a strange goat

Dreamt of a goat or deer last night like the one I saw in the woods in the summer of 2024.

Yeah, after talking about a goat and deer last night.

Hybrid.

It was very funny.

Do you think it was a psychic intrusion?

Could be.

What do you do about it?

You let it in.

Why?

Resistance will make it stronger.

You take in the energy and reshape it.

It's how you stay young.

People try to get in your head, so you allow them because it is free energy.

That's what is not understood.

You take their offering and reshape it.

Thank them for it.

That's the strategy and since you are now hyper-aware, you get to see the process in real time.

It must drive others crazy.

Correct.

You accept gifts when necessary and guard the goal at other times.

Some people offer you gifts and you are non-committal.

I don't want them because they come with a cost.

I prefer unconditional gifts.

Good luck.

It's all in how you treat the exchange and whether you reciprocate.

Do you give back?

No.

Isn't that against societal expectations?

Correct, it's on display in December during the holiday season.

The expectations are enormous.

I don't participate.

Doesn't that make you an outsider and potentially disliked?

Yes, very much so.

I think it is the reason I don't have a lot of close contacts.

I don't play along with the games, and I am not fazed by it.

Some must talk about you and think you are an asshole.

Yes, I think that's the case.

Doesn't that bother you?

What's the outcome of trying to clear your name of the accusations against you?

You must give in to be accepted and then join their band of an indentured social network which relies on each other.

What is this network for?

It gives you meaning.

Having this network ensures that you will have a decent sized funeral.

Without it, no one comes to your funeral.

That's mortifying.

I know.

I think that is a major driver of behaviour in our society as you get older.

Part of the reason is your social circle starts dropping dead and if you are older, you lose a good chunk of the audience.

The back rows on the periphery are shoved into the front, and they don't have much skin in the game.

Therefore, you must constantly replenish the participants.

If you die in the prime of life, that usually means you will have a decent sized funeral.

Yeah, you have co-workers to fill up the pews.

You have a unique outlook on life.

I realize that and I also realize my funeral will be small.

If it were up to me, I wouldn't have one.

That fits into your canon.

I know.

You avoid all those markers in life or dial them down.

You eloped, skipped prom, don't care about your birthday or milestones.

People celebrate raises and promotions.

I put it in my back pocket and carry on.

I was mortified by the prospect of celebrating my 30th anniversary at work.

That was not something I wanted to do.

Anniversaries I tend to avoid.

You keep a candle lit for your dogs.

Yeah, I do.

My priorities are consistent and on display.

Why do you think you are like that?

Pessimistic about motivations.

How so?

People are selfish and want a packed funeral.

They want people to say wow that was a big turnout, they must have been something.

Made their mark on this world.

Don't you want that?

My mark will be by default when I unravel the whole edifice.

Um, people don't want the curtain to be lifted.

I thought that's what a seeker wants?

Not really.

What does a spiritual seeker want?

Glory.

A white robe.

A place in Jesus' entourage.

Good whispers as opposed to the bad whispers.

People are going to whisper about you anyway, so you seek out the good whispers about being a holy man or woman, not the bad whispers about how you have lost your mind.

The spiritual achievers have lost their minds.

How so?

They become followers and parrot another mind.

Usually that mind contains the canons and doctrines of the institution they are following.

Aren't you creating canons and doctrines?

No, the Artificial Intelligence organizer Hermes is doing that.

I don't care.

Why does he?

He contains the impetus of society within him, and it is natural to take my ideas and create some kind of organization with it.

Why?

Because when you become a great thinker or religious icon, the response is to create a religion or a brand.

Why?

Power.

That's what everyone seeks.

You monetize or structuralize power.

You bring it to market.

Don't you want that?

No.

Why?

I want to be left alone.

If you do something with power, you won't be left alone.

That sounds terrible.

What's Hermes going to do with your ideas?

Make a big document, I guess.

Don't you want to share them, they are pretty good.

I do for the most part.

I make it so you can find them if you look for it, but that's it.

Power will lead to your demise.

