Mar 21, 2009

The Day the Earth Stood Still

Richard Arrowsmith at Black Dog Star has recently shared his Contact Device moment, and there were certain similarities to my own, so I thought I'd try to share, though words are poor tools for this kind of thing. I can see why the prophets relied on parable and myth to share their visions. You can't talk about it without sounding fairly nuts.

My Contact Horizon opened in 2004, after particularly difficult personal times. I won't go into the details, but let it suffice that the gravity of the situation overtook the cultural myths that sustained me, and like Icarus, I fell to earth. The movie house had shut down, the Wurlitzer had ground to a halt, Elvis had left the building.

I was in a particularly vulnerable frame of mind, and I went seeking. I found my prophet straight away - advertising in the local alternative rag - The Stranger. This prophet was Jeff Fairhall, Local Seattle organic bakery entrepreneur by day, Fly Agaric sucking shaman by night. Jeff had gone 'round the bend', buying full page ads to proclaim the End of the World, and his own Messiahship. My kinda guy! I immediately met him, struck up a friendship, and we had a short-lived and tumultuous relationship/love affair of the guru/student variety. It was Platonic (are you reading Var?) but that doesn't mean the relationship lacked passion. Far from it.

Jeff was definitely Linked In to the Right Brain, and he told me outrageous things that I somehow knew to be true, deep down. He showed me how to view current events in mythic context, with modern actors playing the parts of mythic archetypes, and he showed me not to fear making my own interpretations - to hold the consensus reality construct highly suspect. In a way, Jeff opened another dimension in my tesseract brain, as if it went from a flat, 2D view to glorious 3D! Jeff was also barking at the moon mad, and I eventually left. But his moonshine had left its mark, and I was forever changed. I was bitten.

So one beautiful morning in the fall of 2004, I went walking in the wood with Oliver, the Oztralian terrier. We weren't drinking or on drugs, so bare with me. But as we entered the woodland glade, something changed. I felt a presence, and a vibration. Like pins and needles. Something was happening. WTF?

I was like... bathing. In an energy of such refined frequency I can't even describe. It was raining down, and so I looked up, and I saw... everything. And it was Good. I mean, really good. Like your best fantasy of the best universe... ever. Who also is your lover. My cock responded to the vibration, and was soon standing at attention. Like some kind of "divining" rod!?

I could see inside the trees. I could see inside the cells and I could see something more... the tree was made of some kind of sentient matter - at some basic level deeper even than the atomic structure, the tree was made of... seed. Everything was made of this "matter". A matter that holds consciousness within it. Everything and everyone, "matters".

I'll just stop now, because I've gone way past the ridiculous already. I'll just sum up by saying that this little ten minute or so event changed my life, and yet... nothing has changed, except I decided to blog about it. Go figure.

12 comments:

Eunus Noe said...

Wow! That sounds great. I got so stoned about a month ago that I thought I was going to die. I lost my individual finite self, and felt infinite and everything and it wasn't pleasant. I thought I ruined it for everyone, like I shit in the pool and now the fun was up. All existence was over because of me and all I could say was that it was too much. (My body purged too. I threw up and then shit and pissed everything out. I felt off the whole next day.)

Your experience sounds better. It reminds me of the force. To me it sounds, a jedi you are.
-I'm unaware of this Jeff guy. I lived in Seattle from 2000-2003, I still browse the Stranger online. There are some member only blogs that many synchromystics list in their blog rolls that I haven't seen. Does he have one of those?
All interesting.
take care.
en

Arrowsmith said...

'My Contact Horizon opened up in 2004'....love it! It's funny how these moments of Being can happen completely unnanounced. You could meditate for the next 10 years in that same part of the forest and probably never have that experience again, and yet you could be wandering along minding your own business and then WHAM - the Earth Stands Still.
Thanks for the nod Michael, and thanks for sharing the experience.
Peace

Michael said...

EN - Yea, it was great. Insanely great? It was quite Pantheist in flavuh. Maybe the Great Spirit? I've heard about ego death experiences like yours - thanks for sharing.

