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Old dog learns new tricks

  
  

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Less searchable M0rd4nt
20:06 / 12.01.06
What? It's a reasonable question. If you're going to be any kind of a real magician, you should be asking it of yourself on a regular basis. Is it worth it? Does what I'm doing still have validity even if it's mostly in my head? I do. I'm certain than Money $hot has.

Doubt is not your enemy. Doubt is your ally. Doubt is your sparring partener, always keeping you on your toes, always driving you onwards, never letting you grow complacent, never letting you atrophy and become weak. There are enough self-satisfied, delusional twerps out there already. Embrace Doubt, take it out to dinner and buy it flowers.

Sorry. Kind of a hobby-horse of mine.
 
 
power vacuums & pure moments
20:22 / 12.01.06
Amazing thread. I have a question about the kundalini aspect of your experience, what convinced you that the energy you experienced was kundalini? Theres no doubt that whatever it was, it was incredibly profound and intense, but im interested to know the details that lead you to catergorize it as such, especially since its an alien term to [xxxxx] and shamanism. Laya yoga, the yoga dealing specifically with the rousing of kundalini energy, is pretty firm in its stance that whilst kundalini may be passively and partially roused in forms of meditation and creativity, the actual movement of K from muladhara to sahasrara [which would result in massive headfuck type experiences] can only be accomplished by years of sustained practice. Ive done the work as proscribed and had amazing effects from that, but prior to that had many incredible chemical experiences also involving empirically undeniable energetic movements. So your view would be very interesting...
 
 
illmatic
20:23 / 12.01.06
Re. books: Well, you're welcome to borrow them off me. Though paperback editions are available of both books now, I believe. I have the Richard Rutt in paperback - cost me £22. I think t'other is available in p/back now.

No, I did mean Karcher - Biroco hates him. He feels he stole some of his ideas for Total I Ching. Can't comment on what he says about Huang as a) I haven't read it and b) even if I had I don't have the I Ching knowledge the he does to ground any criticism. I suspect if you like it, it will like you.
 
 
Scrambled Password Bogus Email
20:25 / 12.01.06
Hi Alex's Grandma!

Can I ask you the same question, about your life, before I answer?

I'm totally serious, and very interested in your response.
 
 
Scrambled Password Bogus Email
20:47 / 12.01.06
devo - A good question, and one I can't really answer beyond saying 'that's what it seemed to be'...it was double-helical, incredibly overwhelming, and erupted up the spine to the sahasara chakra (actually, to the third-eye, which I forget the name of, but which is not the sahasara chakra...). It resulted in a very specific spontaneous hour of channeled yogic posturing I have never been taught, and which was the only thing, so it seemed, which grounded the enormous release of fire throughout my body...and subsequently lead to the most startling 'genetic adaptations' within the visionary experience, and the skills explosion which has been detailed...The energetic effects lasted for days, though of course its perfectly feasible to attribute this to the weight of sacrament I drank...

It spoke straight to me, at the time, that it was in the code...right down to the blueprint...and many of the effects were physical more than mental...the setting of the skeleton, my postural bio-mechanics were deeply affected (still are) - my shoulders were brought round and back and rotated such that my hands hand differently at my sides, the musculature of my face was affected for days, I could feel bones warping and moving...it was very intense.

I felt, afterwards, that this was the correct term for what was/had occuring/occurred...it was a taste, a preview, but it distinctly rang of what little I have read of this experience...

It could have been *something else*, of course. I'm open to any conclusion, any suggestion, and will adjust my position according to data.

I must say I very much doubt, Laya Yoga guru claims aside, that there is only one means of raising kundalini...In Laya it is the main objective, from what I gather, but I believe Hatha, Raja, Krya and other forms also have a great deal of contact with kundalini...plus, I suspect it can occur spontaneously, given the right genetic predisposition and chance circumstances...It's already there.

