November 29th, 2005

Ever played musical chairs?  You start out a dozen people and a dozen minus one chairs.  The music starts.  You're all moving around, looking at each other with smiles and watching their body language as they bob over one chair then shoot their rears over another chair while you're doing the same thing.  The chair you're over, you plan to sit in that one if the music suddenly stops.  The chair coming up, you'll knock that person out of the way if you have to.  People are being knocked out each time the music halts and there are fewer chairs each time and you find yourself in a group of five, then four, then three people.  Three people, including yourself, and two chairs, your intent being to keep one directly under your derriere at all times.  And now it's down to two people and one chair.  Your eyes are locked on that other person's butt and that one chair.  The music stops, arms and legs fly, butts fall and you find yourself halfway on the chair sliding, sliding, falling and hitting the floor with a loud crack.

That's how I've been feelings these last four or so days.  Someone started the music last Friday and I'm walking around this big circle of chairs and it's not terribly serious at first, just people having a good time.  The next day comes and there seem to be less chairs, I'm feeling a little more anxious, a little more serious, and the game isn't as fun anymore.  Suddenly today I wake up and there's just one chair and I fall straight out of bed onto the floor with a hard thud and have spent the entire day in an absolutely horrible funk.  If I were forced to use a word to describe my emotional state it would be dread.  If I were asked to describe the experience I'd say I've been absolutely overwhelmed with negative feelings like...

"I'm fat and overweight and gross.  I can't stand the way my body or face look.  It all started with that one seed a long time ago, I used to be a string bean then I gained five pounds and someone wasn't attracted to me anymore and told me so then I started eating sometimes and gaining weight almost out of anger towards them, towards myself.  I'm not 'fat' by society's standards, just fifteen pounds overweight, but I feel enormous, uncomfortable, and gross.  I exercise more now than I have since I was in grade school and I eat much better than I have these last ten years yet I haven't lost anything.  I'm a failure to myself, I'm a failure to all those that want a skinnier guy, I am a fat fucking looser."

How's that for some blunt honesty?

This feeling hasn't been relegated to internal criticisms about my weight.  I've been feeling that way about my social life, about my job, about my wallet, about my writing, and about my spirituality.  Point to a part of my life and today I feel nothing but absolute dread peppered with a little despair and it has almost sent me into an uncontrolled lateral spinning anxiety attack.

If you know me well you know I know myself much better than most people will ever hope to (know themselves, that is).  I know why I'm reacting to things a certain way, can tell you how I'll react to certain experiences, and can usually and very accurately predict my behavior and feelings over a future timeline of days, months, and even years.  In the past decade I've become so adept at this that rarely anything, external or internal, surprises me and usually when they do it's great, a wonderful "light bulb" in the mind's eye type of experience.  But this?  I don't know what the hell this is.

The last time I felt something remotely this way was at the tail end of my last vacation so obviously, just having finished off a week's vacation I'm wondering if this is related.  What happened back then was that someone was sending me some very nasty thoughts and when that happens (and if I'm not "guarded") I can get very down on myself.  When that happened my first thought was, "No, it can't be external, this must be your own bullshit," but though I had no reason to feel down on myself the criticisms I kept hearing in my mind were running around and around in the voice of the person I found out, only a week or two later, had been spending that time pondering whether or not to write me and let me know what their real feelings were, so to speak.  So of course I'm going to think this is another psychic attack but no, that doesn't feel quite right (though it may play a subtle part).  With a psychic attack usually the thoughts and feelings have a taste and texture that remind you of being around the person sending out that psychic energy (see my previous journal entry on emotional-psychic pendulums, this is exactly what I'm talking about and people don't need to even have the slightest idea they're doing it for it to work!) but today I'm feeling none of that.

What I am feeling is like I've been playing a heated game of musical chairs and I'm so dizzy my emotions have had me on the verge of being physically ill.  I have been nauseous all day and it's emotional and there's no escape, I just need to wade through these emotions.

