114) Dealing with the Devil: Adventures in parenting, Part 2 - Asmodeus and Siskenet
Siskenet crossed his arms. “Fine. You want me to trust you? Let’s start with you showing me what you really look like. Nothing to hide, right?”
“No tea then?” The man sighed. “Very well. But there is nothing to show you, Siskenet. I have no true form.”
“But…how…. What do you mean? That doesn’t even make sense.” Siskenet set it firmly in his mind, he wasn’t going to be persuaded by whatever this Demon said. It was a Demon! They were in the Hells. He must not forget that, no matter how slick this creature’s whole schtick was.
“I’m an abstraction. A coalescence of patterns that very commonly replicate in consciousness, throughout the self-aware, sentient creatures of the worlds.” The man smiled, spreading his hands and shrugging. “It’s kind of hard to explain.”
113) Dealing with the Devil: Adventures in parenting, Part 1 - A Sentient Universe
So, the other day, my kids and I made a deal with Baphomet.
It was our second time making a deal with a Lord of Evil.
Hmmm, you may be getting the wrong impression here. Let me explain.
95) Gratitude Day 9 - A Dead Raccoon
That raccoon-shaped piece of God taught me an important lesson about the wisdom of the “Perennial Philosophy” that is the beating spiritual heart inside the world’s religions. Without that raccoon, I think I would have been lost for far longer in a kind of modern perversion of spirituality, a positivity-infused delusion known as spiritual bypassing whereby so many people talk about wisdom as though it was practically synonymous with happiness, and happiness with “success” and living a life of passion and adventure, a North American-ized, mega-church, business and self-esteem-friendly Disneyworld version of Wisdom that is easy to translate into motivational sayings for people to hang on the walls of their yoga studios.
94) The Day I Saw My Future Unfold
I read a love poem once. It was titled “The Day I Saw My Future Unfold.” It was about a walk in a forest. The vibrancy of life. Beauty. The ecstasy of truly trusting someone with your whole heart. It sounded so perfect.
I wonder if their future unfolded the way they saw it.
So often, it doesn’t.
But in any terrain, you choose your path.
90) Gratitude Day 8: Loneliness
Loneliness is like a psychic heartbeat. It shows you that you are a creature of Love. You yearn for love. Not just to BE loved, like you want to consume other people and vampirically suck the love out of them. But TO love.
Loneliness tells you, moment by moment, that you are a fountain, a river, an ocean of love, and it is the sheer, relentless pain of loneliness that confirms that, irrefutably. For if you weren’t a creature of Love, then you wouldn’t be lonely. You would just “be”.
It is the very agony of loneliness that reflects your inner light. It is a Friend who visits, right in the depths of your suffering.
82) A pandemic a day keeps everyone away. But it also might bring us together.
Seriously, why skim the surface, stay in your safe box, maintain your personality-defenses and your societal persona and status symbols, worry about all that stuff, and occupy your mind with the trivia of everyday gossip-news, when you could truly, truly root yourself in This Moment, drink in the miraculous Life dripping into your pores and senses in every moment, and love, love with your whole heart, love so fiercely that it makes you cry. Often.
Because no doubt, you’ve got a river of tears in you that need to be cried.
80) Magic, Motorcycles, and Mandelbrot: Part 4 - A Call for Global Revolution
I believe that we need the majority of society to shift, and quickly, into an ecological way of perceiving ourselves in relation to each other and the rest of the world. The knowledge of how to “be” in a different way is already out there. It’s held in indigenous cultures. Eco-farming communities. And a thousand other places. We have the knowledge and wisdom to behave better as a species. But we need to apply it, large scale, and immediately.
This is unprecedented. Nothing of this scale has ever been undertaken. This is bigger than WWII. The space race. The pyramids. The fall of Rome. The colonization of the New World. This is a global revolution in how we conduct ourselves towards each other and towards the planet.
79) Magic, Motorcycles, and Mandelbrot: Part 3 - Mandelbrot
When you shift from Motorcycle thinking to Mandelbrot thinking, then problems take on a different dimension. Instead of thinking about “the solution” that you need to Invent and then apply over the world and change everything, Mandelbrot thinking is about “the processes” we need to set in motion, in order to SHIFT the way the world organizes itself.
It’s such a subtle distinction, but it filters through everything profoundly. For example, think of the difference between a boss/parent/teacher, who is very clear, and structured, disciplined and powerful, versus a boss/parent/teacher who is a true collaborator, encourager, mentor, and role model. Think of the difference between “doing to” and “doing with.”