I dunno though. Whatever it was, it was bloody amazing.
 
 
illmatic
21:08 / 12.01.06
devo: I wouldn't be too prescriptive when talking about kundalini, no matter what the books say. I think it's best when someone simply talks from their experience - who's to say if it's "kundalini" or not, and who cares? Who is to say "kundalini" is a real, uniform experience anyway, the same to all those lucky enough to experience it? I suspect, rather, that it might be shorthand for a range of diverse and different experiences.

There's a good thread (started by me, IIRC) if you do a search.
 
 
Scrambled Password Bogus Email
21:09 / 12.01.06
OK, interesting...the Ajna chakra, which is the pineal plexus, the pineal being the most likely seat for where DMT crosses the blood-brain barrier and, I suspect, builds its model of reality...

Its element colour is Pure White, and its Aspect is Self Realization...

Though its interesting that the enrgetic journey travelled over and past the Sahasrara centre to explode at the Ajna centre...

Intriguingly I see, also, there is a Sub Chakra of the Seventh Chakra - between the 6th and 7th, the third eye and the crown of the head, and dealing with states 64-72 within Leela, the States of Being, beyond the Chakras...Its behavioural aspect, beyond even Non-Dual Consciousness, is merely 'Bliss'. It, like Sahasrara, has no Element, Colour, or any of the other material connections...

Hmmmmmm...take notes, Watson!
 
 
Dead Megatron
23:24 / 12.01.06
Wow, this thread is passing way beyond my experience now. I-Ching? Kundalini? Never had much formal studying of the subjects, but they always seem close to everything that's "magick" to me (keep in mind I'm little more than a lame wanna-be at this point in my life). But this thread has inspired me already to do the following:

a- I just bought myself my first I-Ching set. It's a pretty "industrialized" one, but it has a real book, and real coins, so I'm getting started right now (I shall start a thread on I-Ching 101 soon, if there isn't one already)

b- Seek out my [xxxxx]s friends and try the Tea a couple more times, maybe in a healing trabalho, for it's been a while and I never thrown myself in headfirst as I should. Next time, I'll take it till I puke out all sickness in my body or someone from this or the other reality tells me to spto, wichever comes first (I wonder if there's any trabalho at halloween also, hmmm)

c- train my internal kung fu extra-hard, for it is yet another way to tap into one's own kundalini energy.

d- offer myself to translate hinários to English as part of a spiritual exercise. Money, that means I'm at your - and anybody else's who's interested - service to tranlate any hinos for you, just choose one and ask for it. Abnegation is great for the soul and for the planet.

e- start a campaign to convince Money to turn this thread into a blog (with a FAQ section), so as to divulge the "word" as far as we can [see "d"]. It seems the world needs some saving.
 
 
Scrambled Password Bogus Email
00:06 / 13.01.06
Hehe, LOL. It's great that you are so inspired, DM, and thanks for your kind offer, I may well take you up on that at some point in the future.

Your plan sounds excellent to me. All the above seem like solid intentions.

Revere the I Ching. My advice, even for a beginner, is do not approach it with frivolous enquiry...it is predicated on the notion that you really, need its guidance, and intend to align your behaviour with its decisions...

I have found, having adopted this approach, that it becomes a present part of the mind...you will consult it less and less, because more and more it will be obvious what to do, and what changes a given predicament or situation present and are transforming through...

Past I Ching threads here

and

here

and

here

and

here

and

this excellent thread

Good Luck!
 
 
Scrambled Password Bogus Email
00:17 / 13.01.06
BTW, not that you were to know, but that phrase, and others like it, is one of my pet peeves.

The world does not, and never has, needed saving.

It's us. Humanity. We are the ones up shit creek with a shortage of paddles. 'Save the planet!' my arse. It's billions of years old and going strong. We, on the other hand, could do with a deep inhalation, rousing from our collective catatonia and swiftly identifying that coffee smell, methinks.
 
 
Dead Megatron
08:55 / 13.01.06
I stand corrected. But, y'know, I was kinda talking about the world of Man, anyways
 
 
Alex's Grandma
10:16 / 13.01.06
Can I ask you the same question, about your life, before I answer?

