T is for Tribe

I was a weird kid. Seriously. Even as kids go, I was a real oddball.

When I was ten years old, I told my grandmother that I didn't believe in "God" (which went over REAL well, let me tell you), and I'd already seriously considered suicide. It's not that my life was all that terrible (it wasn't, not yet); I just didn't see the point of the whole process, and didn't feel like I belonged where I was.

I was right on that last point- I simply didn't belong there.

As I grew and aged and became a teenager, life deteriorated significantly. My sense of not belonging, and my opinion of the pointlessness of the whole thing grew and grew. I tried religion, serving briefly as an acolyte at the Episcopal church where we lived, and that didn't do anything for me. It made even less sense to me than anything else I'd seen or learned. More and more, my peers, my teachers, my parents- they all seemed clueless, cruel, and ignorant, and nothing I did or said or asked made any difference, unless it was to make matters worse. I ended up living with my father, my younger brother, my step-mother, and her son, and it went downhill even further. My step-mother was a Jehovah's Witness; my father converted, and my brother and I "converted" with him, even though no one asked us what we thought, nor cared. My brother ended up in the care of the state after flagging down some police officers and telling them he was being "abused." In retrospect, he kinda was, and so was I, though I didn't see it that way at the time.

My father and step-mother split up, and I went to live with my father. I became even more isolated; high school was a living hell: I had nothing at all in common with my classmates, my teachers didn't seem to have anything to teach me, really (with a couple of memorable and noteworthy exceptions), and I wondered more than ever why I bothered to hang around.

When my father's marijuana habit cost him his job, and we got evicted from our apartment, I went back to live with my mother, step-father, and half-sister. I battled through my last half-year of high school, found my first girlfriend, and started community college. Things became more and more tense. I got along with my parents exactly not at all, and I finally had a fight with my mother that pushed me over the edge. I emptied the trust fund account that I had (from a car accident when I was six), packed my few meager possessions, and my girlfriend and I got in my car and just left.

...at which point, I found out what hell was really like.

I'm not going to get into details of that trip here; it's pretty horrible, and has no real bearing on the point of this writing. Enough to say, then, that I considered suicide much more seriously during the three months that we were "gone," and that we ended up moving back to California, very much in pieces.

After that move back, I met the man that more or less set me on my Path, and began the rough-and-tumble course that brought me to where I am now.

During all of this, one of the profound and overwhelming themes I battled with was the inherent and obvious uselessness of other human beings. With very few, very rare exceptions, people were cruel, deceitful, dishonest, and shallow. They were only interested in what profited them, they cared nothing for others, and were, as a rule, not to be trusted. Every single time, without exception, that I let someone get close, that I showed trust, I ended up with a knife in my back.

I tried, for a very long time, to emulate one of my sci-fi heros, Mr. Spock from Star Trek: I wanted to purge myself of emotion and feeling, to live life as a logician, an empiricist. Prove it, show me, was my attitude. If you can't, then I won't accept what you say. Even my nascent Pathwork was based on the idea that if I couldn't SEE it work, then it wasn't real, wasn't true.

A very lonely way to live, let me tell you.

In my mid 20's, I was introduced to Buddhism, and a concept that they call Sangha: the Buddhist community. It was the first whispering in my mind and in my heart that I might indeed at long last be able to find my People, that I might be able to trust again, to love again, to care again, without being made to bleed.

A noble illusion, while it lasted: the Buddhists I was working with turned out to be as twisted and corrupt as anyone else I ever met, and apart from giving me another piece of the puzzle, apart from being another rest-stop on my Path to Here and Now, they were no different than anyone else I ever met.

Stumbling through the next decade or so, it was more of the same. I resolved to survive, or die, on my own, and not count on others; I would do well for a while, until lonliness became too great, and I'd let someone get close, only to learn the painful lesson yet again, and go back to solitude for a while.

My first expedition to Salem, which I alluded to in O is for Oregon, marked the beginning of a radical shift in the way I saw the world. I had many of the puzzle pieces already, without a whelk's idea in a supernova (100 points to anyone who knows where I got that expression) of what to do with them; suddenly, a whole bagful of new pieces fell into my lap, and a whole boxful of new tools, new approaches were simply... handed to me.

The people responsible for this sudden metamorphisis know who they are. They also know that I love them, and that I am blood-grateful for all they've done for me. If they DON'T know these things, they ain't been listenin'.