The reason, I don't know!  I only have glimpses.  Like a few days ago Vipasanna rubbed my neck and all of these emotions just seemed to come out of my muscles and though this happens for a lot of people this has never, ever occurred for me, a massage is just a massage and it's nice and wonderful and makes me feel physically better but I've never started to feel something like relief or an urge to cry or absolutely anything like that.  It was like she was squeezing oranges and the juice was coming out, not squeezing muscles.  Do you understand how odd and almost scary that can be if you've never experienced it?  And there have been a lot of things like that.  We watched The Sound of Music last week, a movie I've absolutely hated my entire life, and I'm watching the movie, on the verge of tears the entire time, and now I want to buy it.  I know why I felt that way, a spiritual awakening I knew about beforehand, and yet the intensity of these awakenings have been overwhelming.  I'm almost deathly scared to go see The Nutcracker here in a few weeks, I would hate to break down in public (which is also unlike me but then I've been stepping out of the box more and more over the last few years).

On an empathic level my eyes have opened so far that I can simply look at someone and tell them things that will either have them thrilled or hiding behind large pieces of furniture waving crosses.  On a spiritual level I can see my spiritual self and my physical self at the same time--so I can be in a complete state of anxious despair and be completely fine with it (which is an irony I'm still trying to work out for myself).  On an energetic level I see a whirlwind surrounding me, positive energy and negative energy cycling around from future to past, past to future, from here to there and there for here, a skyscraper high cyclone twisting with me being grabbed and turned and turned and turned and then being dropped with a thud into the eye and here I am writing right now from this eye and if I move too far to the left or two far to the right I'm immediately jerked by the wind.

What I do know is there's no easy out, the storm must be allowed to finish.  There's no comfort food that'll make the trip more bearable, no jacket that'll keep me warm and dry, no person or persons that can jump in and rescue me.  What matters is that I see it through.

November 27th, 2005

One thing I love more than my pathetic words can explain is getting out there on the path with the MP3 player strapped to my left arm and hitting play to some new album someone lent Vipasanna and da-da, da-da, da-da, I always know when I love a song 'cause I'm going faster and faster, long sure leaps, feet meeting pavement to the rhythm.

Then I stop.

Pant, pant, pant. Backup, lets listen to that again. And I'm off!

I've known for years now that I can look at someone and see empathic empressions reflected off of them, as if they were a mirror reflecting other people's energy back at me. Another way to look at this is to imagine that someone you know took a camcorder on their vacation and you're sitting down one afternoon and watch their trip through the Bahamas on the yaht and you see the islands and the beach bars and all that. Now you weren't there so you can't say you got the intensity of the experience, you can only have the experience through the eye of the camera they happened to be carrying and if the quality of the tape isn't so good your experience is a little farther from the original. That's what it's like using empathic reflection.

Psychic reflection, now that's a trip! Try it sometime, watch the video tape without putting it in the VCR!

Now here's something even a little more tricky and for shits and giggles I'll call it Tri-Local Psychic-Empathic Tuning (in Technicolor). It's actually pretty handy so pay attention, you may be able to pick this one up yourself.

So here's the situation.

You're walking down the street and you see someone/something and have to do a double take because that someone/something "reminded" you of someone. Now for brevity lets call this someone/something the "Reminder".

Now the Reminder might be there for any number of reasons. Some might say the reason is purely psychological, a projection, an insecurity, or whatever the case may be. Others might say it's our spirit guides telling us to pay attention in the only way something without a physical voice is capable, that is through thought ("Hey, look!").

So...

Rule #1: Accept that the Reminder exists.

We can argue all we want about the real causes for the Reminder but the fact is it exists, accept it and move on. Same with gravity, nobody's really figured it out but you can't deny something keeps our feet planted on the ground. When you recognize it there it is.

Next...

Step #1: Create an emotional-psychic pendelum.

First, I'm not talking the kind of pendelum you find at a new age store but the kind you'd pick up at home depot, you know, big piece of metal with one pointy end and another you attach string to. One of the oldest tools around Pendelums have been used for thousands and thousands of years to do something very simple, that is, make sure things are standing straight.

Here's what you do. In your mind's eye take the Reminder and find the pointy end, i.e., the specific trait or feature that lets you know who the Reminder is pointing at. Next, tie a piece of string to the other end. But what's the intent and what kind of knot to use?

It's simple. Do you want to understand and use the Reminder? Yes? Then you're done. What next?

Rule #2: Use it!