You most certainly can, Mr M (and apologies if my earlier post seemed a bit on the snippy side - by way of recompense, I will now display, for the board's amusement, the undergrad banality of my thoughts about life in general.)

Is anything 'real,' and even if it is, what does that mean?

Well, I don't know. I think Paul McCartney, for all that the guy's in many ways a slightly questionable figure these days, stumbled on a semi-important truth when he wrote, in 'Penny Lane', that 'And though it seems as if she's in a play/She is anyway' - Whether or not quotidian, 9-9 reality is actually what it purports to be, to the extent that it does, it seems only politic to take it seriously. (Although IRL, incidentally, I suppose I could be accused of doing exactly the opposite - after I'm done here, I may well pass an improving half hour dealing death out to the criminal scum courtesy of The Punisher on PS2. But am I a part of the local Neighbourhood Watch? No, I am not. My relationship with 'reality' has therefore arguably been compromised for some time now.)

I'll admit to being a bit envious of your recent experiences, Mr M - As a younger old woman, I had a really great time thanks to the kind of bathtub LSD that I'd imagine would curl up and die, out of sheer shame, in the presence of the materials you've recently been involved with. But, and here's the thing, I just wonder (and wondering's all I'm doing, I don't honestly have a clue as to the answer,) how far any of this stuff ever actually gets you. Or where there is to go, At the end of my personal investigations re: psychedlia, which were reasonably extensive, 11, I kind of found myself sitting there thinking (having fought off Satan, and all his guys, in the bathroom, and having become convinced that I had entered another reality, one that was very similar to this one, except that the televisions there were very much larger, and a bit more proactive, in terms of their recruitment policy,) if perhaps the power plants (Columbian shrooms, in this case,) were taking the piss, and had been for a while.

Or to put it another way, if the day-to-day business of work/politics/war is an illusion, possibly the alternative should be about as open to question.

So there you go. Basically, and while I appreciate it's impossible to say during the on-going experience of having fun with this stuff, is it something spiritual, or is it simply hedonism? And would there be any real difference, perception-wise, if it turns out, at the end, that the world was just what it appeared to be, and that all you'd been doing was just taking drugs? I used to feel pretty connected to the gods and so on, until I laid off for a bit.

(I should stress though, that I'm about 50/50 on this, and would not necessarily be averse if you could hook me up with your guys, either.)
 
 
Scrambled Password Bogus Email
11:17 / 13.01.06
Hmmm...

I'm not entirely sure what exactly you are saying here, and I'm not entirely sure you are either...

Since you are a very old lady, however, I'll see if I can answer. Would you like some Rooibus tea? OK, now then...

First thing is to reiterate my disclaimers peppered throughout this would-be blog : I have nothing to sell. This is not a system of beliefs or any kind of message I have for the world. The world, clearly, has more than enough of that kind of thing already.

This is nothing more than my description of a sequence of events that happened to me, and the consequences of those events. It describes my emotional response to experience, and my subsequent mentations relating to those emotional responses.

I think for clarity you need to make it obvious what you mean by 'real'.

These things happened to me. I experienced them, and described them to myself in pretty much the way they have been recorded here.

Was your breakfast this morning real? Was your day yesterday real? I have no way whatsoever of verifying what happened to you yesterday, but on the other hand, I have no reason to doubt that your description of it was how you intersected with the ocean of data you encountered and had provided to your brain by your perceptual apparatus (over 11 million bits per second, if we want to explore information theory...your conscious experience of which is made up of just 16 bits or less...that's 950,400,000,000 bits of information passed from your senses to your brain in 24 hours (assuming you were awake that long) and your experience of a conscious 'I' was made up of just 1,382,400...demonstrable by the simple fact that describing, in English, 950,400,000,000 bits if data would most likely take several decades, if not lifetimes, whereas you could probably run dry for what to talk about if asked 'What happened to you yesterday?' in about an hour or two, yes?)...

