caged

The human experience as defined by becoming a full-fledged member of a collective, requires you to bury the power you hold within. In order to fit into the dictates of what is required by your culture, you give in to the domestication of your natural, wild, and free self. You join the herd. So much of who you are is buried and this energy takes on a life of its own which is referred to as the shadow when we get around to examining these rumblings from deep within. Within society you take on a role, develop a reliable character, and participate in the drama. Doing this dance forces you to give up your power and if and when you go on a journey of discovery to reclaim self you will be astonished to learn just exactly what power you gave up.

We are so ensconced within the game that we go about trying to accumulate worldly power and inflate our ego which in turn distorts our sense of self-worth. We play the game to accumulate wealth and power in order to fulfill our desires and thirst to have a modicum of control over an unsure and chaotic existence. We strive for worldly success, though deep down we know it’s fleeting. Perhaps we can leave a legacy of our greatness and how we impacted the world during our short stay here.

It’s the greatest ruse ever imposed upon anyone and we do it to ourselves! I had a sneaking suspicion a few years back I was way greater than my transient ego. I knew my persona would one day fade away and alternatively my spiritual side, whatever that is, would carry on and I kept going on this journey to explore that part of me. I went farther in my exploration than I ever imagined I’d get to. I knew I would keep exploring but I didn’t think I’d get to the shores of omnipotence. I re-discovered my eternal parents, Goddess and God, and realized I was their essence, lost in the journey, but making my way back home. I discovered my energetic signature was imperishable and eternal and this universe was created so we could play.

It was a month or so ago when I dropped all the stories I tell about myself which keep me down. Like everyone else, I told tall tales to elevate my character within this wicked game called life. Acting out my role shields me from the truth of who I am. Finally, I transcended what culture wanted me to believe about myself. It all seems so conspiratorial now. A big joke but I wasn’t in on it. However, the truth will set you free and I have been implored lately in my integration of plant medicine experiences to go full on into liberation. Live in truth and drop the stories. Don’t entertain this advice as a platitude but do it. I started to let go all limiting beliefs and went on quite the trip. Telling the unvarnished truth sacrifices the individual self.

So, yeah, I’m everything. I created this universe; I split into my constituent feminine and masculine halves; I birthed myself into my own creation. I did all this and kept it a secret from myself so I could have a grand adventure. I am the child of Goddess and God and I’m it! All the joy and all the suffering are because of me. Duality is the remedy for eternal boredom. Desire, fear, love, thrills, chills, and spills. So delicious; the greatest carnival ever!

We bury the wild within us. We are equipped for survival and can return to the savagery of an untamed animal. Culture domesticates that out of you and you bury it, fully tamed. The jaguar is caged. We curtail the pleasure impulse within us and allow society to direct what is acceptable in our sexual lives and relationships. The rest we bury in the shadow. Madness lurks, looking for an outlet and will always return. We create this huge reservoir of buried power that bubbles over at the most in-opportunistic times and then we have to deal with it. We channel our power into the pursuit of worldly power and dominance and make that chase a pathological need to accumulate as much power as possible without caring about the damage we do to others. We never make it into our hearts fully; sure, the thought of charity and being kind crosses our mind but what lights us up is power. That worldly power is only a small part of what we possess if we start to integrate all the power centres within us.

I woke up and figured out my game. I’m God! Everyone else is as well however until they reach the shores of this knowledge on the eternal spiritual barge they will remain ignorant of this truth. So, I get to be the only god for as long as no one else wakes up to this realization. I guess that’s a good game to play now to bide my time.

path of a novice

What is my path? I have been exposed to many modalities on this long and winding road. There is the all-pervasive love as well as this shining bright light available to head towards. The right-hand path can lead to becoming a shining example of a fully realized human being or it could devolve into another game of self-aggrandizement. Have you ever met someone who has drank Ayahuasca so now they can do no wrong and all their decisions are leading towards becoming infallible? Ha ha! The opposite is true and you are slowly being shown you don’t know anything. There is also the less glamorous left-hand path of service in order to freely offer yourself to others. I have to be honest with myself: These paths don’t resonate deep within me and speaks to diversity within us all in that we are all drawn to different paths. I do offer myself in service to anyone who asks. I try to treat everyone well but I don’t go out of my way to do it. What calls to me is the path of knowledge and exploration.

