Sunday, July 25, 2010

part 2: you got there without drugs?!

I don't know if I ever told you, but the reason that I went back to school is that I got a message in my heart. The message was a response, from a force that answered to "God". It was summer 2008, and every day I was doing the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram, the Middle Pillar exercise, meditating, plus those 5 Tibetan Rites I posted about. These are energizing practices, practiced and designed to bring one's concentration to a quiet focus. I had the confidence to catalyze growing into my inner life, because I wanted more success in seeking my fortune in this world that felt like cruel and unforgiving. I could see, dimly, that those were both qualities within myself that I expereinced as coming from my environment. But more than from my mind, I also could see that the world can be a tricky place and that I needed some subtle power to penetrate and unlock the precise reality for which I feel seeded to blossom with. So using these techniques, passed on from sibs of the blossoming tree/rosy cross, I hacked out a free space for standing and channeling light.

It was spiritual calisthenics. Every day. Going to a forest clearing at the pinnacle of Enright ridgeline, to bellow the sacerdotal words of some barbarous semitic language. It was psychological isometrics in the basement of my girlfriend's apartment during the coldest months of winter. Bringing illumination into arenas of my being that I would no longer tolerate being isolated. I would stand in the snow by a frozen creek and guide LVX to stream up through my feet, all the way out the top of my skull. These exercises provided an opening for novel decisiveness to my yinned-out, self-critical personality.

excerpt from my journal, Thursday April 17th (2008)

"...God spoke to me today. I came through to him at the end of the Middle Pillar. My question: What to do with my life? Horticulturalist and shaman. Do the Work of Creation- express the Divine ideal by bringing forth permaculture lifeforms. This with the alchemical quintessence so well expressed that just being in the garden will resonate with our desire to pierce the veil. Awestruck by the Fathomless Beauty that'll be expressed at the scene, people will be be freer to transform themselves and manifest thier best in brightest in the vocation that speaks to them..."

It felt right to proceed farther, sometime around my birthday (5/13), with an experiment. I would address the source of my shift, which may have simply been the soothing seepage from my light-sensing pineal gland, as if it were a discrete, though completely interdependent, being of omnisentient benevolence. The question: WHAT I should be doing with my life to characterize its next phasze?! Cuz I had no fucking idea how to more fully manifest the Mars Silvanus, Greenman energy in my sphere of sensation. On the field of endeavor, I was feeling impatient and exhausted at what felt like a mighty effort and what looked like lolly-gagging on my destiny. I agreed that I would sincerely and fully explore whatever God told me directly was best for me to do, and that if the question needed further qualification, unforseen nuances and details could sort themselves out.


This is the stage that was known as Neophyte in the Golden Dawn. Probationary, testing you out to see what you're made of and whether you wanted to go on with more rigorous training. That's what being a Neophyte is about.

Eventually I was ready for the big mojo. In an epic session out by the overlook, beyond my momma's Eco-Village, did I span the inner space. Pentagrams on the pinnacle. "God, I've reprogrammed myself to believe that you, as a diffused benevolence that created the Universe and continues to act as the Prime Mover, truly enough exist to give me an answer. The ground of my being is enflamed with prayer, and the question is sincere. So even if it were only that part of my psyche which has the characteristics that I ascribe to you, I would still listen to you, because you have access to knowledge that normally now I can only dream of. So please tell me, what am I to do with my life at this stage so that I may fulfill my mission on Earth and enjoy myself to the fullest? I'm ready to execute whatever plan it is, and I'm ready to adhere to your version of it."


The answer was immediate, and very simple. "Go back to college."

"FUCCCCCCCCCCCCKKKKKKKKKK"

Whatever, I should have known that was coming. On some level I did, and it was unavoidable. I needed credibility, training, social skills wisdom experience. Connections and knowledge.

College. Getting there was Neophyte. That fall, I stood on Bong Hill, overlooking Athens and wondered what further progress was going to look like. Would I became a minor adept by the time I graduated? What would that feel like? What would that look like, and what would I be doing from an exhaulted station where the energy of the Sun could heat me and ray out of my heart to illuminate the world? I felt that it would happen. Then I plunged into a dark night of the soul, as I came to terms with the fact that I could not contain a successful student life in the container of poetic madness.

Fast forward through my life chapters that were shaped mainly by academics, qigong and N*. We may peer into my recent journal to read why now, I am calling myself Zelator, the task of whom is to zealously gain control of the foundations of one's being.

This is a journal entry that has been groomed for public consumption:

6/28/10

I experienced a kundalini awakening last night, at J!'s place. He is a recipe master of the sweat lodge.