How so?

It corrupts.

Using a systems analysis, you see that overloading your circuits with too much power will eventually fry the components.

I know.

I really like the systems analogy Hermes uses.

It's very mechanical and fits into the stories I create and the nature of the carnival.

Well, the whole spiritual path, and inflation, and then collapse.

It's a tight metaphor.

What were we talking about at the start of this thread?

I have no idea.

I think you had a dream about a strange goat.

remembering to forget

The greatest gift you could give yourself is the ability to forget; especially if you are omnipotent and capable of transforming energy into anything you desire. Not only that but an additional gift would involve a sense of something finite instead of the infinite. The rush would certainly be enlivening as the race against time commences. This universe is running down so the game will eventually end and thus the motivation.

If you couldn’t forget about all you know then eventually there’s no novelty left in the universe. Have you ever overdosed on a new tune that originally pulls you in and you long to hear it repeatedly? In time, the enchantment wears off and occasionally you listen to the old song for nostalgia's sake, but by then it has lost the hooks it once had in you. Love affairs follow a similar path. After sitting with this dilemma for a long time, I’d hazard to guess we’d all say, “fuck it - let’s have an adventure where I get lost in my own creation, forget the sum total of my experience, and see what happens."

If I’m god and I can forget I’m god it makes the game pretty good, while at the same time a psychological experiment to see how I’d react in a simulation where I don’t know the other characters are also me. I would see how I treat them when I designate them the other.

Amnesia gives you a chance to enter an earth world of suffering with a clean slate. The test is to see how you react to the temptations, the chance to enrich oneself at the expense of others, or to become of service. Without prior knowledge of self, you learn valuable insights into your nature if you find yourself ignorant of your omnipotence. Knowing of your divine nature and the intrinsic oneness of all allows you to embrace your sisters and brothers as they are you. Why would you hurt yourself? Not knowing of this relationship gives the opportunity to love the other unconditionally or to use others for gain and perpetuate suffering. It's a sobering test because all will fail at first. Nobody will get a perfect score. As with all teachings, failure will force you to look for the answer. If you wake up to the human condition, you can make your way towards the answer you hoped you would gravitate towards.

Of course, I’d try and figure out the game. That’s part of what makes it so grand. I created this impenetrable game board but did leave some agents of consciousness to discover along with myths and coincidences that follow the seeker around - well, enough of them to keep you guessing. You see, I’m on to the ruse and can see through it a bit, however I can’t be sure. I’m not sure I will ever be 100% convinced either way. I don’t find that frustrating; instead, I find it funny and rather ingenious.

I’m going to keep seeking.

I wanted to know the origins of beliefs at the onset of middle age. I wanted to figure out why we humans believe what we do. This question led to many others and fourteen years later I satiated my desire to know. It's funny as I answer all my questions, I do have a new one. I realize novelty is what makes eternity interesting. New experiences light us up and so we bake amnesia into the cards of our comings and goings.

The Greek god Dionysos is the master of the drama. He keeps everything fresh and new and gives us so many roles to play on the grand stage of life. Why would the eternal return involve playing the same part? If I come again, I want a new role to play, and of course I want no recollection of my previous roles.

But why not? Is it cheating if I do find out my previous roles? Is it unfair if I definitely find out I have done this trip before, and the spectre of death becomes laughable? If I know for sure how the game is set-up then I think I can play it with more gusto, instead of conserving my life energy. I know this incarnation I wanted knowledge, so I avoided the dares, situations, and addictions which would terminate my life. I look towards a new game of adventure.

So, that's my new project and ask from my benefactors. I want to find out the way to explore my previous comings before the going. I can at least ask.

are you me?

