lots of decadent food. I like pretty lights. I like giving gifts and receiving them. And yes, these are things I like all the time, not just on certain days. I wish everyone would be festive and celebrate all-year round like we do. But if they're not going to do that, I'm glad they do it at least once a year. And granted, I can enjoy the holidays because I don't go to malls, I don't watch TV (except Buffy), and I generally avoid most of the nastier, consumer-driven holiday culture. If I didn't avoid these things, I'd probably hate it too. But I don't think we have to accept the given cultural interpretations of the holidays. Forget the historical "events" that may or may not have happened to inspire Thanksgiving or Christmas. Let's celebrate because it's fun to do so, because it's good to feast and drink and because it is the darkest time of the year, and all the more reason to decorate with colored lights and candles.
Anyway, that's my rant about it. Try to stay away from the shopping world. And drink some egg nog; it's really good shit. We're going through like a gallon of the soy nog a week at my house. And remember, nutmeg in the right quantities is hallucinogenic.
Much love,
PanDoor

Quintessence and the attainment thereof

Beneath the world of appearances, by which I mean the physical world as we perceive it in all of its myriad diversity, lies one true substance. This is what the Alchemists were attempting to tap into when they aspired to finding the “Quintessence”, literally “fifth element”. They saw the physical world as comprised of four elements: fire, air, earth, and water. The fifth element was pure spirit, and as such was not subject to the entropic nature of the physical creation. It was believed that by accessing the quintessential level of an element, one could undo its tendencies towards chaos. In practical terms, this meant such possibilities as bringing about immortality or transmuting base metals into gold.

The story about reality that underlies this pursuit is that the Creator originally made the world perfect out of this one substance. The Alchemists saw God as the ultimate force of order and harmony. However, at some point, due to the events known as “the Fall”, which are described metaphorically in the book of Genesis (Adam and Eve being expelled from Eden), the whole material world got corrupted and divided into various elements which were pervaded by a tendency to break apart.

Now this story was an attempt to explain away the chaos inherent in nature while letting God off the hook. They saw God as infallible, and hence incapable of creating such a clearly flawed world. Personally, I do not subscribe to this idea, as I see creation more in a dualistic sense, which pits Chaos and Order in a delicate and beautiful dance whose movements are the world as we perceive it. But there is a great deal of depth to the Alchemists vision. It is clear that the tendency of the natural world is to break up into chaos. Newton couched this is physical terms through his second law of thermodynamics. But at the same time, there appears to be an equal force that is not entropic, but rather creative, active, organizing. Were this force not in place, the world as we perceive it would not exist.

The expression of this power into matter is perceived by physicists as the fundamental forces of Nature. The so-called “strong nuclear force”, for instance, is an attempt to explain why great numbers of positively-charged protons can co-exist in very tight quarters in the nucleus of an atom, despite the tendency of similarly charged objects to repel each other. This is a force of cohesion, which counteracts the entropy-driving natural premise that opposites attract. (there are also many esoteric references to the effect that in the spiritual worlds, like attracts like. Hence, when astral traveling, a person will tend to attract forces and beings that resonate with his or her own projections, intentions, and desires).

So what is the nature of this so-called “quintessence” or underlying spiritual substance that is the true source of all creation? In esoteric literature, numerous terms abound: light, sound, spirit, love, Cosmic Fire, word (logos). In all of my investigations into this question, utilizing the instruments of consciousness available to me, I have often seen this primal force as one or more of these concepts, however none is complete. To apply qualities based on the qualities of material (or even emotional) forces is to attempt to limit what is limitless. Be that as it may, we have to call it something for practicality sake, and while personally I’m drawn to the poetry of saying that all creation is made of Love, I will defer here to tradition, which has more tended to speak of the manifestations of the Absolute as Light.

So here is my supposition. All creation is the manifestation of one singular Light. This Light is homogonous in its nature, however, like white light passing through a prism and breaking up into the various colors of the spectrum, the divine Light, once passed through the filter of consciousness, refracts into various qualities. Because of the coarse and entropic nature of the physical world, the entrance of Light into this world is both very dim, and highly refracted and diffuse. Hence it is very difficult to perceive the true nature of this reality from here. Or at the very least, it requires a great deal of clarification of one’s consciousness through the various means of spiritual/yogic practices.

Now in other levels of reality, this is not the case. The angels and other inhabitants of the spiritual worlds are not so limited by the worlds they inhabit. Hence, they are able to receive and to emanate a much greater degree of this Light in a much purer form.
One version of the story of Lucifer is that his rebellion was inspired by a feeling of compassion for our plight. Here we were, self-aware beings who carried the Divine Light within us. However, we were trapped in these very limited physical vehicles that kept us from knowing our true nature. This is the tragedy that moved Lucifer to leave his place at the right hand of God and devote himself to awakening us through sometimes-drastic means. This is again the story of Prometheus, who brought the fire of the gods to mankind.

I believe it is our purpose in this life to awaken to our true nature and to open to ever-greater levels of Cosmic Light. What is interesting, though, is that to do so requires a delving into darkness as well. I believe that Light and Darkness are mirror images of each other, and without coming to know one, we cannot know the other. That’s why many of my most beautiful experiences of clarity and light have come after a long night of exploring the darkness inside my mind. Psychedelic trance music has often been a great facilitator for this process. After a night of moving through chaos, disintegrating my rational consciousness, and often exploring many darker emotions, I have often come out into the sunrise which a clarity and focus and a sense of peace that is greater than what I generally experience most other times. And darkness and chaos also do not have to mean negative (as in painful or unpleasant) experiences either. Usually after passing through a level of negative emotions, I descend into a more pure level of darkness and chaos. One that is very rich and beautiful and smells of serpents’ blood and sex. The wild, dark passion of allowing one’s reason to step aside so that the body can be swept up into the throes of ecstasy. This can also certainly happen through lovemaking as well, and the sensation afterwards of love and serenity is comparable.
I believe that if there really are angels and gods (and I think there are), they must have a clearer grasp of darkness, as well as of the light. They must know deeper levels of unconscious passion in order to also know higher levels of pure and absolute being. For me, it is the tastes of both that give me the desire to go on living.