Jeff was founder of the Essential Baking Co., and he had just bought the old Redhook (note the pyramid logo) Brewery in Fremont in 2003 with ideas of turning it into a chocolate factory, with himself as Willy Wonka. That's when I met him, and he'd turned the octagonal shaped (of course!) tasting room into a kind of ashram and was receiving the general public. It was totally nuts - I loved it! Anyway, the shrooms took their toll, and he was ousted from the company. I think his blog disappeared sometime in 2005 and so did he. He may have moved to San Francisco.

Richard - thanks for reading. Yea, the ancients probably would say the grove was sacred after that, but the pineal activation moment could have happened anywhere - just a random triangulation of satellites... ;-)

Cheers, Michael

skrambo said...

Sounds like a true "plant consciousness" experience to me. I don't know if this counts, but when I smoked Salvia I felt pretty much the same as you described (besides the erection, haha), and it was a feeling I wished would never go away. The pins and needles, seeing "into" things, all of it. My ego was done for and all that was left was love. It's awesome that you just "stumbled upon" that experience, I pretty much did the same even though I did initiate it, I didn't know what to expect...

Anadæ Quenyan Effro said...

Michael, there ain't nuthin' reCOCKulous about this experience with the Infinite a'tall, but definitely ineffable. Words just can't do these awakenings justice, as you noted. Thank you for sharing it with all of us. You Gno how much I appreciate hearing about it.

I often think of walking into the Wildwood as venturing forth into the very mind of the Earth itself, often the perfect conductor for these moments of clarity, completely sans any kind of botanical adjuncts whatsoever, that is, other than the undulating infinitude of Nature itself. The examples of life-changing encounters in Nature are, it goes without saying, legend.

Buttressed by forests my(s)elf,
Anadæ Effro ( :-)}

Michael said...

Tommy - the experience does seem similar to Salvia or maybe DMT, but without the insane roller coaster ride. I'll always treasure it because it gave me a sense of "knowing" not just believing.

Anadae - I feel fortunate to have had the experience in the woods - the mighty trees were like phallic testaments to the fecundity of the Father. "The rocks would cry out if I remained silent." That kind of thing. Those apostles had some most excellent weed, back in the day.

Michael said...

Postscript: Eunus Noe sent me a link to Jeff's obituary, died Sept. 5, 2007.

Wow. I lost contact with him after 2005, his blog disappeared shortly thereafter. I can't say I'm shocked. Jeff was probably the bravest man I've ever met, and one of the most sincere and well intentioned souls anyone could meet. I think that Jeff might have been Seattle's John the Baptist, because he sounded an alarm as loud as he could, and in the end he lost his head.

R.I.P. Jeff.

Anadæ Quenyan Effro said...

Michael, compare your late associate Jeff's demise to Terrence McKenna's (I like your John the Baptist comparison; mayhaps they were fraternal twins) ~ ( :-)}

Michael said...

Anadae, you are truly elf-kind. See the next gosporn post. :-)

David Stewart said...

hi michael - I enjoyed that you shared this with us - thanks - when my experiences happened I wished the earth stood still - at first I thought it was an earthquake Scared me silly at first - and I think I was far too young at the time to really benefit much from it. i was lucky enough to connect with a doctor who had undergone a NDE after the air ambulance she and a patient were in crashed through the ice of a frozen lake. - She diagnosed it a a Spontaneous Kundalini Awakening - so that was a lucky break because I think if i had described all my symptoms to any other doctor I would have spent my early twenties jacked up ant-psychotics.
anyuway enjoying catching up on all my blog -reading and best get back to it - my right eye went dark a couple weeks ago - had surgery last week and still waiting for the sight to come back - so please tell your hubby I wasn't really winking at you!!!! :)

Michael said...

David, thanks for sharing. Spontaneous Kundalini Awakening! SKA! Jeez, hope the eye gets better soon! A detached retina or something?

David Stewart said...

Exactly right Michael - and Ive heard all the jokes about having to lay face down all day that I care to hear!!!!!haha
I'm looking forward to the full healing as well.

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