So, what does your question really mean? I think in a way you are asking me : What if SD is a liar?

What if, when all is said and and done, the seriousness and profundity alluded to within the visionary realms of the Porridge are nonsense, a lie, effectively.

It's a fair question, I suppose. One I used to wonder about as well, no doubt.

However, and linked into what MC said after your question, it is the question of a non-serious person. No offense meant, in fact, you actually self identify as such. You do this, perhaps - here's what I suspect, my theory, you no doubt have your own, at odds to mine - because you believe you have time. You still suspect, deep deep down, in a place you guard very carefully, and will deny the existence of, but it is there, defining you, and protecting itself, always on the move, always one step ahead of the game, refusing to be still, avoiding the mirror, that you are immortal. You have the time for this question, because you believe, strongly and in spite of all the obvious evidence to the contrary, that you, maybe just you, maybe no one else, for you can see the decay of others all around you,but surely you, you alone, are going to live forever.

Does that answer your question?

For me it does. The problem, of course, is - which is why I have peppered all the discaimers throughout this adventure - that nobody ever listens to anybody else. Nobody, ever, has. Its not possible. Completely impossible in fact. You can only listen to your'self', just as you can only see 'your' own 'mind', and taste 'your' own 'mind', and smell 'your' own 'mind', so 'you' will only ever hear 'your' own 'thoughts'...and even then, they are not 'yours', since there is no 'you' there to hear them, only the weight of your cultural conditioning, received and selected and filtered and organised by that wonderful receiver in your skull.

There is some spectacularly useless breeze-shooting over in this thread. If I may copy and paste, and paraphrase myself:

I've radically altered my take on the veracity of the 'models and metaphors' used within 'magic' over the past year because, well, I haven't really had much choice about the matter...if it looks like a duck, and walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, and smells like a duck, and drops mallard feathers on your carpet, and has a large neon sign above it blatantly blinking on and off with the word 'DUCK' and an arrow pointing at it, then there seems little point, to me, in struggling to explain it as a duck-shaped product of some other as-yet-undiscovered-by-science duck manifesting duck-like phenomena merely because accepting that, y'know, it's a duck, makes you sound like a bit of a weirdo who most likely played a bit too much Dungeons and Dragons (or Dungeons and Ducks, whatever).

Personally, I have no problem accepting it's a duck and engaging with it as a duck, and possibly finding out if it and me have any sort of useful relationship to explore (no rhyming jokes, please...)...Like, you know, stuffing pillows or something.

and also

cultures since the dawn of time have constructed false realities and associated ceremonies to make sense of their place in the world.

Including this one, of course. Western rationalist scientific determinism is no more nor less of a 'false' reality cult than any other, historically or culturally, and the fact that it is the consensus shared by you does not make it any other way. To elevate it as 'truer' is centric to your own immersion in it.

Science is a very (very) useful way of looking at the Universe with a specific agenda or desire for outcome as the intention. The italicised caveat is essential, and applies to every replacement of the word 'science' with any other discipline, be it magic, poetry, art or music (though that would be listening not looking :-)) or whatever takes your fancy. It is your fancy that is important.

Example - not a perfect one, but pretty good. Look at the room you are in. Do a quick sketch of it. A draughtsmans sketch. As quick as you like.

This is your subjective, draughtsmans Way of Looking at The Room. It is entirely 'correct' and makes 'perfect sense', yes?

Now, for the sake of this argument, lets say (it may even be true) that this room holds a lot of memories for you. So now, either do, or imagine, a painting of the room intended to convey the overall emotive connection you have within your memory-nervous system array and The Room. A painting of your feelings about the space.

This is (one of) your subjective, artistic Way(s) of Looking at The Room. It is entirely 'correct' and makes 'perfect sense', at least to you, yes?

Now whip up an architects blueprint of the room. You know the form. This, if you like, is the scientific-rationalist Way of Looking at The Room. It is entirely 'correct' and makes 'perfect sense', yes? To architects, at least.