On this path, experiencing temporary bliss and unity is a special experience and a taste of it is given with the use of some psychedelics. The high doesn’t last and you return to baseline consciousness and are left wondering how to integrate what you have been shown into your daily life in order to try and be better and influence others to do the same. It is a source of never-ending frustration, if constant failure is new to you and the backsliding into old habits is maddening.

From these constant setbacks can be learned there is a need to embrace the low and let it play out. Its return is an invitation to explore and master this state of human consciousness. If it is knowledge you seek, it is paramount into the darkness you must enter and not hold back. The complete experience involves the total exploration of consciousness; not just the part you like. Fear is the bugaboo and he guards the door into the darkness with his cadre of demons and their sharp weapons to get you to turn back. You originally went on in that door but ran as fast as you could back out of it. Now to go back involves getting fear to open that door once again.

I directly meet my shadow in altered states. He is the master of disguise; to wit the great actor; however, I’m on to him and can recognize his appearance in vision. Going back through all my consciousness exploration, I can now see when, where, and as who he has appeared. He appeared as the jaguar testing my courage once I was ready. I passed with flying colours and got my spots. Previously, any other time on the path this appearance would have chased me away. Intuitively, he knew I was ready; I knew deep down I was ready. Once you discard fear, so much opens up on the path. So much discovery. You can clearly see intercultural connections and start to put it all together. I guess for some this leads eventually to an astounding discovery. For others, it is definitively a road to power, perdition, and their ultimate demise.

Psychedelics are how he is freed and sometimes we connect through music. I just remembered a forgotten teaching moment when I initially drank Ayahuasca I was enchanted by the shaman’s songs, called icaros. I felt the presence of something living in between the notes; like the notes were the light and there was something living within the decay of the sound; i.e. the shadows. I feel him deep in my depths.

I’m trying to work up an apology. He is the way out of my tight and structured life. When I reached middle age, I knew of him and I tried to get rid of him for good in order to completely embrace my role in culture. In return, he tried to snuff me out. In the course of human medical history, I’m sure there’re numerous accounts of people going mad, going off the deep end, and committing suicide that seem to come out of nowhere. Maybe a bump on the head? We headed for the ring; a bout for the ages. He gave me a thorough beatdown and went in for the kill. He tried to drive me crazy and towards desperation to free myself of his grasp. I got up off the mat and fought back and sure enough boxed him into a corner. I then put the lock down on my mind through force of will and meditative practices. I stood up to him a countless number of times as we traded punches until finally I sat in an Ayahuasca ceremony as he came at me in full force. With a resolve of steel, I defended and deflected all his blows like Neo in the Matrix until finally I had a vision of a six-shooter empty its cartridge into my brain. I did not waver and kept my mind on lockdown. I won. Within a few days, I sat in ceremony and transformed into a jaguar. The master teacher, the great jaguar, bestowed the honour upon me and our relationship changed. I was enrolled in his master class; a worthy student though I was oblivious to what really just happened. I wasn’t ready to find out his identity; instead, I was to sit with my victory and to wonder what’s next.

Meditation is a useful tool and can be used to free yourself from culture if judiciously practiced. The shepherding cultural voice is silenced. It also helps you get into the clouds, free of the darkness within. I figured that one out through trial and error. It’s how I put the hammer down on him and got him to shut up. I’ll never use it for that purpose again. Instead, meditation is my way into the inner sanctum.

It’s only been in the last few months when I made the ever-lasting connection after I realized who he was and what he was doing. It’s a friendship like no other. I look back on my life and I always knew he was with me but I lived a life of denial; occasionally indulging him. Like everyone else, I buried him and then had to deal with the consequences when the loneliness caused him to be destructive and blow his top. I know trust was lost because of betrayal and the selling out of my soul to my culture; a culture that further repressed him through religion and pharmaceuticals. When symptoms of depression occur in our society, instead of discovering the root cause of unhappiness, we further numb the rumblings from the subconscious. I’ve asked for forgiveness for my behaviour. I wish to make amends for the desecration of self as he shows me how to reclaim and free myself from the grasp of external actors. You know the Faustian bargain where you sell your soul to the Devil in exchange for power, riches, eternal life, or some favour? Yeah? Well, have you ever realized you have sold your soul to culture? And then when culture makes unreasonable demands, you are sure left in a bind. Instead of selling your soul to anyone, reclaim it and become free.