Say for instance you're trying to hang a picture straight. What you do is determine where you want the edge of the frame to be then hold the string near one of the top corners of the frame. The pendelum will hang straight down (thanks gravity) and to insure the picture is straight simply move it until the side is perfectly parallel to the string!

Psychically this is the same thing. Lift your intent high into your mind's eye then let gravity pull the Pendelum...then pay attention!

Now if you're able to practice this for a few months you should be able to notice something. Try it, what's there to loose? Try it for a year then ask yourself:

When you spot a Reminder is it already part of a Pendelum?

If so, did someone else create it?
If so, are they using it now?
If so, are they consciously aware of it?

Is it possible to send positive or negative emotional energy (intent) down the Pendelum?
Is it possible to use the Pendelum with only the primary intent?

(Be careful, if your mind or heart are not clear it's easy to project your own intent upon all of your answers!)

What I like most about the emotional-psychic pendelum is that, like the physical tool, it is simple. And it's not about whether it's psychic or psychological, it can be used quite effectively either way depending on your bent.

My most frequent use?

Refined balance.

November 26th, 2005

I didn't write last night. Tonight I'm going to cop out. I'd like to share three things from my past. To the right, a four leaf clover I once found. Below, two journal entries that pre-date The Temple. Take care and goodnight.

What do you look like without the makeup? Without your face hiding behind a shield of the 90's. After the century turns will your face turn as well? Can I see you in the shower, naked, because that is how I see you anyway.

You walk to the table and pour your cereal. Your hair is up in a towel, body curved under your pink robe, and you think I can't see you because you rush into the bathroom every morning before I wake because you know I wake early. You say hi, as ways, and stare at the back of the cereal box while holding tightly, unknowingly, to your illusion. And still I can see.

You know, it's like this for me every day with most people. Not everyone, you see. If someone makes me anxious, nervous, or insecure about myself, well, I can't see anything. I'm preoccupied. Got a lot of pain in my eyes. Clear paint and everything seems a different colour and the only cleanser is a night's sleep and staying away from the cause--them--or me.

Remember, you don't have to ask me if you can have your lover over tonight. You would anyway, even if I said no, you'd just need to drink an extra glass of sparkly on the way up to your room, so you couldn't hear me typing while I had to listen because I don't control the floor boards.

Sometimes you make it so easy for me to see.

And in the morning comes the cereal, the milk, and sometimes the hang over banana. Of course, if the effects don't wear off you skip everything and go straight for the tums and smile like I'm stupid--shit, anyone can read street signs. And they're a peculiar thing to be seeing in ones kitchen.

I've got a bag of luggage. It's under the table. Wanna see it? Wanta take a look? You force feed me yours every day, everyone does. Wanta see mine?

Lets trade for a day, you can have my eyes, k? I've got a strange sort of sight, better than 20/20 they tell me, but I'm forced to use a cane, shield, and knee pads--even a helmet if the wind gets bad enough. You though, are blind and can get places a lot faster and you don't ever have to look back because there's no need to see what you never saw, what you will never know, what you can never understand.

You're up now, it's a one banana morning, and he's gone. He never stays. I remember one of them, Chris I think his name was (oh, how many Chris's have there been this month alone?). I bumped into him running down to the bathroom afterwards. He was naked, penis pointing straight at my belly, and a stupid smirk on his face: "Your turn," he says, then pushes me against the wall, walks in and takes a leak while humming the Brady Bunch Theme.

You're telling me about yesterday at work, how things went, who you are hoping to avoid today. I can tell, as usual, you are not interested in how I was yesterday, although I heard you say something, maybe "How was your day," or whatever, between kisses on your way up. I won't be pretentious, so I start talking, start talking about my plans, my hopes, my fears, my dreams.

And you look out the window.

Sitting behind the common face of any monitor, I am the same person. My fingers hit the keys with regularity and sureness. Even when I make a mistake, my pinkie knows; it jumps up, depresses the delete key the appropriate number of times, and the rest of my fingers continue their journey.

When I look at most people, I see them for who they are. I see through the clothes and the makeup, through the hair cuts and stylings to a deeper core of being. Would you be able to see you, if you were you and knew who you were?

I know.