Now take a photograph of the room. Now suspend yourself from the ceiling and sketch the room again. Close to the arhitects view, but not quite. Now write a song about the room. Warrah warrah fishpaste.

To argue that the architectural view is the 'real' one is clearly nonsense, though it is mathematically precise and would enable a qualified builder to recreate the rooms structural manifestation exactly. But, the problem with it is, it doesn't actually exist, anywhere, except in the abstract, ghostly world of mathematics. It is a map, not a room. It won't help you try to make your way across it, right now, in the dark, without barking your shins on the coffee table. For that, you will need your eyes (and maybe a torch) and your brains experience of the room. Nor can it tell you anything about the beauty or aesthetic of the interior design, nor about what the room means. It is a Way of Looking at the room which serves a particular purpose. If you elevate it above any other Way of Looking as 'more real' you are succumbing to a form of Idolatry and dogmatism that is the calling card of that most despised of scientific-determinism, the fundamentalist. Strange, eh? It can be corroborated by others, sure...is that really your gauge of 'reality'? The say so of the mob?

...So anyway, Ways of Looking. You seem, though perhaps I am mistaken, to be of the opinion that outside of yours, mine, Stephen Hawking's, Walt Whitman's, Damien Hirst's or Whoever Else's Ways of Looking, there is One Ultimate Way, which is Actually Right and True, and once Science has 'discovered' it, that'll be that and we can do away with all the other ways...or something like that, I don't know. What will we do with all the other Ways? I don't share that opinion, if that is your opinion. That One Way is the Universe.

Try this one : you drink an entheogenic (psychedelic, psychotomimetic, hallucinogenic - not just Ways of looking, Ways of Describing which influence Ways of Looking - isn't it great?) sacrament which science would explain chemically and describe the neuro-chemical effects within the blood and brain of said sacrament intersecting with a human organism. That is a Way of Looking at that process. Great. Substitute imbibing of sacrament with ritual chanting, drumming, invocation, whatever floats your magic boat.

Meanwhile, the subject who has imbibed the sacrament, peformed the ritual, beat the drum, invoked the pantheon, finds themselves in a sensory-perceptual world within, behind and all around the ordinary world of the five senses, which is populated to the brim with alien, apparently independently autonomous agents/entities, which interact, forge relationships, reveal information and have agendas with regard to the manifest world they are so interested in...

Now, faced with this, you can rush of to the scientific establishment, and they will absolutely say you are delusional, hallucinating, making it up, a charlatan, or simply ignore you completely as some wacko nutball. It just isn't Science, you see. It's in your mind (as if everything else isn't), and rather amusingly, science, the product of a highly evolved consciousness, cannot explain...Consciousness! That which we are using to discover the Secrets of the Universe is the biggest Mystery within it. Can you use a tool to work on itself? Can you shine a torch to find...the torch you are using? Can you Reach for own hands? Look for your Looking apparatus? It's a toughy. So...bugger off! That's Not Science!

But this will not change your need, your imperative requirement, to understand what the fuck is happening. Being told, in response to what i have described above 'You were just hallucinating' really, really doesn't cut it, I'm afraid. That is not the fucking point at all.

The question is NOT 'Why?' or 'How?' - which are the major concerns of scientific rationalist cultists.

The question is 'What does it mean?' - a question scientific cultists are mostly either not interested in or actively scared of...because of where it leads.

When you do this, this happens. Weird. What's it all about? What the fuck do you mean 'I'm imagining it?', 'It isn't real?'...I just fucking saw it! Talked to it! Got a cuddle from it! Had feathers stuck in my back by it! It was an angel, I tells ya, an angel! a Reptile insectoid alien! An adversarial demon! An African tribal God! Don't lay that scientific rational crap on me now, I need some answers! Not excuses!'

