Recycle THIS!

Kirkland is having their semiannual Reuse -Recycle-Conserve Event this weekend, and the flyer has new rules, which include the (federally mandated) need for every single battery to be individually wrapped in plastic or have both terminals covered in tape, and I kinda hit the roof with that one. I have a big coffee can full of AAA batteries that was dutifully waiting for the Recycling Event, but I'll be damned if I'm going to spend my time wrapping batteries as an unpaid Waste Management employee. It's almost as if they don't really WANT me to recycle.

It reminds me of the attempt of four star hotels to decrease their washing expenses by guilting their patrons into leaving their dirty sheets on the bed for an extra day or two - in order to save the planet. I'm sorry, but when I'm paying top dollar for a luxury hotel, one of the MAJOR luxuries is clean sheets every evening! I didn't notice a "saving the planet" refund on my bill. Funny how saving the planet only seems to benefit upstream in a Capitalist society.

Var had a Russian boyfriend back in the day, and Sergei related how soft drinks were vended in Russia: The machine supplied the drink, and the state supplied the glass. You picked up your glass, got your drink, and when you were done, you brought your glass back and washed it with state provided scrub brush and soap, and left it - sparkling clean for the next comrade. No muss, no fuss, no millions of plastic pop bottles choking the life out of the oceans.

Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to live in a place where I could trust my anonymous comrades to wash my glass, as if it were their own. What are the advantages of mutual trust to a biosphere? I wonder if She would tend to select for that attribute - and this is the real nutcracker: how might She give a competitive chance... to the noncompetitive?

Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. --Matthew 5:5

NOTES:

That is one crazy 55 synch. See Goro for more pentagram craziness.

Fishers of Men

Jesus made his disciples "fishers of men", and when I see images like this, I remember that I was about 13 years old when I was caught. Never let me go.

Dead or Alive - Part 2

Fuzzy Nuts

Diving a bit deeper into Salvia Divorum Magazine, Issue No. 1, I discovered that the various authors use the word "entheogen" in a somewhat broader sense than the strict dictionary definition:

a chemical substance, typically of plant origin, that is ingested to produce a nonordinary state of consciousness for religious or spiritual purposes.

The word is from Greek, literally 'becoming divine within' and though it was coined in the 1970's to mean the inebriants of shamans, it is used to mean ANY method, practiced or accidental, that causes a "nonordinary state of consciousness", AKA ego-death. The entheogen is seen as simply the catalyst of the Event, and that catalyst may or may not involve plants, chanting, rhythmic drumming, prayer, sex and even plain old emotional stress. So yes, Sally is a potential entheogen, but so is your overdrawn credit card.

SD No. 1 includes an excerpt from DMT: The Spirit Molecule: A Doctor's Revolutionary Research into the Biology of Near-Death and Mystical Experiences (2001), by Rick Strassman. Strassman is a clinical psychologist who studied the controlled administering of DMT to subjects over a five year period. Among his many interesting findings, was that DMT is a naturally synthesized molecule, a chemical cousin to the neurotransmitter serotonin. It seems to be naturally generated during emotional stress - trauma.

Trauma induced bridge crossing

A ha!! Perhaps my own personal Jesus ego-death was the result of a glandular secretion of DMT, induced by emotional trauma? That's probably why we "hysterical/sensitive" types are always seeing crazy shit, because we get a bong hit of DMT every now and then, and boom! Aliens/angels appear! And I don't mean to belittle the experience, because I'm a believer, but what usually happens is that after the experience, it gets translated through the belief system of the visionary and/or, through those who wish to profit by the prophet.

According to Michael Hoffman, an entheogenic altered-state was fully integrated into ancient culture:

A common standard banqueting tradition with reclining at table while drinking ‘mixed wine’ ran across many seemingly disparate cultural practices (Smith 2003). ‘Mixed wine’ was the central, reliable means of accessing the intense mystic altered state throughout antiquity. Ancient ‘mixed wine’ specifically meant visionary-plant mixtures (Ruck 1978), such as Psilocybe mushroom wine. If Electric Kool-Aid in an Acid Test type of gathering were switched with ‘mixed wine’ in a Hellenistic symposium, neither party would notice much difference.

