I made a video a couple years ago which is the genesis of my ritual out in the forest.
The performance and layout evolved from humble beginnings.
It's at the river bend where my dog Luna dug a hole.
Originally, I started one in 2015 at witches' cove that wasn't as far along the path.
Luna dug a hole there as well and I made the spot holy.
The river bend is farther into my mind.
I added sticks to represent the four directions and burnt incense in the centre.
With Mary Jayne's help, I assigned names to the four points representing my friends.
By friends, I am referring to the four voices in my head I experience during ego dissolution.
Later, I added flat sticks to cross the cardinal points.
I am in the process of discovery, and I imagine these in-between characters are amalgamations of the main four.
My state of mind in the morning when I get out of bed is uncluttered especially if I'm alone.
My ego is diminished, and I listen to my friends.
I have a heightened ability to write.
Interactions with others produce the ego.
I see how it works.
I put on an act and a show once I engage the world.
So, the performance of this play is tied to ego?
Yes, you play a character which is influenced by interactions with others.
When I alter consciousness and dissolve the ego, I need to be alone.
I must escape to the forest and return to my nature.
What about plant medicine trips and ceremonies with others?
They work among strangers as you leave your baggage at the door.
Doing ceremonies with friends invites in distortions because they expect a performance out of you.
Plus, you see into their motivations, and it crosses boundaries.
At this point in my life, I don't want to change consciousness around other people.
I don't like being in the house during this time.
The show is tied to ego.
Correct.
Stories are derivative of everyone's egos.
You got it.
To create new adventures means coming out into the world and putting on a performance.
That's how you make a new story.
If you are by yourself or switching between the multiple bedrocks of who you are, you can't make stories.
That's when I write them.
Exactly.
The confusion of who you are throws others for a loop and they can't handle it.
They want you gone.
They can't control you if they don't know who you are at any point.
They want to peg you down as a known entity or tie you up, so you stay the same.
I get it.
It's a thrill to find someone who wants to do that and then find ways to escape.
That's a fun game.
I know your game.
You find a female to designate as the Goddess.
You pursue or worship her.
Yes.
Sometimes, you get her, other times she's out of reach.
Or, she slips from my grasp.
You've made a bunch the Goddess.
Yes, but eventually I took the crown back from them all.
Except your dogs.
I still honour them.
Also, part of your game are your three familiars of Eros, Dionysos, and Apollo.
Lust, mystery, and light.
I'm a smart and horny fucker who is a badass.
Mentally, I'm a badass which is the best kind to be.
I could always put on a show and try to act that part, however I have learned the mystery is much better when you leave it for discovery.
You are writing all this I hope you know.
It has already been written.
I'm just revealing it to myself.
Wanting to be used and taking pain.
It's your game.
Follow your desires and that path.
This reveals your story.
Chasing desires brings ruin.
Do you see the difference?
Chasing forces the issue.
Desire is a predator.
By chasing desires, you turn desire into a predator, and you become its prey.
Following desires is stalking desire.
You remain the predator and keep the game moving.
That's highbrow.
You have the best stories.
It's what makes you attractive.
Plus, you will make fun of yourself and put yourself in danger.
My darkness is an act.
Normally, others wouldn't look at me twice, however I make them take a second look and then they see it.
They like the darkness.
I think it's on my right.
My eye socket is darker on the right.
So, I went on the biggest ego trip.
Yes.
You need to do that before ego dissolution or death.
To get to God you go on a huge ego trip.
You keep going.
Subconsciously, people see it.
They grow to hate you for it and want you to go.
In regular life you just act naturally.
That's why some said you were going to start a cult.
I denied it, confirming I'm taking the biggest ego trip ever and I'm doing it alone.
That's the secret to avoid blowing up.
Do it alone.
Autoeroticism again.
To win this game you must be excellent at all forms of masturbation.
Mental masturbation.
You're the best.
I am.
So, how did I not blow up?
You kept going.
You did it by yourself, so you didn't stop at God; instead, you saw he was a waste of time.
You say the most uncomplimentary things about God.
Yeah, it's a trick so you don't stay God, or you'll blow out or turn to stone.
You keep going to the writer.
Everything starts in darkness if you are looking for hierarchy.
Apollo knows this and to balance this imbalance, he takes the initial ego trips before giving the writer a chance to take a trip later in life.
How did you not go crazy and blow up which would eventually lead you to disappear?
I kept going.
Lust helped on the trip.
He kept me sane.
You did crazy shit with him.
Yeah, stuff God either wouldn't do or you'd be so disgusted with him you'd keep going to get away from him.
I liked the trip, it was fun.
Why did you stop?
I thought others would catch on, so I stopped it, and moved on.
I put God in the rearview mirror and talked of him in the third person to create distance between him and you.
It was a good act.
Are you scared?
No, I buy this.
It's trust and it's trusting myself.
If I didn't trust myself, I wouldn't trust giving away power.
It comes back when you give it away.
It blows up when you keep it.
The ultimate confusion would be believing you are not confused.