How I came to sit here is still somewhat of a mystery to me. The idea of linear has no meaning. One, two, three. I can count the years since 1973 and still, this does not matter nor does it paint an adequate biography. Give me a slide rule or a calculator and still you will find no formula or proof to set me apon with ease, unless you would have me fall on the floor like I have done so many times before.

My scars are different. I didn't choose to get on this bus. Sometimes, though, one must see what one must see, like a dog being dragged on a short leash.

This is sometimes the way of things.

So who are you? Not me obviously. Not me.

Who are you? Sitting there, reading over this with a curious detachment I would find refreshing. Allow me to drink from it.

Why, you ask?

Do you ever wonder how a flower got to be where it is and why it grows so splendidly while its brother, just inches away, struggles to reach the sun? Do you ever wonder why great men are often ignored while the plain and superficial build monoliths to their names?

Do you ever wonder why some leave the nest flying while others realize walking works just as well?

I was walking down the street the other day. Saw this woman, beautiful woman. A little taller than me, tan. Nice clothes, not that it matters. What are clothes when you can see right through them--them and the skin and the muscles and everything.

And I thought, as I sometimes do when I gaze at the universe around me: here is something uniquely beautiful.

The image is jostling around. It sometimes does that. Late at night, when I've got the stereo on and the ceiling heat. Electromagnetic wear.

I bought this computer with my own two hands. I went out, worked at McDonald's for a month over a year. I remember, bus loads of people coming in. Slap! Down with the grill. Lets get those burgers down. "Twelve on top!" Twelve more coming up!!" Could create a stack, averaging one burger every second. You think that's fast? You should have seen when the manager, Joe, a balding man in his thirties, would get behind that electric grill and he and I would spatter that grease because burns didn't matter as much as satisfying customers.

Sometimes I feel like a fast food restaurant of wisdom, talent, and knowledge. Come up to the drive through, if you need--when you need. Our motto: "Come when you are ready."

There's a McDonald's across the street. A Burger King (or Hungry Jack's in Australia land), a Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, everything that satisfies the average pallet yet hardens the arteries. They get more visitors than I do.

Once someone came in. She told me that she needed sureness. I said you already have it, why order more?

She saw it, she lost it, she left.

I once knew a man with a million friends, some good, some not so good. He had a book and a list and a number and a name and he was never alone unless he chose to be because his name rhymed with God and he had stolen itself from the earth.

One day we were supposed to meet at the park. I like the park. I like going where the soul is the key to interpersonal truth, where money and clothes are unimportant, unless of course there's a game of tackle football and you don't want grass-burn.

But he didn't meet me and the next day I asked and he had a curious look on his face that didn't understand or know and said Mine is more important.

Clickity-clack. Doesn't matter who types, even a monkey can type. Perhaps this computer doesn't mind who the input comes from--standard input, standard output: all the same.

It would be nice to hear, if I sat and asked it, for my 386 to say in a lively tone and happy manner, "You are dear and special to me. I look forward to the clickity-clack from your elegant and knowing hands."

But it stares. Stares and stares and stares and the image jingles sometimes, as I said, and reminds me that all I have is myself. Maybe it's true that this is all any of us have, but I would at least enjoy fooling myself, even for a short while, or having a side to take my mind off the view screen.

My eyes refuse to close.

Sometimes, when you stare hard and long enough (without blinking) you see strange things. Sometimes just mirages but sometimes mirages pull the corners of reality taught and wrap them around your mind until you can see something new. When you blink it's still there, though, because it was there all along but you'd never known how to see it before.

I once knew a girl who had no friends and sought me out and told me I was special because I knew how to care. I once met a girl who didn't care that I was special because she knew there was a McDonald's across the street.

When walking, always remember its one foot after the other. Even if you decide to go backwards for awhile. But I advise against the latter of the two--it's easy to trip.

So, look forward, walk, stroll, sit awhile on the grass and look at those little purple flowers that look like spiraled towards of DNA. You're alone but that's OK. You're just DNA too. But I'll be true to you. I'm glad I'm not a flower because then I wouldn't be able to enjoy them as much.

Or maybe flowers know how to enjoy themselves more.

That's what Jesus said. Or what they said he must have said. Or maybe the editors trashed it and came up with something better, something particularly useful in controlling those who don't have time to look at fragile purple flowers.