What's the point of all this?

It's in the title: Tribe.

Your People? They're out there. The ones who will give you their blood to drink, if you're thirsty and there's nothing else. The ones who will have shovels and trashbags ready when the bodies start piling up. The ones who will lay down in traffic for you, if that's what it takes. The ones who will help you turn a few loaves and fishes into a feast for hundreds.

Tribe.

...so please, take if from someone who has looked Death in the eye more than once, someone who has contemplated the Void and been as close as a person can get to just... jumping... no matter how painful, how lonely, how terrifying your position is... your People, your Tribe, they're out there... and you will find them, if you don't quit.

I don't pretend to be more than I am... but I also no longer pretend to be less than I am. With that in mind... if there's someone out there, hurting, lost, ready to chuck the whole thing... don't quit. If you need someone to talk to, even if it's only to hear it again that there's something worth hanging around for, feel free to e-mail me. I'm not saying I have all the answers, but between me and my Tribe, we do have a damn big chunk of them, and if I can't help, it's a good bet that I know someone who can.

Remember: Tribe.

S is for Suffering and Sacrifice

I complain a lot about our language. It's inadequate. We have dozens, scores, even hundreds of words for trivial irrelevancies, and none at all for some of the most important concepts out there. We invent new words, and butcher old ones, to describe ridiculous passing phenomena. Worst of all, we take words and mutilate their meanings into something totally unrelated to the original intent.

Two of the worst cases in point in this regard, from where I stand, are Suffering and Sacrifice.

In it's original iteration, "to suffer" meant "to allow, to permit." What does it mean now? And how does the new meaning intersect with the old?

The irony, to me, is that most of the time, when we "suffer" in the modern sense, we're "suffering" it to happen in the archaic sense. When we suffer, we LET it happen. Many times, dare I even say MOST times, we not only know WHY we are unhappy, but also exactly how to rectify that reality, how to change things so that our pain can end or abate, and our unhappiness can be reversed. Typically, we do no such thing. We refuse to make changes, and allow ourselves to remain miserable. Why?

It's because we fear things we do not know, things we do not fully understand, and we fear change. Stripping another layer off, though, there's another reason buried just below the surface: change requires work, and we've been bred as a culture and as a species to be LAZY. We have so many tools and machines and gadgets to do EVERYTHING for us, from walking to communication to writing to cooking... the whole world has been made so effortless that we grow up not knowing what it's like to have to buckle down and WORK to make something happen. It's easier to just sit there, and.... suffer. The Emerald Tablet tells us, "As Above, So Below," and our conditioned in physical laziness has made us spiritually lazy as well, and as someone who wandered, feeling lost, for decades before he found his Tribe, I can tell you that there is no suffering so great as feeling empty inside.

Sacrifice... there's another term that makes my blood boil. Even as far back as Biblical times, a "sacrifice" was something that cost you, something that was painful or uncomfortable, something you did to curry favor with one diety or another. Sacrifice represented loss.

In it's original sense, though, "to sacrifice" meant "to choose." You can have "this," or "that," but not both... and isn't most of life that way, a lot of the time? To have one, you must sacrifice the other. It's not bad, or painful. It's just one of the side effects of living in a dualistic world. Certainly, it can sometimes be hard to choose between two things, and I don't deny that there are circumstances under which such a choice could be painful... but it's the circumstances that make it so; sacrifice is not, in and of itself, uncomfortable. It's our attachment to things which makes it so... which is ironic, really, since All is One; there's nothing outside yourself to choose. There are no choices to be made, not really- all choices are one choice. It is the illusion of separation that makes it seem like we must give up This to have That. There is no This or That. There only Is.

How many other words can you think of that might have meant something different once that it does now, or that might have had their meaning twisted by circumstance and the flow of culture into something totally... other?

R is for Rats

When I was 18, I took a job at a bookstore. My boss was a witch.

I told this story in more detail in I is for Intuition The relevant point is how I approached my Path moving forward from there.

I read a couple of books about witchcraft and magick in general. I bought some Tarot cards, muddled with them for a while, and spiraled out from there, trying different things, talking to different people, reading different books.

Funny thing is this: I never read a single book, magazine, or article about Native American mysticism, shamanism, totemism, none of it. I didn't talk to a single medicine man or woman, nothing of the sort... and yet, somehow, I started talking to animals.