78) Magic, Motorcycles, and Mandelbrot: Part 2 - Motorcycles
There’s a hungry-ghost kind of thing that happens with the exertion of power. You start to feel more entitled to exert power, because after all, you are pretty smart to have gotten all this power in the first place, and you start to depreciate “the other,” assuming more and more that other people just don’t have the same perspective as you, the same depth of understanding. They “don’t get it.” So, maybe you still need them as minions, to carry out your bidding, but you don’t really need people questioning your decisions anymore….
77) Magic, Motorcycles, and Mandelbrot: Part 1 - Magic
Let’s start with when we’re young. Really young. As young as we can remember. I wholeheartedly believed in magic when I was a kid. I’ll bet you did too. You might have held onto it as an adult, but you probably didn’t, or at least, it faded and changed. This “loss of magic” as childhood morphs into adulthood is such a cliché that it is, in fact, a theme in many children’s stories themselves.
73) Dear Ancestors,
Dear Ancestors, thank you for this chance you’ve given me, to live. For the songs you passed on. The babies you nursed at your breasts, taught to walk, and speak, and play, and fish, and build, and love, and read, and forgive. Thank you for your courage, the sacrifices you made in the wars of your time. The wisdom you discovered in silent meditation. The poems. The traditions, dances, beautiful creations of art and worship. Thank you for the recipes you passed down through generations of care-takers labouring over hot stoves, for the endless mouth-watering concoctions we coaxed from the abundance of water and soil and sunlight. Thank you for the luminaries who inspired all who came after, to strive for the Good, to love unto death.
72) Purpose -- Part 4 -- In Between
Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field.
I’ll meet you there
71) Purpose -- Part 3 -- I hate you.
If I met you on the street, or at a party, or in a class, or at a job, there is a very, very, very good chance that we would get along just fine. Or at least would be able to refrain from cannibalizing whichever of us was unlucky enough to get knocked unconscious first.
70) Purpose -- Part 2 -- Why the Environmental Movement has Failed (so far) -- Act III: Full Circle
My message is, I love you. I believe in your good hearts. I honour the sacrifices of your visionaries. I weep with you as ecosystems fall apart. The Amazon burns. The Arctic melts. The Great Barrier reef disintegrates. The oceans become a graveyard. Forests turn into grasslands, and grasslands into deserts. Bird song turns into the white noise of traffic. The buzzing and clicking and colourful vibrancy of insect life turns into the empty whisper of barren spaces.
68) Purpose -- Part 2 -- Why the Environmental Movement has Failed (so far) -- Act I: Me & You
I love you.
You might be thinking….”Really? That’s creepy.”
Or you might be thinking….”Really? We’ve never even met!”
Or you might be thinking…..”Why, what’d you have in mind?”
Or you might be thinking…..”Huh? I thought this was about why the environmental movement has failed.”
50) Dirty Feet (TW: suicide, sexual assault)
Thinking about suicide has been my main hobby for 14 years, 7 months and 16 days.
You were right about sexual assault, especially for kids.
“It makes you see yourself as a demon. So you check-out, dissociate, a lot of the time, because who wants to be a demon?”
I realize why I kept this fantasy alive for so long.
I believed the only worthy thing to do with my life was make sure my last act will be one of love.
42) Afterbirth in a field: The answer to the question of life, the universe, and everything...
Soften into your true animal body and feel your rawness, your wildness, your strength and your vulnerability, your life. And your death.
If you have not done this, then you should. I would call it as close to a moral imperative as anything Kant ever came up with. Even more important than masturbating, if you can believe that.
30) Hell: Epilogue
“Hell” is an allegory. It can help a person understand the suffering of feeling existentially Alone. And thus, it points towards Connection, through opening to suffering.
This is useful, if it helps you connect with others, and if it motivates you to go more deeply into your questions. But it’s not useful if it just scares you into clinging to The Answer that some particular cult insists upon.
29) Hell, Part 2
Hell is like a logic trap, constructed so you only have one answer, one solution. As soon as you throw Infinity into an equation, it trumps everything else. Pascal knew this; this is what his wager was all about — that faith is not based on reason. But anyway, back to Hell as an unfair logic trap:
Hell = You Have To Give Your Life To God Or You Are An Idiot.
It’s the best sales-pitch ever. Buy my product, or Burn In Hell For All Eternity.
I call bullshit.
28) Hell, Part 1
Do you remember what it was like when you first heard about Hell?
For me, running into Hell was a soul-wrenching struggle of childhood. I mean, seriously man, Hell is the scariest thing ever!! And my young mind was excellent at imagining the unspeakable agony of actually BURNING. For all eternity! ….. wow….. like….damn…..who thought up THAT idea?