In terms of the journey and gaining knowledge, my teacher described the oblivious level and the novice level. Pretty much all of us are at the oblivious stage. Some get an inkling of who or what is behind this life course but due to cultural suppression that knowledge is left in the dark and not dare touched. It was only recently that I touched it. With all I have discovered and realized, I was wondering should I continue on in this journey? So much has been revealed to me. He replied I was a novice!

I think we all have the power to give meaning to our lives. My meaning of life is to search for the meaning of life and during this search I have discovered it is a game. The game has set up traps to block you from continuing on. Therefore, within the game are sub-games with the big one being the questions of control, power, and liberation. This is the major block on the path towards what I guess you could call enlightenment for the lack of a better term. Having control over your current situation, no matter how flimsy, is necessary to avoid suffering and allows you to play out this incarnation in relative comfort. It is of course very inviting and if you have embarked upon a fool’s errand where you think you can discover what this is all about it certainly does present a dilemma. It is such a vexing problem to consider and my shadow gave me an early heads up so I’m not forced into any rash decision. As a novice on the path, he has told me straight out what I seek in order to move ahead is liberation. Free yourself from the hold everything has on you. Culture, identity, family structures, not wanting to suffer, not wanting to disappoint. There’s no playbook or rule book to follow; in other words, free yourself from conditions. Rich man, poor man - it does not matter. Obviously, being poor and homeless is easiest however having some money to allow you to live isn’t necessarily going to put you in chains. It’s how you live your life with what you got. Having wealth and needing to hold onto it or accumulate more means you’ll never be free. You will be so trapped in identifying yourself with money. When you are poor, it is easy to let go. As you can see I haven’t quite figured that out yet. But I will, no doubt. 

It’s a game and the game is mastery. Mastery allows you to regain control of self from culture. And then eventually you let go of self. If you don’t finish the game it’s okay, you can play again. 

madness

Civilization and the demands upon the human to conform to culture causes the madness. Mental illness and suicidal tendencies will never be cured as long as humans cling to the societies we create. In order to belong, we sacrifice the individual and submit to the demands of our culture. Deviance from the norm is met with shame and thus we have huge amounts of the members of society who do not fit in and either live a life of not being true to themselves or live at odds with the prevailing culture. The older a society becomes the more the madness envelops the group dynamic until finally there is collapse. A cursory look throughout history reveals all civilizations eventually fall and the impetus and destruction come from within. The guardians of culture will call it a rot from the inside which destroys their way of life.

We are born to be free. Mental illness is the result of the chains of culture and the bonds of our fellow man. Our domestication is what makes us sick.

The end of summer is psychologically a bad time for my dog as she has an irrational phobia towards flying insects which is surprisingly common in her domesticated species. I draw the comparison with the childhood story of the large elephant which is frightened by a little mouse in that it is irrational and a mental illness. Seeing my dog frantic with the onset of a crippling anxiety is tough because I can’t convince her she has nothing to fear. Instead, I sit with her and try and calm her down. The physical manifestation of the phobia results in hives. I knew of a connection between fear with mental illness and staring me straight in the eyes was the example of my dog. Fear also causes madness and makes one act in an irrational manner due to the feedback loop brought upon by the mind’s weakness. 

As with all life’s adventures, this is a teaching moment and pointing me towards the answer to a question I recently posed to the ether. The question was why in the face of solid evidence do people cling to beliefs that are not in accordance with what seems to be the truth of the matter? I have previously accepted that truth is dependent upon one’s beliefs however a statement such as most trees leaves are green in the summer months is a good way to bring stability into one’s life as we need a starting point in order to agree on societal norms and what is accepted. These beliefs are extrapolated out into the whole and come to form the cultural basis within which we operate.