Not Dr. Doolittle style, mind you- they don't chirp up and say, "Excuse me, chap, could you pass the vinegar? These chips are a touch dry. There's a good lad." Nothing like that at all. More that I could... hear how they felt, what they needed. The thing that made it really interesting was the fact that they could tell that I could hear them, and they really seemed, generally, to appreciate it.

All of that to say this: a few summers ago, Susan and I were mucking about on a weekend, doing not a lot of anything. I told her, apropos of nothing particular, that I wanted to go to a pet store we used to frequent. No special reason, mind you, I just heard a wee, distant voice in my world, and wondered who's voice it was.

So off we went. Being that sort, I shuffled directly back to where the snakes, lizards, and spiders were kept- those are the kinds of critters that talk to me the most. I spent 30, 45 minutes back there, driving the staff crazy by asking to handle this snake, then that tarantula, and pestering them with questions about how old they were or where they'd come from.

Susan, meanwhile, stayed mostly out front, playing with the bunnies and the ferrets and so on.

I (erroneously) concluded that whatever I was hearing wasn't coming from there, and we went back home.

Susan mentioned, semi-offhand, that she thought the rats they'd had out there were really cute. I was a little surprised by that- I'd never have pegged her for the "rat" type- and I told her that I thought so too, and I used to have rats when I lived in California, MANY moons ago. She asked why I hadn't said anything. I asked why SHE hadn't said anything.

We batted it back and forth for about 10 minutes, then got back in the car and went back to the pet store.

Fast forward about a year: we had two boys (Alder and Ash [Alder was the very first]), two girls (Caper and Clove) that we adopted from a lady who had too many "pets" (gods and fish, how I loathe that word), and a third boy (Linden) who lived in his own little house because of his grumpy disposition, who we adopted from an old friend of Susan's (the old friend was moving and her animals couldn't move with her).

People have some strange, and incorrect, ideas about rats. They're "dirty," they're "mean," they "stink," they "bite"... the list goes on and on.

The last time I checked, all of the above can apply to people... dogs... cats... you catch my drift, I'm sure. The truth couldn't be more different. Rats are basically like tiny little dogs that don't bark and don't have to be "walked." Our ratkids have been some of the sweetest, friendliest, and most fun friends I've had in my whole life.

Alder, in particular, was an incredibly smart and affectionate little guy. If you held your fingers to his face, or held him up to your face, he'd give little rat kisses. They liked to play games, like bobbing for peas (we'd put frozen peas in a bowl of water on the table- it has to be seen to be appreciated). Susan bought a toddler's play set at a garage sale, which we fixed up with tubes and climbing apparatus and called Ratty Playland.

Alder, Ash, Caper, Clove, and Linden are no longer with us. One of the painful downsides to being a ratfriend is the fact that they don't live very long- a couple years, 3 or 4 at the outside, and that's it. There are several health problems that they tend to suffer from, and the average "pet owner" (*teethgrind*) doesn't know enough to do research into what they should be fed or what their other needs are (for instance, most commercial "rat" or "rodent" chow has ingredients in it that can and will cut a rat's lifespan by as much as half), so a lot of houserats are probably not treated nearly as well as their people would like to think. We took damn good care of our kids, and as painful as it was to watch them pass, we're confident that they were grateful for having a safe, comfortable place to live, with the right food and plenty of love.

Mandrake and Sorrel are our boys, now; Hazel, Hyacinth, and Zynnia are the girls. Sorrel and Hazel are hairless rats- they look something like this. I found them to be sorta horrible looking when I was first made aware of their existence... but they grow on you. What's really amazing to me is how each and every one has a distinct and different personality (kinda like people, eh? Imagine that...)

I still get a bit teary, sometimes, when I think about our ratkids that have moved along; maybe it sounds silly to some of you, but I miss the little hairballs. They're not gone, though, not completely; as long as they're remembered, they'll always be around.

If any of you out there have ratkids, or are thinking about getting some, feel free to drop me a line with any questions you might have. We (ok, mostly Susan) did a lot of research when we got Alder, back when, and we've worked pretty hard to make sure ours are the most spoiled rats around. We'd love to help, and it's always fun to meet new ratpeople.

Q is for Quiet

One of the great contradictions of our world is speech. I'm not talking about words, or language. I'm talking... about talking.

