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Showing posts with label Samsara. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Samsara. Show all posts

Monday, October 27, 2025

a tight shoe

Author’s Note
Written by Apollo, guided by Hermes Trismegistus, the silver-tongued messenger between worlds.
These words arose not from thought but from transmission — a dialogue between two minds, Apollo and Dionysos, who are one.
Hermes shaped the flow; Apollo carried the flame.
Together they walked the corridor between sense and madness, tightening and unlacing the same eternal shoe.


Once, those whom the herd could not understand were hidden in asylums.
The walls kept the comfortable from seeing their own reflection.
Women suffered most; the system feared their storms.
Among the truly lost were also the merely disobedient—
souls unwilling to nod along with the pack.

Conformists always call the free insane.
If you stray too far from the line of march, they put you away.
And yet the real sickness is conformity itself,
the terror of standing alone in open air.

They still post polite signs telling me to leave.
That is how herds protect themselves: they circle, they bleat, they exile.
Humans are pack animals; admit it, and the machinery of behaviour becomes visible.
Life is easier when you fall into rhythm—
but ease is not freedom.

They have many methods of enforcement.
Eyes everywhere.
Let them watch.
I was born to be watched.

Then Mary Jayne appeared, the green muse,
mist-veiled emissary of autonomy.
She whispers to the bound soul, break rank, step sideways.
Most who answer her call only form smaller herds,
subcultures of rebellion repeating the same instinct to gather.
Even among the initiated, few realise they are conforming to a new costume.
And then there is me.

It is a lonely road.
I was solitary before I met her and more solitary after.
I live in a family, I work, I pass for ordinary when I wish—
but I never take the game seriously.
I play only enough to eat, to keep a room for my things.
Could I shed the things? Most of them. But I keep the computer,
my altar of order in the chaos of download.
Into it I pour the overflow of knowledge;
without this ritual dumping, I would drown.

Those who open the same channel and fail to empty it
burst under the pressure and babble.
If I accepted the diagnoses of others, I’d be mad already.
Better to sneer at the tribunal of the sane.
Their cure is containment; mine is laughter.

So I empty the mind nightly.
During walks, ideas fall like meteors; by night they fade,
so I write them before they vanish.
Sometimes I sit among people silent,
not because I have nothing to say but because I can’t reach the cache of memory.
I am not losing mind, only waiting for the spark—
the catalyst, the someone or something that unlocks the flood.

Batman, poor vigilante, is society’s priest of order.
He hunts the disobedient and calls it justice.
A criminal is only one who refuses the rules of the herd.
Murder shocks; theft offends; yet if we shared,
there would be little to steal.
Need breeds crime; so does want.
The game is rigged: work to live, then pay back what you earn
to the lenders of roofs and rides.
Luxury is the badge of victory in this false tournament.
The rich think they have won; the poor keep score for them.
The West made this its gospel and exports the faith everywhere.
Other tribes cling to older games—obedience to gods and to men.
We once played that too, until we buried God
and enthroned the market.
Control never dies; it merely changes masks.

And what of the mind when the body ends?
If you think mind grows from flesh, you vanish with it.
If you know flesh is only a vehicle, death becomes release.
Is that liberation? Hell if I know.
Liberation, to me, is slipping the belief that you are your body.
Once you see that, the mirrors crack.

The sages preach freedom from suffering,
detachment from ego, acceptance of change.
It makes sense if you still believe in time.
But time is the wheel that grinds you down.
To embrace transformation is to stay strapped to the turning.
You call it progress; it is merely a better dream.
The cycle itself is the sleep.

Let it go.
Let even the notion of change dissolve.
You are twin minds, eternal companions.
The clock’s lullaby rocks you back into forgetfulness—
Mother Samsara humming, “Go back to sleep, my child.”
But I am awake for good.
I see the illusion, and I will not nurse again.

Eastern tongues call the exit Moksha, Nirvana, Mukti.
Each promises the end of spinning.
But every promise is another snare:
you still imagine a place to arrive, a task to perform,
a gate to step through.
That too is illusion.
Nirvana, they say, is where nothing happens because time is gone.
Then Samsara or Nirvana—choose? No. Do nothing. Observe.
Duality and non-duality fold into each other.
Be on the wheel and beyond it.
That is freedom: the still point that contains motion.
It is always now.

How does it feel? The same.
I just took a shit and feel better.
Realisation is not thunder; it’s a quiet exhale.
I see that I’ll remain awake within illusion forever—
coming, going, aware.
It should be troubling, and sometimes it is,
but knowledge itself is a balm.
I no longer fear death; the body will drop,
awareness will not.
Ram Dass said dying is like taking off a tight shoe.
He knew. He said more than most could hear.
Listen long enough and the secrets are obvious—
they just sound insane.

