Spiritually are you white, black, or grey? Would you say you are a lightsider spiritually, a darksider or somewhere in the middle?

• Zebra. You would be grey then.
• I’d say grey.
• White.
• I tend to move along the spectrum both ways, so that would make me a grey.
• I strive for the lighter side, but am constantly aware that things draw us to the dark. Also bearing in mind there is not much point to light if there is no dark to make the contrast clear, but I’ll go for light.
• You would seem more like black to me. Closely attuned with death and darkness. I don’t see it as a bad thing. Nor do I. It’s part of what allows you to find the insights you share.

I will say we have all three types here, and will explain my point. I will not use destructive examples of the types for this comparison.

If you are dealing with a darksider, you are dealing with a person who sees the glass as half empty. They are not unhappy. They will clam up quickly if you say they are, but they see things as ending. They are most comfortable on the bottom line. They like to see things levelled.

If you are dealing with a lightsider, you are seeing someone who is focused on what can be done. What can be created. What new thing can start, and yes, they like to know what they have to work with so they are also realists.

Some of the biggest business people are lightsiders, very successful people and not out of touch. Some of the most famous scientists are darksiders, also not out of touch. But if you get this business person and the scientist together, they often can’t communicate with each other. Why is this? Both are functional people and they both likely want “life affirmative” goals.

• They don’t appreciate the dynamic?
• Concrete vs. abstract?
• Fear of the unknown? Fear of being judged?

That is a big part. They see the logic in each others views, but feel unequipped to measure up.

I can’t create if someone isn’t knocking something apart so I have the pieces. You bring up a valid point. Both light and dark are weak without the other. But still, if you are a darksider, how do you measure up to lights logic or vice versa? It’s not by trying to fake that you are what you are not.

Is it a requirement to do so? All constructive action plays out between the two, so no. But if you would smooth the path, then yes.

Help them see how your step will aid theirs? True, but the way lies in being fully what you are. Be as well versed in your side as they are in theirs, and though you would seem opposed, you will be on the same level and can be on the same page even.

Ah, pro you instead of anti them? Yes, exactly.

There is one scenario where I think it becomes critical to communicate with others. Society abhors extremes and quickly rectifies it in its various ways; disengagement, incarceration, envy/hate, etc. Also true. It’s a constructive skill, but there are those who balance out in the middle and can get just as lost. Is this not so friends?

Isn’t it confusing in the middle? How do you create focus? That’s not impossible or even hard with insight, but the same applies to black and white. The grey person needs to see they walk the infrastructure.

I guess you have to focus on the fact that no choice will be a wrong one if you are in the middle? Actually, there is a choice that’s in the middle, and to a grey type it will always seem the clearest choice.

Grey is the connecter? Yes.

No choice? No, a third choice.

There is light, dark, and stealthed light, and stealthed dark appearing as grey and then finally there’s grey. True, and even stealthier grey focused on light or dark, but the grey needs to mediate life to feel comfortable. There is as much depth in that mediation as there is in being a darksider or a lightsider. Be as versed in mediation with the purpose of clarity, and you will be able to communicate easily with dark and light. Get stuck in sophistry and relativistic thinking, and you will find you function very poorly. The devils advocate often chokes on his or her tongue if she has no clear vision.

Meditation helps all three sectors. It can help a lightsider have empathy. Help a darksider find self control, and help a grey find self acceptance.

If you are dealing with a troubled darksider, more often then drawing them out of themselves, help them go further in to get oriented. This can give them a peace that no amount of contrast to their views would. Likewise, don’t spit in the face of a lightsiders ideals, but help them see (if need be) where they sacrifice one good for another. Help them see all the sides. If they are truly a lightsider, or if the are a natural darksider, they will want this peace and balance. We all like to make informed decisions.

If you can’t be “good”, be good at it.

Your thoughts are welcome. Be well friends.

Travis Saunders
Dragon Intuitive
~science,mysticism,spirituality~

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A metaphor comes to mind. The trees of the garden of Eden, but imagine them very far from each other and no longer in the garden. Some people eat from the Holy Tree, and know its wisdom. Some eat from the Forbidden Tree, and either self destruct or gain its wisdom. According to the original story, Adam and Eve self destructed.

The tree of life was the Holy Tree and Adam and Eve were free to eat of it, but when they ate from the Tree of Knowledge, specifically the knowledge of good and evil, they lost their awareness of God. We commit self sabotage in a lot of ways. Simplest would be rejecting the love of a sincere heart.

But there is more, it’s explained somewhat in many schools of mysticism, but I will simplify. When Adam and Eve ate from the forbidden tree, they were not permanently cut off. A way was made for them and their descendants, but it was not an easy way. The way was barred by angels in that story. It was known as the Path of the Flaming Sword. This sword is also known as the sword that turns in all directions.