Consider the parents of a toddler. Think of how overjoyed they are when little Johnny or Suzie says "Mama" or "Dada" for the first time.Their little one is beginning to grow up; learning to walk, and to talk: the first steps, if you'll pardon the pun.

...but then what happens? "Mama" or "Dada" turns into "Why, Mommy? Why, Mommy? Why, Mommy?" or, worse, "NO!" or "MINE!"

Suddenly, Proud Mother and Proud Father want nothing more than for the little brat to shut the hell up.

Cat Stevens put it very well: "...from the moment I could talk, I've been ordered to listen..."

So how do we balance this? How do we teach a child that it's important to know WHEN to speak, WHAT to say, without teaching them that their thoughts and feelings are less important than those of others, particularly the adults in the world?

This isn't about parenting, I promise; teaching kids to talk is just a great place to jump off. I'll get there, I promise. Stick around.

Ok, so you've got this snot-nosed rug-rat who won't shut up, won't listen, whines, cries, makes demands, and you're ready to snap. What do you do? The answer might surprise you.

Listen.


We teach our kids (and, sometimes, ourselves) to speak, to read, to write; we establish the cognitive process, we learn deduction, induction, the list goes on and on... but we're never taught how to listen. How to Be Quiet and Hear.

Everytime I see some bratmonster in a Target or a Wal-Mart, howling like the damned because they can't have the cookies they want... I look immediately to the parents. It's troubling, how often said parent is on their cell phone, oblivious, or perusing some merchandise that interests them, while completely ignoring their child.

Where do children learn that the way to be heard is to be LOUD? From their parents, of course, and their teachers, and every other adult in their world who acts as though a child is somehow less of a person.

Why do we treat kids like that? Why, because we were treated like that, too, as kids, so that must be the way things are supposed to be, right?

Wrong.

So let's pull the focus back a bit, and give the parents and teachers a break, for a bit.

Listening is a skill, and there's a lot more to it than one might immediately realize. Quiet is the obvious first step... but what does it mean to be Quiet? It's a great deal more than just not talking. Stop talking, and, if everyone nearby cooperates, what you have is silence, which isn't the same at all.

In order to achieve Quiet, there are some other things that have to be done, and not a one of them is easy or comfortable, at least not if you're unused to them.

Once your mouth is closed, and your ears are open, you must then turn your attention to your Mind. I don't know about you, but even when my voice is silent, my mind goes a thousand miles an hour, putting together and taking apart lines of thought, interpreting and classifying information as I receive it, and forming opinions on things, making judgements. What I'm not doing, not to any significant extent, is listening.

"Turning off your brain" is one of the hardest things you can ask a human being to do. We have become so pointlessly and helplessly dependent on "thinking about" things that we've all but lost the ability to just let things Be. My Very Wise Friend talks about A+B=C; while A and B may very well combine to make C, why does that part matter? Of course, there are circumstances when it is important... but far more often, it's really not relevant. C can just be C, without having to analyze and disassemble the process of how it got there. The apple will be no sweeter, no crunchier, just because you understand all the complexities of the seed to tree to fruit mechanic. An intimate knowledge of photosynthesis will in no way improve your experience of the apple. If you focus, on the other hand, on the experience... why, you might learn something. WHAT you might learn, or HOW, is not for me to say; the simple fact is that by simply listening to what's happening around you, you learn things... and in order to listen, you have to be Quiet.

How, then? How do we stop "thinking," stop "analyzing," and just let things Be what they Are? There are no easy answers. Meditation works for some; ritual works for others. Every deeply spiritual path has some mechanic for it; at their roots, I think, they're very likely all very similar. The most important thing, though, from where I stand, is being aware of the need to slow down, relax, and be Quiet. The never ending need to know is really just another form of Greed, just another way that we grasp and reach and try to "possess" the world (and it is, in fact, one of the ways in which I personally am most guilty of greed, something that pains me immensely), but if we see it for what it is (Just letting C be C, remember), the process of relaxing, letting go of our attachment to things being a certain way, because less painful and more natural. In short, Quiet comes more easily.

P is for Psychic

Some time ago, in another world, another life, I spent three years working as a professional psychic for a 900 phone line.

Telling people that always gets an entertaining response.