There were 4 gates, corresponding with the four directions. We stripped off our outer garments and prayed by a blazing fire. Following that, we then went inside the towel-covered frame of woven boughs. We sat in a circle, our butts resting on boards over a sand floor. Sunken into the middle of the place was a brick invagination, where J! would lay down red glowing stones, saying "Welcome, all my relations" in Lakota/Sioux.

"Find your prayer", and "let the steam and the stones help you carry it up". These were my instructions… Opening to the possibility of transformation, I asked spirit to guide me and I vowed to follow its lead. The need to heal my Martian spirit, the body god of the heart, occurred to me. I saw that I had allowed my wholistic sense of self to be warped as I sacrificed balance to continue Beyond Coal battling through the Spring quarter, especially. I asked that my inner warrior be equilibritated with my ideally balanced and masculine self, so that I may laugh and feel the simple joy of living without feeling a constant desire to vault through life, driven always and solely by the battle daemon of Mars and instead welcoming in the equilibrating influence of, who would it be, Khamael according to the Big Tree Chart. I could feel this happening, as I experienced the thought in its fullness. Later, when the steam was burning my face and sweat poured from my chin, I began offering a verbalized prayer. J! opened the door to the lodge as I began, and I paused. A! sat to my left, and urged me to finish. Thank you, A!. It was my truth in the moment, and was an admirable declaration. When we emerged from the womb, there was lightening flashing in the sky and it continued for the rest of our time. Mars had heard me and showed his response with the flashing bolts of Thor. We talked about stars outside for a bit, me mentioning Astraea to the Scorpio and Libra audience. A! informed us about a cluster of guardians who live out by Titan, saying that a "mothership" is out that way also which can be seen with the naked eye.

I decided to do a ritual whereby I would fill myself with the pure planetary energies to experience them, and then wash myself clean with Lux. I had already gotten this experience with Mars, who is very close to home and responded with a happy, care-free side of me that I had not thought before as being the same part of me that can deal with conflict…. pause to read and rest…

God I have a killer stomach ache! I feel like a different person than whose consciousness was merged with such larger patterns last night. However, I know that the pain is something I need to work through... By recording this story, faithfully detailing the evidence of this truth that is no longer in the forefront of my thinking, it can find a home by integrating it into my habitual self. That will make the surface of this pond as good as clarified, because I know what lurks beneath and what is reflected from above (the daemonic and the angelic). The mead of inspiration hath ceased flowing, but fills my cup.
I'm indebted to Alan Chapman (page 25 Advanced Magick for Beginners) for elucidating this for me. I'm used to thinking of doing what has to be done in the ephemerally appropriate now as a chore, but the small haze of pain won’t keep me from harmonizing with the Dao. Doing so is easy and more richly gratifying than I previously realized.

Lodge. Returning, I filled myself with Venus, which I pictured as emerald plumes of color descending throughout my pa hui/jew cap area of the dome, and expanding into my whole body. Self-induced experience, the energy I was picturing introducing seemed to respond (remember to keep an objective tone, it will help you maintain an objective outlook) to my invitation as I felt: 1) a sentimental love, 2) generalized erotic loving for my self and 3)other, as if I and all were one unit of pleasing flesh. Truly a yummy feeling! I remember feeling this before, looking at myself in the mirror after a shower last week or the week before, and exclaiming that "Nobody's got curves like this!" in affection for the way my lower back transitions down. Then I purged the eroticism of Venus with white light followed. It took more work of will than flushing out Mars, and it seemed that I was aware of some other part of me that was there without filling with Venus energy, like part of the hardware of my physical makeup is governed by Venus and that I had stayed tuned into it after being completely awash. As I would write in my journal if I didn’t have the focus to be scientific, “But the excess energy did dissolve, overpowered by the Ain Soph.”

Next was a non-aroused Jupiter energy. It is happy, mild, not a boundary setter, but an affirmer. I felt myself bestowing a personal blessing on my experience as a whole; it was of the blue sphere based on the Kaballistic imprint. I did not feel uplifted by Jupiter, which surprised me at the time. I had expected to feel Jovial Green Dragon I've felt in my liver before, but did not. Silent mirth, happy in solitude, an inner chuckle is the kind of happiness if I had to personify the satisfaction. At this stage, J! began talking, and I had to interrupt my focus to pay attention to him, and when I focused again it was to do Mercury.

