be the moon

The striving of individuals in the game of life is one big attempt at being the king of the castle (and you're the dirty rascal). We take the games we play as children and adult size them.

Being able to think enables me to never be at a loss for ideas that I can sit with and then expand upon. So I was thinking about the moon and how it reflects the light of the sun and becomes a light in the darkness. It is so profound. The full strength of the light of the sun, if you look at it for any length of time, will blind you as it is a bright spotlight. There is a humbleness to the moon. There are people like the sun that carry this aura about them that is a very powerful presence. The easiest way to explain it is to look at famous people and see how we get star struck in the presence of their greatness. They have reached the top of the mountain and are going to try and stay there as long as possible. They have to fend off the attacks from all the bottom feeders wanting to knock them off the mountain. A good example of this phenomenon is the online troll trying to tear others down. The online troll is on a quest for self-enlightenment on the right hand path that leads to the glorification of self. The psychology behind them is they are trying to get up the mountain and get one up on everyone. However they have realized they will not get up the mountain so instead they knock everyone off of it and in that regard their lowly position will eventually become the most high. It is not easy at the top. Wisdom tells you: "be the moon." Shine a floodlight in the dark and don't play the sun game too long. Being a part of the all star enlightenment team is fleeting and will leave you empty once you are replaced.

Humans like searching. It's a fun game. At some point you have to 'declare'. No one is going to give you a piece of paper declaring you are enlightened or have achieved the prize you were trying to get. You will just know and at that point you know and there's no party. You will find the answer if you keep looking but I sense even though some see it they just choose to look away. It's a little confusing. They just want to stay on the journey of discovery and have something to fall back on when they feel vulnerable or perceive they are failing at life. Is it fear? Accepting what you see and feel leads you to wanting to help others get there as well.

i am

The sun as the avatar of the right-hand path is so bright that it is blinding. When you engage the right-hand path of ego self, and this is not a condemnation of that path, you shine very brightly and from this you are unable to see and connect to the left-hand path which is a holistic path that reveals we are all connected as one. Following the right-hand path is a necessary part of the journey, in fact follow it all the way to the end and get right into it. Celebrate the self and pay attention to how we all act out of self-interest; it's quite necessary for individual survival. And when you've exhausted yourself on that path, you are much older and wiser, and you can then start to grasp the left-hand path where you find the moon and wisdom and incorporate this modality of the greater good into how you conduct your life.

I have sat with the ego self for a few years now trying to find the underlying cause of this self. In this case when you get into these spiritual questions and engage all the different beliefs and teachings of the ages, you gravitate towards the Hindu and Buddhist traditions because they teach the ego self is transitory and is a delusion. I became trapped by this thinking and subsequently tried to free myself from ego, spent some time battling with myself but didn't really get anywhere. It was last fall when I realized the quest to become enlightened, to free self from ego, to climb that mountain of spiritual achievement, was in fact just another game and trap of the ego. So, I just let it go and came down the mountain back to a more balanced way of thinking.

I have stressed that the root of one's beliefs must be experiential and not one in someone else's. It's a mind trap to get stuck in this mindset. I don't care how venerated some spiritual system is, you should question it, and find your own answers. Well at least that's how I function and would need to do before accepting anything at face value. So last fall when I went through the Huachuma Mesadas at SpiritQuest, altering my consciousness in order to access the wisdom of the ages, I was inundated with the simple answer that Love is everything. That is the only enlightenment, spiritual truth, or mysterious knowledge you really need to know. I was taught we are made of Love, and existence is one big training ground for us to learn to make that Love shine. I was taught our very core is Love, we are to Love, and to this fount of Love we will return. Until we learn to live a life immersed in this Love, we will repeat the curriculum until we “get it.” It was a simple message. This teaching, however, hinted at the continuance of self upon physical expiration and conflicted with what I had accepted as transitory. To be clear I am not referring to personality or the character we have built in this instance but the underlying energy that is the base for our perceived solo identity. A simple message threw my complex understanding of the mysteries of life into disarray! Now I must change my beliefs and rewrite my understanding of self. It's funny how we tend to resist challenges to established beliefs like the ego self hates being told it was wrong. You see the delicious irony here, right? My ego self was pissed off that they were built upon a slice of the vibratory foundation of Love as opposed to being a peculiarity of consciousness.

One of the first things the Great Goddess taught me when I drank Ayahuasca and sat in communion with her, was that all is vibration. That teaching is something I go back to quite often as it has solved a great deal of the mysteries that have vexed me. In learning of the survival of some form of self upon physical death I eventually went back to vibration and realized my manifestation of this self is a vibration that is coming forth periodically and then returning to the fount in order to recharge the energy that will propel it upon another journey. The master vibration is a vibration of Love; it's the eternal song. It is where we all come from. We are energetic patterns that have as their origin this Love vibration. We are the junior partner in the manifestation of the universe. We are the music coming forth from the eternal song. We are all important; we are all Loved; and we are welcomed home when we are ready to come home. We left because we wanted to make our own way, just like the rebellious teenager, and shine our light so brightly on our own. After doing that, we gain wisdom, regain our sight, and acquire great clarity to see the way back to where we came from. It's the left-hand path back to mama. It's time to go back home.

take the long way home

Climbing the spiritual mountain is the supreme egoic accomplishment in this game. By reaching the top you essentially become the most high. The race to the top, while dealing with your split personality, eventually satisfies both sides of the contending halves of your mind. In other human pursuits, this drive to get to the top of your game is the shiny right hand path beckoning you on with promises of fame and fortune. Once reached, the accolades come pouring in. You have made it!