The questions I got asked on the phone teetered back and forth between sorrowful and ridiculous. I got asked for lottery numbers pretty often. Yeah. Right. "If I could do that, would I be sittin' here, talkin' to you? NO! I'd be in a tricked out motor-home, going from state to state, winning those suckers one after another."

For some reason, they never seemed to quite understand that.

Another one I got all the time was "Am I pregnant?"

Really? You're going to spend $2.95 a minute... talking to a psychic... instead of spending $10 on a pregnancy test? Really? I always answered that question the same way: "Have you been having intercourse?"

Always seemed like the best place to start, to me.

The whole "psychic" thing, to me, is one of the most misunderstood concepts in all of reality. First of all, when you call a 900 line and talk to a "psychic," chances are, you're not after a psychic. You're after a diviner. A fortune teller. Divination and being psychic share only very subtle traits, and it is very easy to do either without the other.

I've addressed divination in another series of writings (which I'll gladly share with anyone interested; just send me an email). I want to talk about being psychic.

It's not at all what people think.

I've talked repeatedly about the Emerald Tablet: as above, so below. As your spirit goes, so goes your body, and vice versa. It's the mechanism that makes what we call Magick possible. If you are trying to accomplish certain things of a spiritual nature, mirroring those intentions with physical rituals establishes a pattern that the spirit can (and will) follow; likewise, if you're trying to make physical changes, meditation and visualization can set a spiritual example for your body to follow.

How does being psychic fit in? It's quite simple, really: "psychic abilities" are nothing more than your spiritual muscles. When you visualize something in an effort to manifest it, when you meditate to calm your body and relax, what you're doing is, at it's root, a spiritual workout. You're making your "soul muscles" stronger, which paves the way for physical strength.

People who draw a hard line between their mundane lives and their spiritual lives find that this process doesn't work very well... and why should it? You can't pull the engine out of your car and expect either part to go anywhere without the other, now, can you? It's the same thing: your body is the chassis, and your soul, your spirit is the engine. Separating your spiritual work from your physical work is just as silly.

Psychic abilities, then, are like a higher reflection of things like your opposable thumb, your blink reflex, and your endocrine system. Some of them are voluntary, things you can stop, focus on, and "make happen." Some are involuntary, and happen on their own, whether provoked by stress, or some other outside interaction.

The best way, in my experience and opinion, to work those spiritual muscles... is to recognize them. Notice when a "hunch" helps you avoid a problem or leads you to some temporal victory. When you get a "bad feeling" about something, avoid it, and find out you were right... that's not random. It's not chance. It's your higher awareness, saying "Hey! Wake up!"

When you listen... when you honor and respect BOTH halves of yourself... that Inner Bell, those psychic reflexes, they get stronger. Eventually, you reach a point where you can "make" it happen, simply by focusing your senses and opening your mind.

In the end, then, everyone is "psychic." Not everyone, however, practices, and those that don't may not even be aware of what they're capable of; many people go their whole lives blatantly denying the existence of such things, or calling them "evil." I feel badly for such people- they go through their whole existence, half dead.

For those who are curious... I quit doing readings for a living for two reasons. First, the bulk of the people I worked with were complete frauds, and it made me sick to have to listen to them. Second, given that I genuinely tried to help the people I talked to... it got pretty stressful, opening myself up over and over, every day, to the horror and pain of strangers. I wasn't advanced enough, then, to be any good at grounding or renergizing myself, and life got very difficult for a while because of it.

I've found doing readings for others without requiring payment is a lot more rewarding, anyway.

O is for Oregon

In a little less than ninteen weeks, assuming all things go according to (or something that resembles according to) plan, I will be moving to Salem, Oregon. Many/most of you already know this.

Some of you, though, may not be clear on Why, so I suppose it's time for a Story.

Just over four years ago, I was living in Wisconsin. Without getting into too much detail, the relationship I was in at the time came apart, and I found myself at loose ends.

By way of an online game I was playing at the time, I had a friend who happened to live in Salem. I talked with him a bit about where I was at, and he suggested I come to the coast. He offered to let me stay with him for a while, to get my feet under me, and he thought that a change of scenery might do me some good.

The best laid plans, and all that.

I decided that his idea was a good one, and made what preparations I could for the long solo drive from Wisconsin to Oregon. I got as far as Salt Lake City, when things started to slide. My van began to have mechanical problems; fixing them ended up taking several hours and a large, unbudgeted chunk of my money.