Considering the importance of initiation ritual in Masonic tradition, one wonders if this entheogenic tradition might survive even today, in the secret rituals of the Ivy League Fraternities. Stories of Skull & Bonesman pledge George W. Bush, masturbating in a casket come to mind. Ego-death, anyone? Thank you, sir, may I have another!?

In a way, ego-death is a lot like sex - Michael Hoffman, again:

Like the egoic cognitive structure, the transcendent mental model is an innate, pre-configured structure that is discovered and revealed, like the adolescent discovers the innate ability to climax. The ability to mystically climax is inbuilt, as is the mental model that is revealed, although the useful metaphors and systematic explanation that are necessary to retain the revealed mental structure must be a product of human effort.

In other words, the ability to orgasm (the "little death") is a "built in" feature of human consciousness, and so is the ability to ego-death (the "big death"). It's part of the plumbing. Like sex, ego-death is often misused and corrupted. And like sex, it is strictly forbidden/channeled by official religion, and also like sex, seems to be going on ALL THE TIME in the "catacombs".

Isn't it just... fascinating? (see Spock cock an eyebrow) A religious cult originally based on an entheogenic altered-state of ego-death has, over 2000 years, become the official outpost of ego-feeding paranoia! Anything and everything that might possibly lead to ego-death experience: rhythmic dancing, drugs, and most especially sex, is strictly Verboten. Actually, even THIS much splintered cult is showing signs of glacial movement - the more thoughtful are allowing homosexuality, which is basically... allowing sex for ecstasy's sake - G*d forbid! Is Dionysus taking back his church?

Dead or Alive

Much of what you read on Gosporn is an inquiry of sorts, looking for answers to an ecstatic "walk in the woods" experience in the Fall of 2004. The inquiry does tend to wander, but I always find myself circling back to that experience, because I really do divide my life into two parts now - the one before the walk, and the one after. BC and AD. I now call it an ego-death experience because that sounds less preachy than "anointed by the Holy Spirit", and less crazy than "alien abduction" experience. The experience has been a profound enigma to me, until I began looking into the Dionysus Mysteries, and finally the myst is beginning to clear.

Research into the Dionysus Mysteries led me to: The Entheogen Theory of Religion and Ego Death.

...a sense of being controlled by frozen block-universe determinism with a single, pre-existing, ever-existing future. Experiencing this model of control and time initially destabilizes self-control power, and amounts to the death of the self that was conceived of as an autonomous control-agent. Self-control stability is restored upon transforming one's mental model to take into account the dependence of personal control on a hidden, separate thought-source, such as Necessity or a divine level that transcends Necessity. --Michael Hoffman

This is perhaps the best essay on the nature of ecstatic religious experience that I have EVER read. He integrates early Christianity into the Roman and Gnostic cults of the day, which all strongly featured the concept of Initiation into a "Mystery". An initiation who's engine (Hoffman proposes) was the altered state brought forth by the ingestion of "spiced wine" - drink laden with entheogenic drugs. The cup that is very likely... the mythical Holy Grail.

Hoffman intuits that the great "mystery" was, in fact, a personal experience of frozen block-universe determinism, and that much of the Jesus (and Dionysus) mythos can be easily understood when this principle is applied. The journey of Jesus, from the last supper, through the garden of Gethsemane, and finally to the Cross, is metaphor for the Initiate's journey toward ego-death, and the triumphant finale - when the Ego is Born Again.

I was so taken with Hoffman's insight that I purchased the first issue of Salvia Divinorum Magazine, published in 2003. There are only three issues in print. Salvia Divinorum is an entheogenic plant native to Mexico - the Oaxaca region. I've visited the state (not the altered state!) more than once, and strangely, my closest near death experience was on a beach near Oaxaca, when I nearly drowned in a riptide. The beach was Playa de la Muerte - I have since learned to pay more attention to signs.

The cruciform entheogen called hojas de las Maria Pastora, or ska Maria Pastora (leaves of Mary the shepherdess) were used among the Mazatec in medico-religious practices, like the teonanacatl mushrooms and the ololiuhqui seeds (similar to Morning Glory).