To bring this down to earth, it isn’t that darkness is evil. It’s just hard, and when people suffer in darkness it’s not because they are in it. It’s because they haven’t gone far enough. They haven’t gone to “all directions”, because whatever evil you are suffering exists in the context of myriad evils.

And when not having gone far enough, act out in irrational and often violent ways. They don’t have the wisdom of the darkness. They only have fear of it.

How do I go deeper? Every dark, scary, undesirable thing is a part of a universal pattern, and if you see the whole pattern you can see how they plug into what is really just the one life, but it’s like being right or left handed. You are likely light or dark sided, but what makes for wisdom is awareness. Sobriety if you will, not getting drunk with the power of the spirit you favour.

How can we dance with it? How to dance… The world itself is dancing, tides of darkness and light. Every joy you feel has a shadow in your world. Every sorrow shines a light. It’s like surfing. If a stormy wave comes, that’s the darkness. You can ride it and not be it. When the water is warm and inviting, that’s the light, but you have to remember that warm water also brings red tide. You can be poisoned with your light. You can hurt another quite easily in the name of helping them, and in seeking what you judge is wisdom, fall into deep ignorance.

How do we get away from the red tide? You get away from the red tide by not drinking the water. By not buying into the idea that the light is what “should be” in exclusion of the darkness.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not a relativist. Darkness has clear qualities and so does light, and whatever you choose you also choose its consequences. Pitying a denizen of darkness is no more wise than pitying an “enlightened one”. But your sense of balance is neither here nor there, and your place is to live at that balance point. All that you think, feel, say, and do, will have its real power when you have that balance.

What is necessary to find your balance is forgiveness. Seeing your part in the negative side of light or darkness, and acceptance of it. Without forgiving yourself for your failings, you will forever struggle and run in circles.

What if we are in the middle? If you are in the middle, then you likely bounce back and forth a lot. Like an ambidextrous person using one hand or the other, and in that case you have to make allowance for how you fall short in both because you will be spread out. Accepting this grey state is just as valid as accepting darkness or light.

Should people in the middle pick one over the other? No. For some people a more abstract realm is their center, and if they try to side at all it only weakens them. I have witnessed “unfeeling” people get very anxious because they didn’t get all the emotional stuff, but they have their part to share too. They are just as important.

They can actually help provide great clarity at times. Just not “depth”, unless you seek a deep middle ground.

Is rejection the same as not forgiving yourself? Yes, rejection is the same as not forgiving yourself.

How about for the opposite, feeling emotional all the time? Feeling emotional all the time is valid.

To where your moods feel like they are on a rollercoaster? That is imbalance, and might arise from self rejection.

Or be that mood swing illness. Bi-polar disorder, yes and in that case it isn’t a character defect. It is a health issue.

I expect the medical profession today always jumps to the health issue without first considering it as an imbalance. Yes, medicate everything because people are just machines. That is their view.

I see so many being diagnosed and told they’re sick “just because”, when it’s obvious they have deep spiritual pain. Materialism in one of its greater evils.

They just want you to spend money on drugs you don’t need. Yes, be dull witted and still emotionally suffer.

Asking what’s wrong can be done for free and so can listening. The “they“ do not even have diagnostic tools, let alone thinking along this line. But people go along with it, because as you said, they won’t go into the dark fully because they fear it. The dark could save their life, but otherwise they will run themselves to an early grave.

How do you do it when heavy medicated? Your brain still works. Do as much as you understand to do. You may find, despite having a pickled brain, if you do some work, whatever you know to do, it will strengthen the brains ability to cope with the drug.

So the drugs aren’t all harmful? They are. It‘s more a question of the degree of harm.

Can I get off them? That I can’t say, but you can become more functional.

Your thoughts are welcome. Be well friends.

Travis Saunders
Dragon Intuitive
~science,mysticism,spirituality~

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Life seen from the point of view of the “not alive” looks differently. It’s hard to feel betrayed when some support is withdrawn, or feel especially blessed when some support is gained or offered, and you tend to see everything as part of a single level. It has been said death is the great leveller. Maybe it has a hand even before the death of the body.

Is that because you feel disassociated? It is in part, but it feels like it runs deeper. It doesn’t make me hate life or being alive. If anything, I think I can appreciate it in some ways better than a more vital person.

When you do or do not feel this way is that your general modus operandi? I am almost always running on neither here nor there too. I think it has to do with my neurology. I suspect so in both our cases. For me it started at birth, but I have noticed two sides of it. The seemingly dimmed world, the less vital world of greater memory than activity, and a more numinous realm.

Would you agree this is about pushing the limits too far, too fast? Yes and no, mostly no. I have dealt with the struggle of trying to rectify a deep seated sense of being unwhole, and that struggle has been draining at times. But even at my peaceful moments, I find I just resonate more with the “end” phase of life than the beginning. One thing I find is being immersed in this end phase and sensitive to the process of death/closure, I find I am sensitive to the start of new life as well. It seems the deeper I sense the end, the deeper I sense the beginning as well.