Mercury is the Magician archetype, by my reckoning: able to make connections before they are fully felt by communicating between disparate parts. I felt an orange energy down through my crown, the color I've seen in pictures of the planet's surface. The intellect. I felt more at peace with the Mercurial energy than I had during my first year at OU, because I am more fully developed and thinking is better complimented by emotional and social activity. Nonetheless, the 3 sisters project and the bioremediation I am thankful for, and I recall as I write this another experienced truth of appreciating this function earlier this year, which was a milestone I suppose- hopefully I wrote it down at the time and can transcribe it an put it on a timeline- spiraled on the wheel of the year?!!! See what I mean! While Jupiter's humor was slow and subtle, and Venus's was like a ink spreading blue dye from the chemistry lab spreading through a solute, Mercury I felt as the energy around my spinal column. THat seems to correspond with the central nervous system…

The steam got really intense after Mercury, and I realized that the Moon would be next, because there was just a full moon lunar eclipse on Saturday morning. It was so hot, my nostrils felt like they were burning, and so did my nipples.

I came outside and thought about the Moon- and suddenly it was connected to my sexuality! I did not continue the formula of inviting it in and then purging it, there was a truth happening in me of its own accord. In "The Mystical Kabbalah", Dion Fortune says something about how all the other energies are reposted in the Moon's, which brings it down to Malkuth, the Earth, the 4 directions that Amerindians use as a soul compass technology. I imagined different colored beams of light, the green, orange, blue and red that I had seen, entering into the Moon in a rainbow, that arced down into the sphere of my lower belly. Then yellow light appeared as the pre-eminent light, and the blue faded, and it was strengthened. The rainbow covenant was renewed, I realized: I do not need to hurt and strangle my body or emotions to grow and evolve them, and I vowed upon seeing the Rainbow that I was too beautiful to extinguish, ever.

I feel less certain of the chronology of the following events, but I will record them from memory as faithfully as possible, and perhaps return to offer elaborations and corrections later. Inside the tent for the third portal, the East, Rosco tells us that this is the place of beginnings, this is the direction which we evolutionarily are coming out of Dark Age in the heated South and getting more enlightened, so that space alien gods will return to conscious communication with our society and help us clean up the ecological messes we've made. I remember offering a homily to the Moon. I offered thanks to the Moon for her gifts of shaking and strengthening our imagination, so that we as earth poets could connect with the other energies too and figure out the work we need to do, and be the Gods who don't have to destroy everything to create anew! We remember, it is renewed, the Rainbow Covenant, I said. It was powerful, and I did not falter. A! offered a prayer to our DNA and ancestors and teachers before that; M! or Stephan-Eye offered something brief after. J! thanked us and said we should go into spontaneous singing. I began "Humble myself to the light of the Moon", but he overpowered me and the others with his voice, and asked us to "get low" as he dumped a ton of water on the rocks. I felt intensely angry, but then did not allow myself to retain the anger. This was a very important part of the process. I let anger pass through me, and out again like a barnacle goose’s acorn sinking through an uncovered well, and being carried out to sea on an underground river. Bending my forehead to the ground, the cord from base chakra to top chakra that my pal Farinacci suggested becoming aware of, became an upwards flowing motion. I could feel it move through me from base to top as I bent over and it flowed from I don't know where, it felt like, into the Earth, like I was a hose which somebody had dunked in water and then sucked on for some siphoning action. I was totally bent over my crossed legs. I stumbled out, my conscious mind a total annihilated blank.

J! and his interruption, what a coyote, setting me up to realize my higher need of allowing anger to pass through and back out again instead of into my sword arm.

After that third portal, I just lay in the grass. I could barely move. I was nauseous, feeling like the heat had done me in. I did facial massage but without the heat. A! came over and I took a hit of some smoke, which seemed super appropriate. I administered a resuscitating nose bridge rub. My fingers that meandered over to the left brow ridge, below my off-center third eye. I felt it quiver, and I blasted off!

This was the weirdest and most intense of the experience.

There was all this exchange between above and below energies, via the heart, and SOOO much imagery. I remember being reborn as a lux shen baby and being rocked by the virgin mother; I remember burning to a cinder and rising as a phoenix from heart to throat. I thought, "I should read Chuang Tze to see about his thinking on this. I remember INRI, strangely enough, and YHVH, and I felt the fire of creation sweep from letter to letter left to right. There were three consecutive serpents that took three paths from root to crown, each with fierce different face and temperament. One was definitely an asp or some venomous looking green snake with maroon banding, another was grayish. The first two I could feel as blazing verically, the green one kind of meandered. It got overwhelming after a while. I realized on the comedown, as others came out and started adjusting from their forth portal, that I loved this Gnosis and that I was salty to have to ever move again, because I could not express what I felt to the others and that living into it would be difficult to achieve and even more difficult to understand. Perhaps with further study, these super-dense experiences can reveal further meaning. That's a definite possibility! Anywho, when it got overwhelming, I said "These evolutions are what have happened to the World as a Whole, and I would be deluding myself if I was to view these events as my exclusive domain. The visions were of monumental, transpersonal transformation and I will learn and grow from integrating them into what I am, but on a human scale. I can’t get shredded by all this God energy."