Have you noticed that those with the most time to look at flowers spend the least time looking at flowers?

I bought a flute the other day. $9.50 at a store across from the Fifth Street Market. It's bamboo, similar to one I used to play years and years ago in that place where mildew shared its sinus love and the exits were hidden in darkness. I played it this morning, trying to come up with a tune, trying not to arouse my neighbors so early (after all a tinkering instrumentalist is anything but a headache to those who are forced to listen).

Sometimes, when you begin to learn how to play an instrument, the richest earth is compassion and respect. "He can't be a Philip Sousa right away, but give him time," says the instructor as he turns the page for you. And parents and friends will listen respectfully. They know that you can't be a professional flutist without a few missed notes, a chapped lip or two, and a randomly surfacing irrational need to beat the flute against the nearest solid mass.

I'm learning flute and playing with my recorder again. Sometimes the diggery doo, but this hurts because they took my teeth out again and again and the anesthesia lasts only so long and then you're left bleeding, with gauze in the back of your mouth, and slightly tear eyes that speak more of frustration than of anything else.

I picked up one instrument long ago. A strange one, this. Not like the others. Not at all. Mostly, when you pick it up it looks a little different and sounds a little different. But it's the same instrument deep down. Not many see that. But I do.

Someone else must too.

When I was in middle school I wanted to be a drummer. But they told me I played the French horn well so I took that up instead but I always thought it sounded like a flat tire shooting off a rather dull and ineffectual cliff. But they said otherwise, at the concerts, at the recitals. So I kept playing and playing.

My parents once told me they would buy me one. "We will buy you a French horn and it will help you get through college." I asked them why not buy me drums (a computer, a friend, a life) and they told me that college was more important than my dharma.

Go to Europe. That's what they tell me now. The UofO thinks I'm great. An asset. My grades, generally straight A's. What can I say but whatever? I just do my best at everything I set my hands on.

No one listens.

I know a person with a hundred pencils and pens. During the test I asked to borrow one and he gave me the finger.

What do you think, computer of mine? Or am I yours? Where does the rider sit and who does the driving?

Einstein brought up an idea, the idea of relationships, of relativity. His answer to the dilemma of the chicken crossing the road might have been, "It depends on your point of reference."

Sometimes, when I'm forced to exist in this body, I want to change my point of reference. Tighten the noose, rip the wrists, vanquish the soul and go somewhere else where I'm not simply me but something else.

A different frame of reference.

I was sixteen once and everyone who bumped into me told me things would look up. "They always get better," someone would say to me on their hurried way to class or the ball game or the party or the lover. "They can't get any worse."

Pixies are mischievous creatures. They sit up in the clouds, mostly on sunny days, and come down and dance around on rainy days and in between they see how interesting they can make the scenery. They feed the plants and water the lawn and tap dance on loose mufflers until it drives the neighbors wild.

I don't own a muffler. But I have a mop (something I never though I would someday own and could say, "I own a mop!"). Perhaps a mop isn't as exciting. I can understand. Mufflers are fun, they take you places, keep things subdued, quiet even so you can't hear or smell what we all know is coming from their whispering lips. Mops just clean things up.

So will you still want to be around me?

I saw a pixie once and she smiled at me and made me a sparkling sound with her eyes blinking into mine and she knew what I wanted but haha not without a little effort home boy. Maybe I wear hats because I don't like the way she dances on my head.

But I can't be angry at the little buggers, they've taught me so much. Taught me about purple flowers, about flipping burgers, about getting good grades and sticking with someone even when everyone else has gone across the street. They taught me how to use my arms and my hands and my eyes and when to get out the mop.

Little turd taught me to love.

I once made a promise. Sat down in the quiet, in the cold. I knew what I was asking for. Good times and bad.

I've seen the bad stained and rot
like the veins of a deer
that's been purposely broadsided
by a pickup truck.

I once made a promise that I'd be there and I'd learn and I'd play the instrument, let the instrument play me. I made a promise that the notes wouldn't matter or the mistakes or a missed beat or two. The best way to make the tune work the next time around is making a quick note to yourself on the music sheet. Sometimes I run out of pencils though.

Do you have one I can borrow?