Well, that's the point at which I personally became really interested in magic, cause, well, people have been doing this shit since the dawn of the species, and much of it has been worked out...channeled, written, recorded. It's esoteric, occult - meaning 'hidden' - precisely because most people do not care for it at all...Good for them. I don't really do, nor watch much, sport, which many people absoltely go crazy for...Nor do I watch soap-operas, which seems to be the national past-time de rigeur where i live. I'd rather spend an afternoon in fear of my sanity and mortal soul fighting a Satanic Adversary that wants to possess my body than watching the Omnibus edition of Eastenders any day...different strokes for different folks, horses for courses.

At that point, engaging with it becomes essential because it is powerful and it works...so as stupid and silly as it may seem to the rationalist part of the memory-mind, accepting the Way of Looking, for example, that there is an Angelic host who occupy positions within a Celestial Court at the behest of the source of all this Isness, this KaPOW! Here it IS! this underlying condition of being - this Supreme Being, if you please - IHVH, Dao, I Am that I Am, Allah, Atman, Jehovah Elohim, whatever...becomes not only a viable and interesting Way of looking, but essential for understanding the workings and benefits and pitfalls of the new memory-mind you are creating by engaging with such powers.

If you like, think of them as energies, patterns within the dance of the quantum flux of all this hadron, quark, strangeness and charm which, due to the nature of your brain-as-a-receiver, tend to become personified, anthropomorphised and attributed qualities you are able to relate to. If you think that will help.

Me, I can just about dig being enfolded in the energetic appendages of one of those quantum doohickies. Sweet. A pattern in the quantum flux that wants me to be safe and well. How inscrutable.

But I prefer, it makes so much more richly resonant and lyrical sense, has so much richer meaning being held in the wings of St. Michael 'cos I'm singing his songs and he is my protetora It just, y'know, gels. And I know what it means. It's available, and it works.

Apologies for the extended cut'n'paste, but I hope that answers your question.
 
 
Scrambled Password Bogus Email
11:43 / 13.01.06
Although I should point out that I was told my arguments were 'Obscene' in that thread, which to this day both amuses and baffles me in equal measure.
 
 
Scrambled Password Bogus Email
11:52 / 13.01.06
I should point out, also, if it wasn't extremely obvious already, that I no longer have time for that question. I have no time at all. In fact, there are very few questions I am really all that interested in, any more. 'Where is the train station?' and 'How much are these carrots?' and similar are just about the length of breadth of it. The Truth does not interest me one jot. What could be more boring?

My own death looms large, shadowing me, whispering in my ear, always.

:-)
 
 
grant
13:55 / 13.01.06
Will you marry me?
 
 
Scrambled Password Bogus Email
14:45 / 13.01.06
Are you sure you want to do the diddly on an Orixan River Goddess? ;-)

I mean, I'm up for it, but *checks over shoulder*

*whispering*

What if She finds out?
 
 
illmatic
16:27 / 13.01.06
I have to say, with no offence intended to Moneyshot, I don't like the "it's all a model" attempt at explanation. It always seems to fall a little short to me in communicating experience. However, I concede, wholeheartedly, that it isn't what the "how", but what it means that's important. Even though I haven't had the intense experiences that MS has obviously had, I have had some very compelling experiences of my own. And all the explanations for them that I have encountered seem pretty ridiculous - both the it was an entity outside my head (a God or Spirit) or one inside my head ("subconscious" or whatever) seem pretty absurd and redundant. I can't help thinking that if someone could crack particular chesnut with a definitive, all embracing answer, it would've been done by now. I think that the best thing is to take the experiences at face value, and see where they take you.
 
 
Scrambled Password Bogus Email
17:50 / 13.01.06
I think that the best thing is to take the experiences at face value, and see where they take you.

Either that or sit around wringing your hands and debating whether it's 'real' or not...

This was sort of my point, if, indeed, I have one, in asking Alex's grandma if hir own experiences might be 'not real.' What if they're not? What practical difference does it actually make to what has happened and how you have processsed it, how you have made a story out of it, derived a narrative from it, as we inevitably do.