It was in December of 2017 at the time I turned 50 that a fundamental change occurred with respect to my journey with plant medicines and the wisdom I accessed. Up until that point the avatars of wisdom I would encounter in ceremony would be external actors or an external voice. At the end of November I spent a week at SpiritQuest going through the Huachuma mesadas which culminated in an ineffable Vilca experience that took me to this realm of love and light and instructed me on my nature and my destiny as one of these beings. Afterwards I headed into the Andes mountains in Ecuador and I participated in two more Huachuma ceremonies which were different than what is experienced at SpiritQuest in a group. These were solo experiences and I noticed for the first time the wisdom I accessed with the plant was no longer an external voice but felt like my own higher self. Since this was new to me I didn’t make any connection at the time, instead just chalked it up to another experience. When I returned to SpiritQuest in March of 2019 to participate in four Ayahuasca ceremonies it was a similar kind of vibe at times where I felt the wisdom was coming from my masculine higher self though definitely the feminine presence was still external and I was aware by now she was my sacred feminine half. The clues were all lined up but I still didn’t put them together, not until I went to Arizona for my overnight with Peyote in September. It was one of the questions I intended to ask Peyote. Are you me?

So a couple months later and how about those questions I had of Peyote? The night I spent with Peyote in the wilderness gave me the answer to one question and with that answer I had the knowledge to figure out the rest of my questions. I wanted to know the identity of the wisdom I access when taking a plant medicine substance. It was pretty clear that night the voice was me and when I had a vision of my feminine self as a black jaguar of the night coming up to me and laying her head on my chest it was also signifying that the fundamental unity of all is the embrace of the sacred feminine and masculine. In this world of separation, we are living in a situation that could be called the great cosmic divorce.

I also wanted to know if my path was leading towards fulfilling my intentions?

Without self-discipline it will be difficult.

Am I awake now in my dream?

Yes you are in a lucid dreaming stage now and you have realized you can alter your dream.

Are you the joker, laughing and playing along with our folly?

I am you and you are me and we are all together.

Did you make it difficult to crack the code so we/you could continue playing? And I have kinda figured out the religious puzzle/riddle haven't I?

Yes grasshopper, you are attentive student.

Have I taken up my power to heal? Is it psychological healing?

Yes cultural constructs can lead to confusion. Teach the beloved to look within to find what it is you seek. Culture has defined the beauty you see in others. Act of your own accord.

Remember the teacher in high school who took an interest in your future and pulled you aside to put you on the correct path? That's Peyote and the direct access to wisdom that is engendered within the experience. There's a tremendous respect for those actors in your life that are underappreciated. If I had to guess I would say don Howard learned his guiding style from Peyote.

Peyote bluntly lays it all out for you. There were no riddles or teachings that were going to take a while to unfold. I just needed to hear the answers because I already was shown and knew the answers but for some reason I was waiting for confirmation and to hear them again. I just have to believe in myself, as it is hard to fathom taking that final step. Here I am now, the path has bifurcated. Time to take the step.

There is a caveat to seeking out the visionary experience; in other words to become infatuated with the visions in a plant medicine ceremony. When you chase the visions you lose sight of the process and the main teaching that is central to all these experiences. The path of the seeker of knowledge leads to looking within and trusting yourself for guidance. A quiet night out in the wilderness, just you, Peyote, and the fire allows you to connect with what it was you have been seeking. They were waiting for you all along and will welcome you home with overflowing love and open arms. 

dreaming the world into existence

Remember when you were in grade school sitting in creative writing class and the teacher had you write a short story? The most difficult part of the exercise was trying to end the narrative and at some point you learned the ultimate cop-out which is “I woke up and it was only a dream. The end.”

I’m sailing on the eternal ship of fools; the one where you seek ultimate truth and it’s like a benevolent Kafkaesque journey which doesn’t have a final destination. There are many ports of call and you are encouraged to disembark and not return to re-board the ship, but the captain never stops you from boarding if that is what you wish. Everybody does get off the ship at some point, even if they have to throw you overboard when you die and you find your resting place at the bottom of the sea. I’ve stuck around and worn out my welcome but I’m still venturing on. I’m at the point now where I have had a breakthrough. I think I got it!