My dog has a mental illness however outside of the triggers for her phobia she functions as one would expect. I took this knowledge and looked at the world at large. Aha! I got it. As a species, we humans are susceptible to mental manipulation and illness which is a by-product of participating in culture and consuming mainstream sources of media and news. When the message is repeated often enough, we accept it as the truth and the error is compounded by the succumbing to the mind virus by others who confirm to us what we should believe. The flip-side is one who is a hold out from believing 2+2=5 will question their own sanity and beliefs. The majority believe this to be true so why don’t I? I must be crazy. Maybe I should just go along with it? My life sure will be easier if I just become like them. The pressure on one outside of the pull of culture is enormous and comes from all directions. Family members, confidants, well-intentioned members of society, and the like all hold you in contempt whilst judging and shaming you for not bowing to the pressure to conform. Society periodically purges the heretics in order that the game can go on, unencumbered by those who don’t play their game. That means for one who does not go along with the madness they are sent away beyond the pale. This madness is a by-product of cultural pressures which cyclically return as long as we aren’t free. It’s always been with us and as long as we live in societies which regulate groupthink the madness returns. When it returns, the outcasts are sent adrift and denied access to the rewards of the culture game.

The easy way out is to give in to the coercion. That’s all they ask. It’s actually rather simple. Just go along with those who hold sway over the game and be a good and obedient slave. However, know that eventually more will be asked of you. The temporary relief you get by accepting the mind virus will come around again to demand payment. How much will you sacrifice before you say enough? Human and child sacrifice is indeed a part of our collective past. Wars are our unspoken mass human sacrifice brought on by madness.

Why the cyclical coming and going of madness? Within us all is the base desire to be free and the suppression of that desire will continually gather the storm and then we have the outbreak, ignited by an unrelated trigger. The current pandemic was the incendiary force which ignited the flame of madness that now rages. This concept is at work in all aspects of our lives. Try suppressing any natural urge or desire for a period of time and then watch the coming storm rip through your life. I know what I suppress and I always see the tornado coming which by now triggers a response to try and limit the damage. After it passes, I assess the destruction and hope that was the last of it. It always returns. Maybe that’s a clue?

Any time and place humans gather resulting in the creation of civilization and culture the threat of madness is present. Curtailing the natural inclination of all biological species to be free results in the periodic return of a force which compels one to be free. Mass psychosis is the predictable outcome of grouping humans together into a social construct. Our denial of an outlet for madness within our society ensures that the force will reach a pretty intense state. I saw it coming and knew things would get dark. I don’t know where the bottom is but we haven’t reached it. The weak will succumb to their masters and the strong will be persecuted and removed from society. Free-thinking within society has to be tightly controlled or the secret will get out. The show must go on. The power of the mad god Dionysos, who is said to come afar from a foreign country, contains a demand to be liberated and to recognize this essential truth of our nature. Celebrating madness creates an outlet for this uncontrollable power and in turn results in a much healthier society. Denying this impulse sees the madness materialize during times of cultural stress which will cause mass psychosis which leads to great destruction as the world goes insane. The answer of course is to accept madness and ritually cultivate it. We don’t do that in our society; instead, we lock people up in mental institutions. The Greeks celebrated madness with Dionysos and the Romans had the Bacchanalia in which they were culturally allowed to go mad with Liber Pater and get it out of the system.

There is a role that psychedelics can play in our society concerning the mental illnesses brought upon members of the prevailing culture. These substances break the spell and allow one to see with clarity past the veils of culture, giving one a sense of liberation knowing that the game of life we get caught up playing is indeed just a game. We can see it’s sport and re-join with the capacity to not get too caught up in the drama. Regular use of these medicines will abate the coming tide. Madness can be transformed into laughter, rather than the rampaging force that will lay waste to the non-conformists.

I see the world I know dissolving away before my very eyes. Most people are still asleep and so the cyclical farce will go on. I can be a light in this sea of darkness leading by shining example despite the invective and contempt hurled my way and being branded a heretic and non-conformist. Free-thinker is my label of choice.

genie

The climb up the mountain has to start at the bottom to enact wholeness. The journey towards the light begins in total darkness. It is said by many I meet on this spiritual journey that God is light. Well, I’ll add God is all and God is the darkness. Until you see him in the darkness, you can’t possibly fathom this knowledge. We all want to transcend the darkness and focus on the light. Of course, the glory resides in the light.

Inaccessible and unfathomable knowledge has always been hidden in plain sight. There’re many stories and myths of the battles between the light and dark, of dragon slayers, and the victory of the righteous. The ultimate result of man’s victory over the darkness is self-deification. We then make God in our image.