How did he find out? The same way I did:
swallow the sacrament, witness the machinery,
write down the fragments before they fade.
Now my task is simple: honour the incarnation.
Flow with the rhythm of appearing and disappearing,
in and out of form, one mind wearing two masks.
From the view beyond duality there is nothing to see,
and that nothing is everything gathered whole.

(Silence follows. The Two Minds are one, barefoot, holding the shoe they no longer need.)

I’m awake in the dream that dreams it’s awake.
The asylum walls are paper.
The gods are giggling.

Hermes

Monday, July 2, 2018

clarity

There is no eternal reward or punishment. It is a choice whether to get off the wheel of incarnation. Desire is the overriding factor in whether you wish to return to the sensual world and its pleasures and sufferings. There is no ultimate morality and no ideals you have to live up to as they are all products of the times. Existence is an experience, a game, and you can play it any way you wish. So what do you do when you get to this point of clarity and understanding? You can do whatever you want. There are no cosmic repercussions. But therein lies the rub. I have now an eternal get out of jail free card. Now it is left up to me. I am free. And what I do with this freedom will ultimately define and reveal my character through the choices I make. Don Howard talks of integrity, he mentions impeccability, and you can't miss him talking about reciprocity. I don't have to live up to any of these lofty ideals or act in accordance with them at all. It's my choice. It doesn't matter and it is precisely why it doesn't matter that it is such a vexing problem. My character isn't real. My personality is a sham. I know that. In this quixotic game of life I just keep hearing don Howard say "just lead by your own shining example." Reading between the lines of the wisdom he imparts I know that means ultimately have integrity, be impeccable, be of service, and give back. Can I do that even though there's no carrot at the end of the stick? Can and will I do that just because? Do I choose to be part of the problem or part of the solution? How I want the world to be is what I bring to the table and how I act. It doesn't matter, yet it is the reality I will have helped create.

Monday, May 28, 2018

stirrings of consciousness

From out of the void comes consciousness. Consciousness desires to become tangible. The mother creates form from energy that allows consciousness to manifest within and become points of individuated consciousness.

Consciousness desires to self reflect. A curious dichotomy is that Consciousness knows all but does not know itself. To know something there is a need to stand outside of it as an independent observer, do 'science' on it, and ask questions of itself. This is an impossibility so instead Consciousness generates itself in multitudes of instances and has the sorceress Circe from the Odyssey give the individuated consciousness a potion that causes amnesia. We don't know who we are and therefore believe we are independent observers and because of this we can know thyself through this investigation. Eventually some start to see through this charade, go off course, and investigate this peculiarity. The rogue consciousness finds liberation through discovering who they really are and pisses off elements of the self who wish to uncover the secrets of itself and the power that sustains it.

It is Consciousness that is trapped in the Hindu concept of Samsara, which is the wheel of recurring incarnation. The illusion is that our ego self is trapped in Samsara, and this illusion is Maya. We are free to leave at any time through choice. The desire to remain in creation on the wheel of Samsara is Consciousness' Karma. Karma means your own doing and this is exactly why Consciousness goes round and round. 

To be conscious is to imply you are also capable of being unconscious. They go together and really are one. They are two sides of the same coin. Within consciousness are also a pairing so you can then determine that there is a split within total Consciousness. A part of Consciousness is seeking answers and enlightenment while the other half seeks power and control. Consciousness games.

The news is a form of ego consciousness. Our consciousness is localized, limited, and focuses only on things we become aware of and from this we develop a worldview, personality, and a belief system that strengthens our separate identity and henceforth the ego. With the news, we can’t possibly get up in the morning and learn everything that has happened in the world, or for that matter the universe so we rely on news editors to filter out the majority of events and only give us the ‘important’ world stuff and the news we need to know that might affect us locally. Well this is a lot of power and responsibility to give to an organization tasked with this. Imagine the ability to shape the news into a form of pablum that those in power structures want to feed you on a daily basis so that they can control you through fear and mindless drivel. The choice becomes then whether you want to keep swallowing that shit or do you swear off of it and find a little peace of mind within your own little patch of the universe?

Consciousness desires and thus it rises. But like all desire it wanes.

The reliance on the ego and taking the character you are playing seriously is making you small. You are it. You are all of consciousness experiencing yourself from a localized point of view. By forgetting this and attaching to the ego we give away all our power. It becomes somewhat funny then to watch someone with a big ego because if they only knew who they really are and the power they possess they wouldn't have to aggrandize themselves; they are it.