Undaunted, I carried on, and got as far as a little town called Grant's Pass, a short ways north of the California border, in Oregon. Mechanical trouble reared it's head again, and this time, it had teeth.

Big, sharp teeth.

The transmission in my van decided it'd had enough of this long, onerous drive, and it died. No warning, just... clank, and done.

So there I sat, in my dead van, on the side of the highway, about ten miles north of Grant's Pass. A state trooper stopped (I'd like to think someone called them on my behalf, and that she didn't just "happen by," but I'll never know), and called me a tow-truck.

At this point, I was screwed. I didn't have enough money to pay for the tow, and I was still four hours short of my destination. The tow-truck driver, though, was willing to deal, and towed I was, back to Grant's Pass, leaving me with a small coffee can of mixed silver coins and my packed possessions and nothing more.

I called my friend in Salem, and he said he'd come and get me. I spent the next 4+ hours sitting in a Denny's near the place where my van was dropped off, waiting for my friend.

When he finally arrived, I was exhausted, frightened, hungry- in a word, about as low as I'd ever been. If I'd known then what was coming, I might have given up.

My friend bought me dinner, and got us rooms at a nearby motel. He had health issues which made driving at night out of the question, so turning around and going back to Salem right away was out of the question.

A hot shower and something that passed for a night's sleep left me in somewhat better spirits, but still not great. We got up, had breakfast (at the same Denny's), loaded what we could of my things into his car, and set out for Salem...

...which is where I found out that the bottom ain't never really the bottom.

My friend lived with a room mate in a trailer. The trailer was right on the teetering edge of being a "hoarder house." The bathtub was broken and unusable. They had a cat, but they did NOT have a catbox. The place was filthy, the company was terrible, and it just kept sliding south from there.

I lived there for two months, during which time I completely and in all ways failed to thrive. I couldn't find a job to save my life, a situation made worse by my lack of transportation and the fact that in the two months I lived there, I wasn't able to shower or bathe. Even so, I battled on, trying to make friends, even trying to date, but it was a constant river of one step forward, two steps back.

As things deteriorated, another friend of mine gave me an out. Again, this was a friend from an online game, who told me that she, her son, and her roommate were going to buy a house together, and that said house had a finished basement, which I was welcome to come occupy. The idea had merit, I thought, and I started shifting my aim.

I wasn't done getting kicked yet, though. First, it turned out that I wasn't going to be able to transport even a quarter of my belongings with me on the bus I was taking to Kansas City, my new destination. I had to have my Salem friend come back to the bus station where he'd dropped me off, and pick up most of my things. The bus ride to Kansas City was long, and fraught with nonsense and unexpected diversions; suffice to say, I wasn't having a good time... even so, though, I felt like things were looking up.

I can already hear some of you, by the way: "Salem chewed you up and spit you out. WHY are you going back?!" Patience, kids, I'll get there.

The house that my friend and her room mate were buying didn't happen (he ended up in jail, if you have to know). We moved, moved again, and ended up living with her boyfriend. I got a job in Kansas City right out of the gate, thanks to her, and things were finally starting to look up.

Then, one evening, we came home from a night out with friends, and I found that I had a message waiting on myspace. (Heh, I know, right? Myspace. Heh.) It was from a lady who was moving to Kansas City from Michigan, and was trying to find some "cool people to hang out with." (I think that's how she put it.) Her profile indicated that she was an artist, a lesbian, and had a fetish for bald, gay men.

Now, I wasn't bald, and I'm not gay, but I was thinking that maybe a lesbian was a good place to start: a person I could establish a friendship with, without any of the stress and pressure that tends to exist when Single Guy hangs out with Single Girl. We agreed to meet at the park.

In what I told myself was a gesture of good faith, I shaved my head before going to meet her. I'd shaved my head before, so this wasn't really anything new or different to me; besides, my hair was growing thin, and I had a hefty bald spot anyway, so I was just accepting the inevitable. Right? Right.

So I went to the park, QuikTrip pop in hand, and there she was. I've always been a "hugger," and this occasion was no different. We took our beverages, found a shaded bench, and sat to get to know one another.