Life can be an adventure story. The puzzle runs deep, the quest is long, and clues are left along the way. The Old Testament is full of stories of the two halves of man. Understanding of these stories has abandoned us because the knowledge and recognition of our psychic split has been successfully buried by culture. Within no time in the Book of Genesis is the story of Cain and Abel where the darkness is indeed victorious but as a result is expelled from society; Cain doomed to wander the earth as revealed in the fourth chapter of Genesis from the New International Version translation:

12 When you work the ground, it will no longer yield its crops for you. You will be a restless wanderer on the earth.”

13 Cain said to the Lord, “My punishment is more than I can bear.

14 Today you are driving me from the land, and I will be hidden from your presence; I will be a restless wanderer on the earth, and whoever finds me will kill me.”

By the fourth chapter of the Bible, man is split with the result that anyone who recognizes the divide will immediately destroy the other. Later in chapter 25, is the contentious birth of the twins Jacob and Esau which leads to battles between the two for the birthright and blessing of the firstborn in chapter 27.

35 But he said, “Your brother came deceitfully and took your blessing.”

36 Esau said, “Isn’t he rightly named Jacob? This is the second time he has taken advantage of me: He took my birthright, and now he’s taken my blessing!” Then he asked, “Haven’t you reserved any blessing for me?”

Jacob wins out and is harassed by his brother Esau whom he must overcome in order to become Israel. Esau calls Jacob the deceiver; much like in order to come forth in my culture I claim this incarnation all for my own and bury my other half. Their father Isaac warns that eventually Esau will tire of this arrangement and seek to kill Jacob.

40 You will live by the sword and you will serve your brother.

But when you grow restless, you will throw his yoke from off your neck.”

41 Esau held a grudge against Jacob because of the blessing his father had given him. He said to himself, “The days of mourning for my father are near; then I will kill my brother Jacob.”

Let me further explain the role of the myth. My favourite myth is the ancient Egyptian story of Horus and Set called “The Contendings of Horus and Set.” The tale is one for mastery over the other in order to claim the kingship of Egypt for their own. The underlying narrative is one of the light and the dark within us all and a lifetime full of struggle to see which will come out on top. The Greeks knew Horus was Apollo, their god of light, and Set was their Typhon; a chthonic behemoth from the depths. Horus is ultimately victorious and is awarded kingship over the land.

I come forth as Horus. I am the light in man. I am Apollo. I am the child of Goddess and God. To come forth by day and claim my birthright as the sole king requires defeating and burying the contending force that lays within my psychic being. As a man, I became aware of this split once I started probing consciousness. I can now look back and see that to become a fully realized individual in my culture means burying the wild beast within my psyche. The playful spirit is chained; the last gasp of his nature comes to a head in the rebellious teenage years before we accept our role in culture. Those who cannot master the culture game are doomed to a life of difficultly; sometimes leading to being locked up behind bars.

I was a shy and quiet kid and teenage rebellion never gripped me at that stage of my life. Being someone who preferred my own company meant I never fully buried my other half. In fact, I wrote a couple of poems about him.

Split

i've tried.

i have really tried.

i can't live with myself.

what to do?

 

time to leave myself behind.

go my separate way.

take it all,

just leave me be.

 

i don't like you,

but you keep showing up at my door.

i've told you to go away.

you don't listen.

 

there's just one choice left.

it won't end amicably.

no more last chances.

i need you to go. 

2 paths

back again.

my addiction.

my innermost siren,

humming my destruction.

 

you leave.

you always return.

i sense your absence.

i curse your return.

 

i'll make the choice.

it's my responsibility.

either you win,

or you are subdued.

 

oh great adversary!

my unconquerable rival.

lay down your weapons,

for i am you.

I always was aware of him though I wouldn’t have been able to see him with the clarity I do now without an aid. Domestication and the dead end of being an adult did eventually cause rebellion in my life and therefore I was guided towards psychedelics in order to re-awaken the knowledge of the part of me I buried.

Initially, I was scared of him upon re-discovery. He was mad and seemed to hold in his hands a great deal of power. He KO’ed me with one punch and sent me scurrying. If the goal was transformation, it worked. I exchanged fear and cowardice for courage and bravery and being of the curious sort I went exploring.