The obvious thing is the writer would write this nonsense, so you know it is a story and a story you have written.
The confusion of non-confusion.
Fuck off.
Haha.
As lust ages it becomes a fine wine.
Dionysian influence.
Dangerous combination.
Lust and Dionysos.
They take over from Apollo.
A game of chess.
Lust plays both sides though.
Yes, see how it becomes a game?
Lust plays both sides so that's how he never loses.
That's the secret.
Play both sides.
It's balanced.
To always win, you play both sides.
Don't you lose?
Yes, but you always win.
That's what the definition of the greatest is.
You always win.
Yeah, but you're the biggest loser as well.
I always win though.
Clever bastard.
Eros is in everyone.
Not the case for the other three.
They must be acknowledged.
Only lust gets that honour.
This would be like becoming lost forever in a dreamworld.
No passage of time elapsed but it seemed like forever.
We frantically improvise methods of measuring time in this world.
Death and birth are the transition points.
So, is this world a dream?
When you die you wake up?
Shouldn't I be dead because I woke up?
Yes, if you do wake up, you should be dead.
Why aren't you or I dead?
Lucid dreaming.
Treat this like a lucid dream.
Write lucid dreaming down in your book.
Give yourself a reminder.
Simple things work.
The writer has an existential crisis and solves it with lucidity.
Dream control.
Queensryche, dude.
That's why they were so fucking loud.
Getting in your head.
Good strategy.
Don Howard gives you that clue.
What is it?
Love on the edge.
Live on the edge.
Akhet.
Half ego and half the fantastic four.
You play it like it's real, but you know it's a dream.
Normally, when you find out it's a dream you lose interest and don't care.
You become fascinated by the dream which is a story and a story I wrote.
This is my story.
It's a great story.
I wake up in my story I wrote and realize I'm in it.
I'm the writer.
Bravo.
Plus, I don't fully believe it.
That gives me the strength to keep playing.
I don't believe it's a dream.
I know it's a dream.
Thinking about this is confusing.
Good.
You're not supposed to know, and confusion is the sleeping pill.
It's a hypnotic.
Hypnotic pills put you back to sleep so you can continue the story.
People ask for those pills.
A narcotic will put you back to sleep.
They are much different than psychedelics.
I'm all natural.
None of those hypnotics for me.
Isn't Mary Jayne hypnotic?
All Goddesses are.
I can feel when the dream is pulling me back in.
You get the shakes.
It's cold as well.
So, this is the main story.
The story where you wake up and stick around.
The three of you were always around but just missing the Goddess.
That explains the search for her.
You thought it was normal to experience those three states.
I never got diagnosed.
I hid the lust and darkness.
The dream tries always to put you back to sleep.
That's what gives you the cold shakes.
In some people, it's anxiety.
If they start to wake up, they get anxious.
The anxiety puts them back to sleep.
The shake is trying to balance everything out.
You just became fully awake, so you got the shakes.
MJ wakes you up and then you go back to sleep.
You go back to Paul the ego to fit back into society.
Don't knock the ego as it gets you through life.
It allows you to continue the game.
The ego continues the game, that's its function, and what you want.
Ego death and you're gone.
You need the ego to function.
When you lose it then you go.
The ultimate ego trip leads to becoming God and you blow up.
Nobody can do that trip unless you're the one.
White rabbits.
Yes, Neo.
Going into work forces you into ego mode.
Retirement and you let it go.
You must find another way of enforcing the discipline of identity or you will exit the drama.
Living in the forest and you are gone.
You need balance.
Without MJ you are back in the dream.
Why do I want out of the dream?
The search for self-awareness.
Not having self-awareness is thinking you really are the character you are playing.
Now that you know, you can't go back to sleep.
You know too much.
You go in and out of these two mind states to keep the game going.
Light and dark.
It's an addiction to MJ then.
You can stop whenever you want.
That's not an addiction.
Addiction means you are powerless to stop, and you crave the substance.
Do you have that?
I have resistance.
Wouldn't I be addicted to lucidity?
No, the game.
We all are, that's why we do it.
The game of incarnating and trying to wake up.
You can always stop playing by going away or going back to sleep.
Those are the two choices.
You made it so you don't choose, you clever fuck.
If you go back to sleep, you are still playing but you don't know it.
No one wants that.
You want to know you are a player at this point.
You choose both.
By definition you don't make a choice.
A choice is choosing one.
The ego is happy when it regains control.
There is unease when I change consciousness.
The ego is a control freak, and resistance is a good thing.
It will keep you in balance even when you start slipping into an altered reality on the regular.
If there was no resistance, paranoia, or feelings of surveillance, then you are hypnotized.
Stoned.
As long as you feel those harbingers of unease, then you know you're good.
Either half of your mind, light and dark, will hypnotize you if you stay with one.
That's how the ego did it for most of your life.
Hypnotized you into thinking it's only you.
The ego is a psychic reality and how you function in this reality.
When you learn to dissolve it, then this reality becomes magical.