It's no different to that post-Matrix nonsense about brains in jars and computer simulations.

Even if it is the case, it makes absolutely no difference to how you relate to it, how you are able to deal with it and what options you have to do about it. It's closed, and impenetrable. You may be able to wake up to it, but neither you, Jesus, Gautama Buddha, Walt Whitman, Krishnamurti nor Goddamn Keanu Reeves can ever wake up from it.

This is it. Welcome. Have a cup of tea.
 
 
Dead Megatron
17:53 / 13.01.06
Walt Whitman too?
 
 
Alex's Grandma
17:53 / 13.01.06
Mr $, in response to your above post, to which I've got the time, but not the energy, to engage with meaningfully, my bad, not yours - I do love Jack Kerouac as much as the next man, but increasingly, the cardinal vitues of all cardinal vitues'd seem to be brevity.
 
 
Scrambled Password Bogus Email
18:01 / 13.01.06
And, to add to Illmatic's point there, I'm not for a minute minute suggesting that in the midst of all the astral mad shit that goes down in that space, there is a white-coated voice (with a beard, like) reassuring me 'It's all just a model and metaphor'.

The shizzle is fo rizzle, yo.

Realer. Than. Real.

This shit can sometimes, in comparison, appear to be a rather pale, washed out and transparent shadow. A very welcome pale and washed out transparent shadow after eight or so hours of technicolor lunacy.
 
 
Scrambled Password Bogus Email
18:06 / 13.01.06
Brevity, yes. I could sure do with a healthy dollop of that particular virtue myself!
 
 
Tryphena Absent
22:33 / 15.01.06
Money Shot, I have a question:

how does your experience actually equate to a slice of toast that you put in your mouth and bite?

I ask this because I think your answer to Alex's Grandma is not only confusing but cryptic. I want to know how all of this convoluted explanation of what you have perceived as real equates to the walls in your house, the door of a fridge, the telephone and the shoes that you put on your feet. Tangible things in front of you because it doesn't wash to say "what's real?" Real is experience that we understand immediately as a group in a few words. This is real to some people here, it is wishful to some people here but to me it's just a thing right now.

You see, the way you're writing tells me that you're on a crest and that the crest is inside your head and I don't trust someone who is high to operate a car without crashing. That to me is real.

What I want to know is the ground of this experience because not once have you addressed what this means and that's something to be considered doubly when this happens.
 
 
illmatic
08:01 / 16.01.06
Nina, I think Moneyshot's already answered that to a degree (though I agree with you his answer was a little cryptic). Thus my post above. I'm trying to broaden the terms of reference a little - beyond "is it real" - to the important stuff, which is how you choose to live and function in the light of those experiences.

Do they make you happier? Sadder? More compassionate? Less of a twat? More capable of accessing your potential?

Asking questions about the reality or otherwise of the experience often seems a rhetorical strategy designed to dismiss the experiences in question, and thereby comfort the querent.
 
 
Scrambled Password Bogus Email
08:05 / 16.01.06
It makes the toast taste very, very toasty Nina. The toastiest toast in toastland.
 
 
Gypsy Lantern
08:56 / 16.01.06
how you choose to live and function in the light of those experiences.

Spontaneous language comprehension aside, I think that is the only plausible criteria for gauging the relative value of "magical" experiences of this type. I don't think it really matters if they are the product of a drug experience or the product of six years of meditation. The important bit is what you take away from it. How you proceed in the light of it. How the gnosis of these mysteries shapes your life and attitude from that moment onwards. I think there is sufficient evidence in Moneyshot's account that these visions have shaped the very building blocks of how he considers his place in the world and the purpose of his time here on the planet. I think that's a pretty tangible result. He does talk about how the [xxxxx] journeys have helped him grow from a largely disaffected, unhappy, materialistic character (and provides a link to a previous thread of his that proves it!) to someone happier, conscious of his place in the universe and filled with gratitude at the fantastic planet on which we live and breathe. This may be happening "in his head" but where else does long term change begin?
 