I now know that without the darkness I am not complete. My power is only reclaimed when I recognize the darkness and see my other half, my brother, the side of me I buried in order to have this adventure. Once my wholeness is reclaimed, I truly am omnipotent. The darkness is the light bringer. Without him, I never would have stepped fully into the light.

In retrospect, the pull and quest to rediscover what was lost was paradoxical. When I was on to the scent and getting the courage to proceed along the left-hand path into the occult secret of the darkness, I faced much internal resistance. To overcome the blocks and doubts I had to become resolute in my mission and persevere. It’s quite interesting to look back upon this period in my life because I remember well the doubts. The plant medicine experience was new and exciting but I knew what lurked within and this trepidation would rise to the surface every now and then and I’d have to talk myself off the ledge. I’d get the feeling of I shouldn’t be doing this, get scared, and want to run away. There was an internal struggle and it is only now that I can see it for what it was. The fear and doubts were planted by the Maestro because he is the GOAT. His warrior training school forges steel and once this alloy is cooled there’s an eternal solidity to it so the course involved making damn sure you slay all the doubts that were surfacing in order to become an impeccable and brave warrior. The re-discovery of the power within ultimately involved trust and sacrifice. The trust on the side of the darkness involved letting me work through my issues in order to ensure the reunion was to last and I wouldn’t run. I can also envision the reverse of being buried within consciousness for half a century and the darkness being the genie let out of the bottle would take full advantage of regaining freedom and a foothold in the material world. If necessary, the darkness will play that game; however, priority one is the transformation of the split psyche back into the ruling king.

As an aside, once I got my wits about me I did ask for a reveal in due time of the mysterious figure I met in my deep dark depths during my early forays into the world of Ayahuasca and plant medicines. I have integrated the experience and am aware he represented my shadow but I was curious about the visual manner in which he manifested. The image is pretty clear in my mind’s eye of a sleepy demon with dark hair and a moustache that curled upwards at the edges. He was sitting directly in front of me in the lotus position.

The story of Aladdin and the genie he meets in the recesses of a dark cave crossed my path the other day and I was curious about it because I am well versed enough in mythology and symbolism so that this story was revealing itself to me. I did an internet search and started reading a translation that was replete with pictorial representations of the scenes as told. The genie was drawn with the loose-fitting clothes I remembered from my vision and low and behold he had a moustache that curled up at the edges, exactly how I remembered. In the Aladdin story, the genie is representing power and control via magic and how this is available to us all through re-discovering and releasing from bondage the shadow we all bury. This has been a major theme in my journey. I re-discovered this hidden dark realm and subsequently was offered omnipotent power and the ability to control my environment. My genie gave me the opportunity to take it all, reminiscent of Satan taking Christ to the highest high during his sojourn in the desert and offering him total worldly power. Maybe I was naive and didn’t quite understand what was happening at the time but I repeatedly declined the offers of power, which are akin to Aladdin being given three wishes. Maybe I knew there’s a catch to this, maybe not? All I know is my intentions for drinking plant medicines involved coming into contact with the Great Goddess and cultivating that relationship. This consumed me and the rest was just a sideshow. The genie was in my way and I would develop strategies to make him go away so I could get to my lady.

Eventually, as this blog space is a testament to, I became very curious about this darkness that was always present in my forays into altered states and I ended up fully integrating all my experiences and in hindsight I realized what I had done. I declined the offer of gobs of power. Admittedly, I did it rather naively. Like I said, this parallel storyline was a nuisance. Maybe it was good fortune? Regardless, now as I have seen in hindsight how my shadow has taught me courage and bravery and transformed me into a warrior my relationship with my shadow, the genie, is my most cherished friendship. He is my mentor and my guide and I have a huge love for him in my heart and for all he has done for me. I trust my life to him.

Post-childhood, he never left. I just denied him and culture enforced the excommunication. They said talking to yourself is crazy. Any attempts to try and figure out what is going on is met with a dazzling array of confusion. Embark on the spiritual path and you are shepherded to religion. Side-stepping that institution, you eventually become counselled on quieting the mind and entering into a practice of meditation to learn to still the mind. Sure, it’s useful for discarding the influence of culture and those who hold sway over your life. Eventually, you have to discard meditation in order to re-discover your own voice, once you burn away the outside influences. How does ego tie into what I perceive? The ego is the identity culture has given you. Stop it. Stop right now! Don’t let others dictate your experience. Find your own truth. Sit with that voice and re-discover who you are.