I was rather discombobulated and couldn't communicate what happened to me to those around me, so much, but it was good. The next morning, this Monday morning, I cried after a belly rub, both for how intensely good it had been, and the great disconnect I felt between the mundane and the journey I had just come back from. I offered thanks, and remembered the Rainbow Covenant and the peaceable Martian were there supporting me.

On my way to 8 am Spanish class the morning after voyaging, I found my red bike, which had been stolen. Lavishing it with maintenance and riding it hard, I exercised the newly integrated pieces of my philosophy. I am feeling fucking amazed, enlivened and invigorated by it all.”

That bike will never have a rusty chain again. I am taking care of it from then on out, and moving straight from a stilled point, amidst the powerful fluctuations of the Lunar Flame, is what constitutes gaining control of your being. Here's to

__________________
This is what my old teacher C Duke said upon hearing my newly adopted title

"You are *not* a Zelator - you are always and only ever were *Ipsissimus*...
Enlightened and *Self-Initiated*

*Everything else is just someone else's hierarchy.*"

--------------------
Next I'll talk about the Solar achievement. After all this heavy duty focus on me, the next posts will be about girls and beer and la vida dulce.

Thursday, July 15, 2010

standing on the moon, Zelator Werebrock is consoled and harmoniously returns to vehemence (part 1)

My last 45 days have have been an unusually well-documented wildride. I kept a journal the whole time, and took alone space for self-intimacy on the as-needed basis. This wakened restfulness catalyzed meticulous self-cultivation, and unusually strong shocks to my system were integrated instead of being cause for disintegration. It has being enchanted, and in this post I will begin to relate the experience.

I hope you enjoy the music along with the other content.



The night after I wrote the last entry, I was feeling worn-out. Tired with finals, activism and emotional confusion while keeping an expansive, effective personality had been taxing. The exhaustion was all of spring and part of winter, and after reflecting for that last post on May 30th, my awareness grew into how hard I'd been slammed by cumulative stress. It was ostensibly for Beyond Coal's sake, but it was actually for my sake. Working effectively for real justice has kept my passion inflamed since last autumn. Then, I had found something important that was bigger than myself and was suddenly bestowed the energy to split outta a dysfunctional, romantic human partnership. No surprises there, before I could walk my parents already set me on an Earth Warrior path, and since puberty I've adoringly followed in the train of goddess Astraea/Justicia. In a way I didn't understand before, pursuing justice has become as captivatingly meaning-generative as Eros; also, this orientation towards the Lady who is Virgo, Libra and Scorpio, awoke Mars energy in me and I RAGED with it. After campaigning so hard and getting myself burned down along with the enemy, I still had to make this one showing, at this one party, as part of this external manifestation of the Great Work. It came clear that strong-arming my way through the way I had been would require neglecting self-care, as the destination lay some miles outside of town and it was me, exhausted without a ride or a bike. Needing to get there, "How am I going to do this?"


I told myself that I would sleep in the next day. I reasoned that if I was truly aligned with the will of the gods, then I should have near limitless access to willforce and animating energy. I ate a bit of dark chocolate, for I was peckish, and suddenly I saw an ouroboros and felt my engine revving. "Mwahaha! I am born anew, I vibrate forever and am completely imperishable." Feeling the whirling light above and behind my belly button, I ran for a long time through the darkness on country roads, before getting carried the rest of the way by a kindly meth afficionado who happened to be driving my way. I did not indulge in his substance, and would not have even if there were no detrimental side effects, because it was QUITE apparent at this point that methamphetamine would be completely superfluous.

That was an interesting little episode.

A few other things, I'll just mention in passing.


The desire to connect with and rely upon another human outside of myself, for solace in dealing with exhaustion, was strong. Eventually I realized this was simply not the path for me anymore, and wouldn't be. So while I was driven by lusting on life for a hot minute, backing out of some romantic foibles with dear friends and avoiding a couple more became imperative. The original meaning of the Fortitude card was revealed: neither seeking nor avoiding conflict, and overcoming your adversaries (conflicting desires and fear) as they appear through inner strength.