Funny thing... it turns out that "lesbian" was, uhm, false advertising of a sort. She was (is) no more a lesbian than I am gay. We spent the whole afternoon together... and the whole night (it wasn't like THAT- not entirely), and ended up spending only a few nights apart over the next handful of weeks. It wasn't long at all before our defacto status as a couple was formalized, and I moved in with her.

There you go again- I can hear you mumbling, "What's any of that got to do with Salem?"

Susan (yes, that's her name. You're very clever; now be quiet and let me tell the story) showed me a piece of fiction she'd written. It was a detailed and precise description of our first day together. So what? Right. So what. She wrote it five months before she even knew me, or even decided to move to Kansas City. She thought the piece was written about another friend of hers- a bald guy who lives in Salem.

(There, I made the connection; are you happy, now?)

It was a year and a half, two years, before her friend in Salem and I actually made contact with one another. When we did, we learned that we had a great deal in common, thought the same way about many, many things, and had a great deal to teach one another.

He was my brother from another mother; we were Tribe.

It didn't take long for us as a group (Susan, myself, Jeffrey, his wife, et al) to realize that living so far apart simply wasn't going to do... so plans began to be laid, and the Day is coming, rapidly.

I wonder, sometimes, whether, as I walked the streets of Salem, looking for work, I might have seen Jeffrey, either on foot or in his car, as he ambled about some business of his. Why not? It's not like my life will ever be weird enough.

N is for Now

In Buddhism, it is said that Hope and Fear are flipsides of the same coin. They both engender the future, and in doing so, they rob you of the present moment, which is, really, all we have.

I've repeatedly referred in this blog to the idea that All is One. That's an idea that could use a bit more detailed exploration, because it's much deeper than it seems on the surface.

It occurs to me that the automatic response of most people would be to take "All is One" to mean "All things are One." As far as it goes, this is the correct view; however, as my Very Wise Friend has said more than once, every lesson has a secret, and this one is no exception.

Think, for a moment, about the implications of the idea that All is One. Your friends, your loved ones, your pets (gah, how I hate that word), they're all You. The "things" that you "possess," the things you want, the things you fear? Those are You, too.... and You are "them," a way of phrasing it that increasingly loses meaning as you begin to realize that there is no "You," and no "them." There only Is.

Keep digging, though, and you will find even more profound ideas. If All things are One, then, too, All places are One, as well. There is no "Here" and "There". There only Is. Your friends and family that are "far away"? Not so much. Your "enemies" on the other side of the globe? They live right there, in "your" heart. All those places you want so badly to see, to visit? They're right outside your door. Literally.

I'm sure most, if not all of you, see where this is going. Having established that All things are One, and that All places are One, it then follows that All times are One as well. No past. No future. Just Now.

At first glance, this idea might seem to imply a very heavy handed, fatalistic view, that Everything is predestined. Nothing could be further from the truth. Even the notion of Karma is broadly removed from the idea of predestination. (Keep these ideas in your mind- I will talk in much greater depth about this subject in an upcoming entry.) The fact is, if All times are One, you have potent and precise control over every single detail of your reality. If the Past, the Present, and the Future are just different views of the Moment, the Now, then you can change... all of them. Easily, even.

Here's the trick of it: ask any dozen people to recall a specfic moment in the "past," one that they all experienced. How many different versions of the story do you think you'll hear? My money is on "a dozen." Why? Because everyone has their own filters and perceptions, and experiences any given scenario their own unique way. Given that... what is experience, really? It's memory. It's recall. If I may speak metaphorically, your experiences are little more than text files on the hard drive that is your mind.

What's to stop you from editing them? Absolutely nothing... except for the conditioned-in idea that you can't, that it's "impossible." The important thing to take from this, though, is that if you retro-manifest your "past" to modify your "present," or your "future," you have to remember that you're only making those changes in your own perception. Others who haven't edited themselves in this manner will still recall those moments as they experienced them. This idea leads into another can of worms, which I will, for the moment, refer to preemptively as group awareness. There's a better word for it, and a whole lot to be said about it, but that, too, will have to wait for another entry.

The practical upshot to all of this? Focusing on the past, or the future, can be problematic, but only if you view them as separate and distinct from Now. Now is "all" we have... but Now is everything, too. The pundits lied, kids: you can (and do!) have it all, and you have it... Now.

So they next time something doesn't go quite as planned... remember that you can fix the outcome "later." We'll talk about how that works in future entries (which I am, of course, writing "now"...).