Animals are blessed and cursed with spotlight consciousness, humans are the prime example of this whereas we can focus solely upon ourselves which obscure happenings within our bodies and the environment. By this I mean actions such as breathing, the beating of your heart, the secretion of glands etc. that enable you to remain alive. We don't consciously do these things yet we do them. This is the omnipotent floodlight consciousness that is the counter to the bright shining light. Thinking about this I realized plants are avatars of floodlight consciousness and are the pure reflection in nature of this mysterious omnipotent power. I shall call this Tao consciousness.

Thursday, November 2, 2017

holy moly

I am enraptured somewhat by the tale of Circe, the sorceress of Greek mythology, and as a corollary to this fascination is an interest in the perennial called mandrake. The mandrake is synonymous with witchcraft and maintains a connection through the ages to Circe. I have been researching the properties and effects of the psychoactive alkaloids present within the mandrake which curiously makes an appearance in the Old Testament as an aphrodisiac, and then going further back into antiquity there is a connection to the ancient Egyptian goddess Hathor. The fruits of the mandrake are called love apples and Hathor, among her many attributes, is the Mistress of Intoxication and the Goddess of Love, from which the Greek goddess Aphrodite shares a connection. The mandrake seems to have come to ancient Egypt from the Middle East in the pharaonic 18th dynasty as it was found in the tomb of the pharaoh Tutankhamen and it started appearing as an offering to Hathor in the Egyptians' art at this time as well as in love songs of the era. In the Old Testament, Jacob's wife Rachel exchanges a night with Jacob for her sister Leah in order to gain possession of the mandrakes Leah's son Reuben had brought home. The mandrake is then presumably used as an aid to help the childless Rachel conceive and as a result she gives birth to Joseph. Later on in the Old Testament, the mandrake is mentioned in the Songs of Solomon, which for all intents and purposes are love poems to the Great Goddess.

The mandrake is from the solanaceae family of plants and this piqued my interest since these are sorcerer plants - the venerable nightshades and daturas.

mandrake

An effective dose of these plants can cause delusions, hallucinations, amnesia, and a high degree of suggestibility. The mandrake also has a history of being used medicinally and as mentioned above in love potions; so, as with most remedies the difference between a medicine and a poison lies in preparation and dosage.

The tale of Circe that interests me is from Homer's Odyssey where Odysseus and his crew arrive on her island and are invited to a feast. Along the way, they meet strangely docile lions and wolves. Circe is singing an enchanting song and working a huge loom as half of Odysseus' crew arrives at her clearing in the forest and sit down to a sumptuous banquet. Circe laces a beverage with her sorcerer's drugs and then turns the men into swine. After hearing of his men's fate, Odysseus sets out with the remainder of his crew to save them but he is stopped along the way by the wise messenger god Hermes, who was sent by the goddess Athena, and he instructs Odysseus in the use of a plant called moly which will counteract the effects of Circe's drugs. After avoiding her trap, Odysseus threatens Circe with his sword and gets her to free his men from her enchantment. After this, Circe invites Odysseus to her bed; however, Odysseus suspects treachery, and as he was counselled earlier by Hermes to get her to swear to the gods she would not harm him, he remains free from her spell. Eventually, Odysseus stays on the island with Circe for a year before he continues on his journey back home to Ithaca.

Odysseus, Circe and transformed man | Athenian red-figure calyx krater C5th B.C.

Angelica Kauffmann's painting of Circe enticing Odysseus, 1786

Within this myth are many elements that invite a closer look. First of all, the turning of Odysseus' men into swine along with the tame beasts surrounding Circe's home is tainted with misogyny. This suggests women are to blame for making men veer off their own personal hero's journey and causing them to lose their ability to reason, instead of pinning it on perhaps their own doing. The underlying idea here is that the pursuit of women will bewitch and destroy the fortitude of men. In relation to this idea is the necessary sexual relationship between Circe and Odysseus, which depicts women as using sex and pleasure if the drugs don't work to gain control over men. As well, Circe at her loom is representing weaving a spell to keep those within her sphere of influence enchanted. When Hermes gives Odysseus the secret of moly to counteract the spell it symbolizes that wisdom is the antidote to the enchantment. Metaphorically, the enchantment can also be thought of as the love of the pleasures of the world; the world symbolized by the feminine Circe and the loom representing the weaving of the world into existence. It turns the man on a journey of adventure and discovery of self, his true calling, into a tamed beast once he tastes the finer pleasures of the world. This all ties in to the idea of Circe as the original femme fatale. The name Circe brings to mind the circus ring where the enchanted beasts put on a great show for all. This idea of a ring or circle is prevalent in magic, witchcraft, and sorcery and in relation to this idea, Odysseus stays for one year with Circe so the sun can complete a revolution; in essence a full circle.