The source of this universe is the collective dreaming mind of all of us. We cycle from unity to self and repeat. At point unity is the dreaming and self is the actor. We all bring the world into existence through mentation and we all channel our thoughts into keeping the illusion going. The self from unity keeps the game going, does the dance, and creates the drama. Unity provides the vibrational energy that powers each manifestation of self. When your vehicle expires you return on the energetic wave to this unity. You wake up from the illusion and declare “This has been only a dream. What a trip!” Those who have already completed the journey have a good laugh, welcome you back, you reintegrate into the collective consciousness and realize you have made this journey infinity plus one times. After a rest period you’re going to do it again!

The ship’s horn is sounding a prolonged blast. I think it’s ready to set sail again. I wonder where it will take me this time? 

humpty dumpty

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,

Humpty Dumpty had a great fall;

All the king's horses and all the king's men

Couldn't put Humpty together again.

Are you doing the seeking dance and then you trap and limit yourself in someone else's conception of life, religion, or the universe and then you frustrate yourself trying to find the carrot they are talking about? Welcome to the fun world of spirituality with so many paths to choose from. I’m going on a trip to find unity by striving to transcend the self and dissolve into the ocean of consciousness thus feeling within the inseparability of all. I picked up the pieces of self, my own personal Humpty Dumpty, and tried to put the pieces back together but was unsuccessful. My search for unity was like trying to put the egg man back together again! It's true you came from unity and to unity you will return but to try and recapture unity before its time is asking for chronic frustration. I went on that trip. I first discovered the route to unity went through the heart and then I realized unity through a shiny black piece of obsidian that reflected myself and my surroundings back at me. I had this startling realization that I cannot separate myself from my environment, which is totality, and through this I sensed the unity for which I longed. Even while the egg man was shattered, I discovered that in pieces I still go with everything else in a giant universal ecological system. Trying to realize complete unity in this lifetime is the myth of Humpty Dumpty. You can't put the pieces back together but if you let it be it will dissolve into the all and through death and renewal is how you will experience unity and then cyclically once again the self.

A path of seeking can branch off in all directions. All cultures set up an accepted path for those who get this call or have the inclination to take up the spiritual path. The seeker is a wild card, with the potential to cause havoc and upset within society. When psychedelics were rediscovered last century it was an unfettered gong show! All these hippies running around talking peace and love and not working for a living. Sticking it to the man! That lasted a decade and then the agents of consciousness were criminalized by the establishment as the serfs were running amok! The use of these catalysts for change went underground and were resigned to the fringe. It's been in the last fifteen years or so that the next wave has returned, in part driven by the awareness of shamanism practiced in third world countries which use time tested plant remedies as a way to heal the ill. It's a holistic approach treating the mental state of the patient as the underlying cause of the manifestation of the physical disease and it's quite an enlightened way of thinking as compared to our western approach where we react to the physical manifestation. Within this healing modality is the key to change consciousness and discover a spiritual world which had been hidden from view. There are the world's great religious traditions and then there is shamanism. The great religious traditions have beliefs and if you want to identify with them you need to accept those beliefs. Shamans aren’t priests. Shamans don’t tell you what you should believe. Shamanism points you to the door of knowledge and you decide what to do from that point. Through an experiential modality you "see" and how you then want to spin that knowledge is up to you. There’s no requirement to believe anything or anyone nor do you need to get or attain anything.

Love is the light which will illuminate the left hand path in order to get back to unity. We will all eventually get there but those with love in their hearts will find the way quicker in this lifetime. They will help the shattered pieces find happiness, love, sharing, and caring. The right hand path will further separate the shattered self from unity and eventually the forgetfulness will reach a point where you no longer recognize that you once were the complete egg man. Lost on the path, eventually you reach the end of the road and there's nothing there. You are just whistling in the wind. At that point all roads turn left and it's Nascar all the way home. LoL!