SD Mag prints accounts of those who have smoke the herb and I found many of them to be extremely familiar - as if they were also there in the woods. Here's one:

"This is a composite of all my Salvia experiences... Hell, and sin, is truly a state of perceived separation from God, to use the quaint theological terms. I've been in Hell, and I've sinned. I was there, and so was God, looking through my eyes, though I didn't know it.

So getting older all the time, and feeling twinges of mortality and middle-age craziness, I was ready to see things a little bit differently.

Not having a budget that could support, or justify the broadening experience of extensive travel, I thought it would be a good idea to travel extensively in my own room. So in my room I sat and chewed the bitter Salvia leaves, and in short order all that I thought I was vanished, and in its place a strange, yet familiar, wild Being took over. This Being was I, and everyone, a vast organic entity.

This Being was (is) beyond words. Any words I use to describe the experience are totally inadequate, lifeless.

All I can do is submit to this Being, and acknowledge that it is real, and in charge of me, of everything. Some would call it God. Whatever it is, it's real, it's alive, and Salvia really brings it home. Home is this Being.

I've never been so happy, so relieved, to be nothing but a part of the flesh of this Being. Ah, the pleasures this Flesh! One Flesh, forever. Thank you, Salvia!"

Right on, bro! IMHO, ego-death is basically what happens when the personal Operating System crashes. It is a kind of built in "fail safe" of the brain. It's as if the ego just can't take any more, and it collapses into a primordial state of programming - a "reboot", so to speak. That reboot is a reconnection to the source of I Am - the all encompassing, all loving, all knowing Id, the Father, Abba, etc.

However, my own, personal Jesus ego-death wasn't due to "spiced wine" - or anything approaching an entheogen. But I do admit to being "under the influence" - of Jeff Fairhall - Seattle's magic mushroom tea sipping (hell, guzzling) shaman. Is it possible to have an ego-death experience without entheogens? Stay tuned for Part II, when we explore DMT - The Spirit Molecule.

If the Matrix Deletes Me

Some gay bloggers are concerned that Google may have begun deleting blogs with adult content. That already happened (temporarily) to Gosporn last month, and if they in their omnipotent wisdom decide to make it permanent, I just wanted to let all 9 of my followers Gno that you'll be able to go to http://gosporn.com to find out what ever happened.

Shiva Makes Pocket Change

Var and I went to the Port Townsend Wooden Boat Festival last weekend, but I was almost sorry we did after I found out that Kirkland also held a Concours d' Elegance at Carillon Point last weekend. Little did I know that a bona fide religious icon would be on display - or I would have braved the mob in an attempt to reverently touch it! That icon was a 1955 Mercedes-Benz 300SL gull-wing. This is the famous "car with wings" - the precursor to the Back to the Future starg8!

The Mercedes had a futuristic aluminum skin, the Delorean was made of stainless steel, both were gull-wings, and Marty McFly was sent back to 1955! The Mercedes three pointed star has a more than passing resemblance to Dr. Brown's flux capacitor. As already noted in previous posts, the triple-pointed star resonates the Tripura - the rotating demonic citadels that Lord Shiva is destined to conquer with his/her triple pronged trident weapon. The cities, as well as their "doomsday" weapon, are both tri-radial, multi-dimensional concepts.

So I was a bit sad that I missed the 300SL, but later, as I emptied my pockets from the show, and found the one business card I gathered at the festival. It was from an old acquaintance of ours who now operates a CNC (computer controlled) milling machine in Port Townsend. His logo is a spinning tri-radial red spear motif - very Shiva-ish. As it turns out, most of his work lately comes from supporting the giant black trimaran that Oracle/BMW is using to challenge the Swiss in the America's Cup - see America's Cup for background. He cuts big carbon fiber parts for the boat. Carbon fiber is the engineering material that has replaced aluminum and stainless steel in all the hottest cars, boats, planes and military hardware - futuristic "skin". His dog is named Maya - I sh*t you not.

So I missed out on a chance to worship at a Tripura shrine, and instead I get Shiva slipping his carbon fiber trident INTO my pocket.