 
Scrambled Password Bogus Email
09:12 / 16.01.06
To add to which and bring it all back to toast, aside from bringing pin-sharp presence to the toastiness of the mouthful, to be eating the toast and not doing anything else, at all - not planning the day, not rushing out the door, not reading the papers, or the morning mail...just toast, the whole toast and nothing but the toast - it has inspired me to consider what's in the bread, and whether I want that to be the building blocks of new cells in my body. To go without toast, or anything else of a foody nature, one day every week, for 24-36 hours. And then go without for 7 days every 3 months (next up in March).

To consider, very carefully, where the materials which make the bread have come from, what working and pay conditions the person or people who made the bread are living under, and whether or not to give them my money based on that.

To make my own bread. To learn how bread is made, and explore its possibilities for myself. To invest, so to speak, in toast, and if toast is to be an aspect of my life, to make sure that it is a deliberate and carefully considered aspect, with an appropriate degree of gratitude for and artistry around its inclusion in my runnings.

To sanctify and consecrate toast, as absurd as that may sound.
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
10:01 / 16.01.06
Genuine question, M$ - what, if anything, do you think can be derived from the fact that you perceived the sexy sprite princess bratz as "dusky, super exotic, smoky" and "mixed race"?
 
 
Scrambled Password Bogus Email
10:24 / 16.01.06
I don't know, Petey. Your theory?

They had representatives from every culture and race, from Persia to Poland, from Malaysia to Majorca, from Brazil to Bengal, from Cuba to China. Am I lucky or what?.

What do you think? That my capacity for wishful thinking is truly Herculean and multi-national flavoured is one possible interpretation I suppose, that I am a sucker for dusky, dark skinned women a self evident fact. I mean, it's a great claim, right? I had this retinue of princesses tripping over themselves to make me comfortable...sure, course you did, tell us when it happens...but I find it curious that my Mrs. (as dusky and dark skinned as the duskiest and dark skinningest among them) met the selfsame sprites, wihtout my having ever told her about them...They took her out to a club where her name was in lights, pampered her, gave her a selection of outfits etc., and generally were extremely 'girls about town' with her...

Is it just too crazy to consider that they might - *irons straightjacket* - look like that?

I guess the bugaboo with that theory is that it requires at least entertaining the possibility that something other, or at least more complex than, an individual hallucinating is going on.
 
 
Less searchable M0rd4nt
10:27 / 16.01.06
I think it's more the language used, M$. Terms like 'dusky' and 'super-exotic' used in respect of non-white females (even sprites) risk sounding a bit... Asian Babes, you know?
 
 
illmatic
10:31 / 16.01.06
Yeah, but if that's your experience ... how else do you report it?

After reading Petey's questions, I theorised - on the basis of no experience whatsoever - that their appearence might be due to the cultural set up/background of the rite.
 
 
Scrambled Password Bogus Email
10:39 / 16.01.06
MC - LOL! I didn't know, actually...no offence intended by the description at all, I didn't mean for it to be...lurid...as Illmatic has graciously pointed out, I tell it how I experienced it.

Dusky - Rather dark in color: dusky skin. (dictionary.com)
Exotic - From another part of the world; foreign. Intriguingly unusual or different; excitingly strange (dictionary.com)

Smoky, perhaps, is pushing it a bit. You know what I meant though.
 
 
Less searchable M0rd4nt
10:41 / 16.01.06
All I'm saying is, those kinds of terms kind of edge into linguistic territory commonly occupied by a sexual-fetishisation-of-nonwhites-by-whites attitude set. I didn't take them that way because the rest of M$'s thread is so passionate and reverential they didn't seem to carry that vibe; but I could just be carried away by exciting magic happenings.

Maybe that kind of language needs to be picked up and given a bit of a shake even here, just in case.
 
 
Less searchable M0rd4nt
10:41 / 16.01.06
Sorry, cross-posted with M$ there.
 
  

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