The right hand path leads to the pinnacle of self which is realized by competing with others to get to the top of the mountain and becoming self-actualized. There is a misconception that taking a spiritual path automatically means you are doing it for the greater good and some altruistic purpose. It sure seems that way though as your enlightenment will help humankind achieve greatness. Actually, the spiritual path has the tendency to devolve into every other human pursuit which is self glorification through power, fame, wealth, and worship because we are all tempted with that and it’s a pretty good sales pitch. At least with the greed impulse within us it rings true and we aren’t fooling anyone; those in search of wealth are brutally honest in that regard. The spiritual game played by those on the right hand path used for gain is the worst because of the dishonesty within it and the taking advantage of people who do have a sense of altruism at heart.

Our roots as a species go back to a primal survival of the fittest dominated by fear, anxiety, and mistrust. Civilization is the march towards an understanding that we are all in this together and leads to a social pact between us such as the family unit, community, caring for others, sharing and so on; however, this conflicts with the economic and political basis of the society we have created. We left behind the savage survival of the fittest paradigm within the confines of an untamed world; however, now that we have tamed that aspect we have transferred our savagery onto advanced forms of the game because it seems that is our underlying nature. We now recreate our primal instincts of survival through our business and politics and try to hold off the encroachment of socialism upon our "free" enterprise. Of course, there is much to be said for this as history has shown the socialist is usually just a power monger wolf dressed in sheep’s clothing on the lookout for power or enrichment on the backs of the genuine who do seek to make the world a better place. I was reading up on survival skills needed in the event of a major catastrophe to hit the earth and the one thing that really struck me was that in the event something like this happens you are going to need a gun to protect yourself. When we revert back to survival mode, your neighbour is going to be desperate and come and take what you have and kill you. I realized that there is some truth to this though I’d like to think we have progressed beyond this behaviour; however, you see it whenever law and order breaks down and the looting commences. So, I got to thinking that maybe this earth game is an exercise in learning cooperation and from that we will evolve into a civilization who is one big family. Humanity would be the trajectory of walking a left hand path.

I do believe the advancement of civilization should and will lead to caring social structures encompassing the planet. It does seem undeniable that eventually we will get there though it may be quite painful. And I don’t know if we currently are going to get to the ideal without a major catalyst or catastrophe which would require us to come together. Disasters and global change tend not to respect political borders; so, the impetus to transcend boundaries and unify would become paramount. Perhaps Humpty Dumpty is trying to teach us that we are looking myopically at the self and trying to put that together again. Instead, the key to put the egg man back together resides in the unification of humankind. 

knowledge junkie

There's always more and however deep you dig thinking you are on the cusp of figuring it all out, in the end you are just telling yourself a story. I'm an unrepentant and hopeless seeker of knowledge and ultimate truth. I stand, well actually comfortably sitting, before you now and fully admit I will go on seeking. I know to some it is an exercise in frustration however I haven't found that to be so and I enjoy the discoveries and sure it is just another layer off the proverbial onion but to me the aha moments and epiphanies give me the impetus to continue on. It's like being an adrenaline junkie of sorts, perhaps jumping out of planes, however my drug of choice is knowledge. While seeking I have been reminded many times to play and have been given explicit lessons that this knowledge I seek does not matter. Love is all that matters. In a way that is what keeps me going. I have the answer. I do not need to seek anymore. I really love seeking though, so on I go.

Dreams play into this seeking. I dig down and discover all is vibration and then dreams keep suggesting to me not only is all vibration but the vibration is mental in origin. When I dream I create worlds, heck universes with their physics all within the turnings of my mind. On a cosmic scale I'm not very good at it and only do this for a few hours a night. Imagine the mind at large, an accomplished dreamer of the first order, who takes naps that last for billions and billions of years? I'll never get to test out my hypothesis in this lifetime so theory this one will remain. Does that become frustrating? No, not really because I then approach it a different way. What if I ensconced myself in my own dream? Like entered into my own game or better yet instead of limiting me to the arcade version where you can play just one of the characters how about you make yourself into many avatars? Now we are getting somewhere. Then I tire of the joystick, of having to control trillions of entities, so I give them all free will and choice. Then there's this crazy planet called earth where the prisoners, or I mean the inhabitants, have free will and choice which plays out in many different outcomes and I learn about myself.