There are two paths - the left and the right. One is shiny, full of your immediate desires, and leads to your cyclical death and re-birth. The other is mundane and dull; however, unlike desire which appears, peaks, and disappears, it just is; it follows the arcing and declension of the natural way. And that's the choice. In ancient Egypt, the two courses can be represented as the cyclical path of the sun god versus the stability of Osiris and the ultimate meaning is contained in their two concepts of time which are neheh and djet.

Osiris and Re merged into one

Neheh is the cyclical path that Re makes and brings time to order. Djet just is; it is not created nor governed.

The right hand path is the path of the sun. Round and round he goes, daily climbing that mountain in the north, shining in full radiance at midday, and then falling into the waters after exhausting himself. The next day he does the same thing, on and on he goes always taking that shiny bejeweled route. The left hand path is the path of the moon. She appears in a cycle out of the waters broken, but eventually reconstituting herself until she shines as well. She does not shine as brightly as the sun however she does not flame out daily like the sun. Instead, she takes her time on this journey to completeness following the natural way until she loses her power and returns to the darkness to regenerate herself over a three day period. The sun is forcing things and his brilliance is short in comparison to the moon, as she follows the great Tao. She lives one life for every twenty eight he lives. In this creation that has manifested, everything is subject to the rhythms of the natural way of things.

I see life and I see death all around me. Day breaks and then night sets upon us. I wake and then I sleep. The energy which courses through me is cyclical. It comes and goes in an undulating serpentine rhythm. To replenish the energy, I need to eat and rest. Like moths to the flame, we are all attracted to fame, fortune, and glory. Looking around I can see the natural path is to take the long way home, shine brightly in full radiance, and then return to the void.

language as a spell

I think you are right; err I think you are correct. Ever notice how language makes you think always in terms of I, self, right, and objects? Language puts a spell over thinking. Thinking is extremely useful but needs to be treated as something you do and not do.

It is so curious why the left is denigrated, and a spell is put over us so that we will by instinct choose the right-hand path. The advertising industry would be proud of this accomplishment. Looking into the roots of this conundrum it is discovered that the left is associated with the word sinister and those familiar with the “sin” in sinister will immediately connect this to the moon. The moon has feminine qualities and the sun, the righteous among us, relate to the right-hand path. In ancient Egypt there are the ubiquitous eyes, and the left eye of Horus depicts the moon as it waxes and wanes, attacked by the forces of darkness, becomes divided, and then is renewed eternally into a wholeness once again. The right eye is the eye of Re and is the path of the sun. The feminine is denigrated in masculine religious constructs, the left-hand path is treated with disdain and called sinister, and the ultra-achievers of our spiritual disciplines are called the righteous. What is being hushed up?

The construction of the ancient Pre-Columbian Mesa of the Chavin temple is three-fold.

three-fold Huachuma Mesa

The left represents the life giving feminine, the right side is the life taking masculine, and in the middle, we find a reconciliation of these opposites to find wholeness. Our western society is not whole in that the feminine is not given her proper place and language casts a spell over any attempts to do so. The third time I ever drank Ayahuasca, at the end of the ceremony I was presented with these two opposite paths as I stepped outside the ceremonial maloca. Though it was past midnight, to my right I saw the jungle lit up in shining splendor. The plants were 3D-extruded and the whole scene was very inviting and welcoming. To my left the jungle was dull, dark, and flat. I looked back to my right - shiny, and then back to the left - dull. I remarked to myself that the right-hand path is sure shiny. Why this Vegasesque allure of the right-hand path combined with a hypnotic spell perpetrated by constructs of language?

Here's my speculative answer: the cyclical highs and lows are on the right path, they go together, and presumably at some point you'd tire of that; well I guess you call that old age but perhaps that is the spice of being alive, maybe this great game of forgetfulness we all play is to experience all the right hand path has to offer and then we eventually tire of the merry go round and say no more for now thank you. We follow the left-hand path back to wholeness and unity and then eventually we want to play again and so we create another world, head on into that, and hide the mystery so we won't figure it out too quickly. And within this construct my game of seeking the answers to these mysteries is no more valid than someone on a quest to sample all the beers of the world.

Language reflects the culture we live in, and the beliefs society is structured upon. Somewhere in my indoctrination, I was taught my thoughts must be filtered through language. All my higher thinking and speculation is accomplished through language and because of this all is tainted with the stench of the values my ancestor's thought were important. It is as if I need to train myself to bypass language and delve into the worlds of symbols, archetypes, feelings, music, and art to try and express what it is I am cognizant of and feeling.

Take the phrase, "it doesn't matter" which puts down something as not real and trivial. The language spell has tied it into the word matter, so we think that what is “real” is material. So, when we investigate matter and can't find anything concrete concerning matter and discover instead it is a bunch of vibrations woven into something that resembles what we call an object we get all concerned because our world view can't handle it. See how it works? The game we are playing has convinced us our existence is really real and serious, when it is not. It's transient and illusory. That's not to say we can't take it seriously or shirk responsibility, however it is incredibly liberating to realize that it really doesn't matter!

the end of time

Our concept of time comes from the cycles of the sun and moon. Our modern concept of time is linear in scope. However, the sun and moon are distinctly cyclical in action. So, there're really two concepts of time which the ancient Egyptians articulated as neheh and djet. 

neheh and djet time symbolized at Denderah

To the natural philosopher, time is inherently cyclical in its natural state. To the modern mind that is a conundrum as we are conditioned to believe everything has a beginning as well as perhaps an end.