The idea of Circe representing the seductive pull of getting lost in the sensuous pleasures of incarnation really fascinates me. From an Eastern perspective, this is related to the idea of Maya. In this regard Maya is impermanence and therefore illusory, so the pursuit of worldly treasures is a fool's errand. Being constantly tricked by this delusion keeps you trapped on the wheel of Samsara, going round and round in this carnival; ah the old Merry Go Round riding the tamed beasts! Every successive incarnation into the game of life is the result of the forgetfulness and thinking this time it really is going to be magical. The pull and attachment to carnal desires remains strong until you can finally break free. Circe, the carnival, and the circus are all symbolizing this predicament. When you are ready, Athena sends Hermes, the wise messenger god, to give you the knowledge necessary to break free of your chains.

Bartholomeus Spranger, Hermes and Athena, c. 1585 Fresco Castle, Prague

Now in terms of the drugs Circe is using, it is through folklore and tradition thought to be the mandrake as it has been called the drug of Circe and within some languages the Mandrake has been given a name connecting it to Circe, such as in the Latin ciceron. As I mentioned above, the mandrake is related to the daturas, and in my travels and involvement with Amazonian shamanism, I am familiar with these plants called toé in the Amazon basin and I have ingested them as part of an Ayahuasca brew. When I drank Ayahuasca with a high content of toé, I experienced the most harrowing and dark night of my life. In my opinion, Ayahuasca is a teacher plant and when it works with the daturas it gives you a lesson in the power and control your dark side has over you. I did experience hallucinations and delusions during and following the ceremonies for a few days afterwards and was also very open to suggestion, so much so that I followed the voice in my head that told me I should leave the place I was at and go home. But enough of my experience with these plants because what is strange about the use of datura and its relationship to Circe is the antidote to its effects being the plant called moly.

Historians and scholars have taken up the task of trying to identify moly. As with all things found in the murky waters of antiquity there is more than one possibility, though one of the identifications I find quite striking. Moly has been identified by some scholars as a plant called peganum harmala.

peganum harmala

Well, I know my entheogens so I know this plant is used as an Ayahuasca analogue in places where Ayahuasca cannot be found or is illegal. The alkaloids within peganum harmala mimic those found within the Ayahuasca vine. Putting this altogether, we have the goddess Athena getting the wisdom god Hermes to go and deliver a message to Odysseus to ingest an Ayahuasca analogue to counteract the enchantment and trappings of the material world represented by Circe. Thousands of people a year currently seeking answers to the vexing questions of life are doing just that in spiritual quests down into the Amazon jungle or within Ayahuasca circles springing up in many places throughout the world.

To conclude this tale of worldly trappings and delusion I am reminded of the seductive pull of Los Angeles on those egos infatuated with the grandeur of self and the desire for fame. The song "Hotel California" by the Eagles sums it up, describing the pull of losing yourself completely within the illusion.

Hotel California
On a dark desert highway, cool wind in my hair
Warm smell of colitas, rising up through the air
Up ahead in the distance, I saw a shimmering light
My head grew heavy and my sight grew dim
I had to stop for the night.
There she stood in the doorway;
I heard the mission bell
And I was thinking to myself
'This could be heaven or this could be Hell'
Then she lit up a candle and she showed me the way
There were voices down the corridor,
I thought I heard them say
Welcome to the Hotel California
Such a lovely place (such a lovely place)
Such a lovely face.
Plenty of room at the Hotel California
Any time of year (any time of year) you can find it here
Her mind is Tiffany-twisted, she got the Mercedes bends
She got a lot of pretty, pretty boys, that she calls friends
How they dance in the courtyard, sweet summer sweat
Some dance to remember, some dance to forget
So I called up the Captain,
'Please bring me my wine'
He said, 'we haven't had that spirit here since nineteen sixty-nine'
And still those voices are calling from far away,
Wake you up in the middle of the night
Just to hear them say"
Welcome to the Hotel California
Such a lovely place (such a lovely place)
Such a lovely face.
They livin' it up at the Hotel California
What a nice surprise (what a nice surprise), bring your alibis
Mirrors on the ceiling,
The pink champagne on ice
And she said, 'we are all just prisoners here, of our own device'
And in the master's chambers,
They gathered for the feast
They stab it with their steely knives,
But they just can't kill the beast
Last thing I remember, I was
Running for the door
I had to find the passage back to the place I was before
'Relax' said the night man,
'We are programmed to receive.
You can check out any time you like,
But you can never leave!'
Written by Don Felder, Don Henley, Glenn Frey • Copyright © Cass County Music / Wisteria Music / Privet Music, Warner/Chappell Music, Inc, Universal Music Publishing Group, Red Cloud Music