For the self-Chosen People out there, Frater Achad put this card between Sefira 7 and 6.

Another thing I did was to stand up at the OU board of trustees meeting and spake our piece. Since they wouldn't meet with us, I had to take the drastic step of inserting myself into their reality tunnel. The president of the University did not like it, but there was nothing they could do. I only spoke the first two sentences, because they refused to be publicly acted upon, so I handed the typed message off to their secretary and left. When we back up the promise to hold them accountable, I predict that they will be salty they avoided us when we were playing nice.

"On behalf of the 2,000 students and faculty who have signed a petition
to show they want Ohio University to move beyond coal, good morning.
Mr. President and members of the board of trustees, my name is Badger
Johnson, I am a student at Ohio University and I am here today to
bring you an urgent message.

As students, we are told that Ohio University community members 
should take great pride in our institution. We certainly are 
accomplishing many great things for which we feel pride, and we are 
also the beneficiaries of past struggles and for this we are thankful. 
However, in a modern world where we can quantify the number of human 
deaths caused by each additional coal-burning facility, it is time to 
acknowledge that burning coal is a backwards and irresponsible 
operation.

The Lausche Heating Plant burns coal, to produce steam for heating and 
cooling the buildings on campus, less than half a mile from where we 
are gathered here. As we speak it could be emitting pollutants that 
are known to cause asthma and trigger asthma attacks, such as sulfur 
oxides. We are letting this happen right beside the fields where our 
athletes train. What value does the board of trustees put on the 
health of the student community?

There are alternatives to coal, and they need to be expediently 
explored because the Lausche plant was due to retire years ago and we 
need something cleaner to replace it. Currently the University is 
reviewing its options, but it is actually well behind the timeline the 
president McDavis committed us to in March of 2007. Tardiness is not a 
hallmark of excellence, and it’s high time to admit that we cannot 
meet the President’s stated goal of carbon neutrality while we’re 
burning coal! And why would we try? Renewable energy pays for itself 
in the long run, and it represents a lucrative investment. It also 
helps demonstrate the commitment to environmental citizenship that is 
part of our core value statement.

Are you, board of trustees, willing to change the damaging energy 
course your predecessors have chosen for us? History demands that you 
move beyond coal now! We need executives of character, who are 
responsible to both the wisest council of our alma matar’s research 
scientists, and to the desire of your customers, the students. We have 
spoken: thousands of students have signed the petition to move beyond 
coal now. We are here to help you hold you accountable. Beyond Coal is 
here to hold you accountable. There will be positive consequences if 
you rise to the challenge we’ve laid out before you, and further 
negative repercussions for all of us if you procrastinate. Thank you."

Later that day, June 25th, I had a vivid dream that's too personal to share. Also, I was shocked by a thunder bolt after reading 1491, which I cannot recommend highly enough to you if you want a tour-de-force of the archaeologically supported awesomeness of cultures that existed in this Hemisphere prior to European invasion. I have been learning about Mayan and Eastern Woodland cultures from the book, after having learned from the oral traditions of these peoples that they shared space until the Shawnee left the Yucatan about a 1,000 years ago. The thunder-clad idea was that I can reconnect the Shawnee with recent Mayan emigres, who are now making their way to the Midwest to escape political turmoil, just as the Shawnee did. The Shawnee carry seeds of the 3 sisters garden, which may offer a key to grounding and continuing the indigenous lifeway of those newly arrived. Picture this: Shawnee, Forgot~urbans and Mayans from the Yucatan collaborating on an acre of 3-sisters community garden. Picture 5 acres, 25, and 64, once the right relationship and gardening techniques have been shared and thanked for. The Neo-indigenizing current being expressed through formerly dispossesed, born again pagans. The Guatamalan's culture could continue directly to their children in this new land, and not worked to be worked into oblivion from the alienation of their intensely-scheduled labor, or the by the prison-school adaptations that their kids are promoted to make. Again I marvel, think how the Earthway continuity would not sink completely underground, and with the solidarity of privileged folks with available education and attention, food could shared at the new table, the kind of table that hospitable Shawnee people had tried to teach to the Whites, the kind of hospitality that some awakening Gnostics are ready to learn now! I talked with the clan mother of the Shawnee Nation United Remnant Band, and she's open to me starting and facilitating this process, so now progress on the project is simply a matter of responding appropriately as the time table occurs to me.

There's more to be said. That brings us up to 3 weeks ago, and I'll try to finish out describing the episode soon. Until then, with open hearts we sail on the breath of God.