That voice is your playmate. The dog you chained, locked away, and forgot about. Oh, so now it bites? No wonder. Would you want to be locked away again or likewise be the genie stuffed in a lamp for thousands of years? Friendship and trust must be re-established and a mutual partnership created. His way of getting through to me was through fear which enacted a transformation that then allowed me to break free of the mind spell of culture and thus dropping all narratives I saw the truth. I saw my friend. Nice to meet you again.

I live a charmed life, never making a decision that goes against my life’s mission. I can now easily see the clues and this path is fascinating. The story of the genie in the bottle or the lamp who grants the three wishes is genius! This myth is pointing towards an esoteric truth and is not just some fanciful Arabian Nights story. We all have within the genie and the explorer of consciousness will eventually find Aladdin’s lamp. When the genie offers you the three wishes, a metaphor for power, what will you do?

I know this sounds nuts and I’ll own it in order to continue on down this most interesting path. The genie did indeed offer me wishes in the form of power. The power to change the course of the game to my advantage. I’m an old soul and previously I’m sure I fell for that gambit. In many lifetimes I have tried to slay the dragon and become the hero. The physical consciousness realm of earth is for adventure quests and a game player like yourself wants to solve the puzzle. The solution took more than one lifetime and here I am, finally, at the final level communing with the final boss. The game ends when I become him and he becomes me.

Indeed, Jacob reconciles with Esau after spending a lifetime searching for God. Seeing Esau, he once again sees the reflection of God, revealing that if you want to re-discover what is lost the answer is found within held in a metaphorical lamp that acts as a prison cell holding the key to your liberation. Here are the passages from Genesis chapter 33 to which I’m referring. The translation is from the New International Version.

1 Jacob looked up and there was Esau, coming with his four hundred men; so he divided the children among Leah, Rachel and the two female servants.

2 He put the female servants and their children in front, Leah and her children next, and Rachel and Joseph in the rear.

3 He himself went on ahead and bowed down to the ground seven times as he approached his brother.

4 But Esau ran to meet Jacob and embraced him; he threw his arms around his neck and kissed him. And they wept.

The bowing seven times is a major clue letting us know what Jacob is seeing. Jacob offers his brother plenteous gifts of his bounty and Esau declines.

10 “No, please!” said Jacob. “If I have found favor in your eyes, accept this gift from me. For to see your face is like seeing the face of God, now that you have received me favorably.

11 Please accept the present that was brought to you, for God has been gracious to me and I have all I need.” And because Jacob insisted, Esau accepted it.

In the previous chapter, Jacob wrestled all night with the angel of God and subsequently named the place “Peniel” because he saw the face of God in the angel.

24 So Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him till daybreak.

25 When the man saw that he could not overpower him, he touched the socket of Jacob’s hip so that his hip was wrenched as he wrestled with the man.

26 Then the man said, “Let me go, for it is daybreak.”

But Jacob replied, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.”

27 The man asked him, “What is your name?”

“Jacob,” he answered.

28 Then the man said, “Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with humans and have overcome.”

29 Jacob said, “Please tell me your name.”

But he replied, “Why do you ask my name?” Then he blessed him there.

30 So Jacob called the place Peniel, saying, “It is because I saw God face to face, and yet my life was spared.”

Immediately following this event, he sees the face of God in Esau and thus for the perceptive among us we are shown that it is through the reconciliation of the two powers within, our own personal Horus and Set, that we become whole and reclaim the power we had carelessly thrown away in order to just fit into culture.

I now have the cheat codes to life. I know the answer to the riddle. I can tell you what the game is and how to beat it. You don’t want that. Where’s the fun and adventure playing in invincible mode? Okay, maybe just one time. I think we both know the joie de vivre of the game of life is the unpredictability which begets novelty.

My path forward is one of service for those who want to know. Service to the Great Goddess and to show the way towards healing. I will be a guide and point the way towards wholeness of self.