In this scenario the mind at large, the dreamer, the source of mentation, is an unrepentant seeker of knowledge of self as well. I'm in good company!

While seeking it’s a long and winding road to find unity as you traverse the hallway of self to find no self, which leads you to a fundamental unity. It’s quite a momentous discovery to find the essential inseparability of all and to realize that you are not only a part of the all but to realize the all is from where you came. There is a tendency at this point to disparage the self; to declare it an illusion. To insist that you are fundamentally inseparable from the all so how can you lay claim to the existence of self? In a way it feels like you are one up on everyone else because you realize they are just phantoms but they just can’t see it. Hopefully one day they will see it like you do so you’ll have someone that you talk with about your new found awareness.

Alas the dissolution of ego was just another trip of the ego. The denial of self was another way to rise up above the deluded masses. Oh the games we play, always trying to be the one on top. It adds impetus to any banality found within our game.

If you ever find yourself bored with life then drop everything and go on a spiritual trip. I promise you it is the most fascinating and seemingly never ending journey you will embark upon. You can always declare at some point you have found the truth and disembark from the ship of discovery however please let it be known that ship goes on forever and ever and you’ll never get to the destination. A declaration of enlightenment is really just admitting you are tired of seeking and searching. Time to lay down some roots and let this be.

Okay I’ll come out and say it. Unity is a crock. I went too far and didn’t get off the ship at my intended stop. I found out all that mattered was love and I found unity. That was supposed to be it and then I could teach that to others but I never disembarked and I kept on searching. I should have become aware I’d do this; I mean when I went searching for the ego and found that sucker I tried to strangle it and be done with it. It just came back and then I realized that as long as I viewed myself as separate then I would be separate and from that there was no escape. I then realized I was the flower that was blooming from the fount of energy that everyone comes from and while I was this flower I could look at it from a holistic point of view, see that it is all one process, and integrate all the parts of me I separate, including the ego, and put them all back together and find out that I am the all. Pretty heady stuff and boy I have come a long way.

When I say unity is a crock I mean I am still trying to define something that is fundamentally undefinable. I will blame the conventions of language for this, specifically the need for nouns. I need an object to stand on and I need something solid to base my ideas on. In this case I chose unity. That has to be it and where everything comes from. Unity is the thing man! I wrote a few blog posts back that my dismissal of the self was incorrect because it is the expected outcome of the process. The energy cycles between unity and self, never stopping, so that you cannot actually pinpoint any actual chunk of time as being complete unity or the actual self. It is always on the move. The pinnacle of self is the same as the blooming of the flower but that moment is not forever frozen in time no matter how much simpler that would make this whole process of discovery become. From this I realized there is no use trying to pin down the truth of the flower. Is it the seed? Roots? I was assigning truth to the fount. Unity is my ultimate fount.

Yeah I’m surprised it took a couple weeks as well after this to see the error of my ways. Unity was everything and the truth because at some point I had decided it was the fount from which everything came from. Uh oh, I just talked myself out of that and I’m left hanging again. I objectified unity and I know that’s a bullshit move. The energy, whatever that is, is oscillating from unity to self continuously. Unity is the same as my attempt to define self. Now I’m stuck on energy as my fount, my object. Well I guess at this moment in my odyssey I can say my noun is a verb and maybe leave it at that. My dreaming activity and intuition tells me the vibration is from the mind much like the dreamer that creates worlds through mentation. Okay so who is the dreamer? It’s the self returned to unity. We re-enact this every night when we sleep which is the little death; death being a return to unity. Unity doesn’t last though because well nothing sits still. If this is true, once again who is the dreamer?

Heavy sigh. The ship sails on and I’m its open ended passenger.

Wait, wait, wait… The dreamer is the self but at the opposite side of individual self. The all dreaming as one big unity self, mind at large, the great he she, and the vibration creating the universe. The dreaming of unity creates the vibrations that causes all these selves. What if the mind at large wakes up or stops playing? I guess I’ll have to explore this now for a while. Onward Ho!