How does darkness fit into this? Well, it’s like a door. I don’t feel like I will die, quite the opposite, it feels like death is a grey thing and not the inevitable weight. I can linger on the living side of the door more easily. In part because the “poisons” of life do not frighten me. No fear of life’s evils = no damage from the fear of life’s evils.

To contemplate the end is to be at the yang side of the cycle. Wanting balance swings us over to the yin or beginning. Yin and yang not used well, but just said to illustrate the principle of that unity. So the deeper we go, say, to the light, the more intensely we can know the dark too. Also true, so the positive side of darkness is the mirror image of the dark side of the light.

But to elaborate more on a point (though I don’t know why I am), this nexus phase of life, sort of a ground state it seems, has two sides. Like a coin, a numinous brightly lit state, much as some people who have near death experience’s report seeing, and a shadowy, by comparison slower/heavier state. The numinous state seems to have qualities much like Buddhists connect to liberation.

When do you have this? Any time of day, or you can call on, or it visits you? I go to it inside. It is like I have a surface self and then a core, and the surface self consumes a lot of energy.

I think it does that for all of us. It’s that upper space we do a lot in. Stronger with people who have a stronger inner dissonance, so I do try to balance those.

Perhaps you are two people then? I don’t experience the two people as having separate identities. The outer self feels artificial, but what I do find is this: Being in darkness so often brings a form of clarity, and when I experience other peoples darkness I’m not moved by it. It’s like reading a road sign, easily intelligible, and I can often help them get to where they want to be inside.

That is a state of mind where you are not being triggered by anothers pain. I do that all the time. It does make me far better suited to counsel for instance. Yes, but also by my own focus and seeming natural point of spiritual gravity or point of balance.

So using the logic of darkness, the whole world can be seen in a way that allows for deep insight. When I am in that state, I feel an “instinct” for an energy to die, like their sorrow. I am not so much seeking to comfort as I am seeking to end a disturbance, and often they don’t like my drive to make their sorrow die.

Your thoughts are welcome. Be well friends.

Travis Saunders
Dragon Intuitive
~science,mysticism,spirituality~

Mix of light and dark? That too. The state of Archmagus only comes about after what they call the dark night of the soul. It doesn’t mean leaving the light, but does mean learning to navigate both sides of the great energy.

I would imagine people are wary of them? They are notoriously scary all throughout recorded history. Merlin would have been one and there are lineages of them across the entire world. I’m certain Hawaii has lineages and a better reckoning of them than we do. Those who move beyond kahuna. Though part of why this is hard to talk about it is illustrated by what is mentioned of the avatars in India. Those who are it aren’t moved to talk about it.

A lineage, and hierarchy if you will, of the various phases, states of being that mirror us anyway, and vice versa. We have names for them in Hawaii. We have protocol for observing. Certain kinds of invocation bring in their own objects of consideration.

About hierarchy, people get angry at that. But I think having a sense of who is where is more like recognizing that if we are all walking the same road, and I have taken three steps and you have taken one, that I am further down that road than you. Your thoughts?

Sure. There is displaced thinking about that word due to its history of it being used to abuse. Just as you illustrated, and in other ways too, protocol and hierarchy have their place in the scheme of things. They are essential ingredients of being. Just as a hunk of matter has its parts, it’s hierarchy if you will, so do we as being simply a composite of that matter. Electron shells in an atom. The electrons are centered on the nucleus, but not unimportant either.

As pieces of a greater whole. Yes, exactly. What makes an atom able to bond to other atoms is the electrons. More like the spiritual equivalent of atomic weight.

So when we say protocol and hierarchy, we are not talking about the rights of a particular class of people and I hope to lead people to “see“ what Kilioe was in the spiritual sense. Audiences tend to worship though, and forget how to listen.

A good leader knows that she has taken the reigns of service. Real leaders serve the people, and even more so they serve the greater way of things. Leader is sort of literal. It could also be considered a scout. Figure out where people are going, and get ahead of them.

Your thoughts are welcome. Be well friends.

Travis Saunders
Dragon Intuitive
~science,mysticism,spirituality~

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Dragon Intuitive
~science,spirituality,mysticism~

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Prayer was fellowship in Shintoism, not worship, and was a respectful form/protocol. So by observing the proper forms and behaviour, they believed the Kami (which included Dragons) would consider them worthy of assistance and guidance. Otherwise it was believed that if they could not show proper reverence, the Kami would ignore them as they had other things to do in keeping the order of the world.

Are you saying that Dragons are lowly in wisdom? No. I’m saying they are high in wisdom and the Kanushi sought to share in that height.

Prayer seen as fellowship, joint effort, and in that varying levels of enlightened ones which sort of reflects our variety of same in humans. As they pray to them, they pray to themselves. Yes. This is why in Buddhism they pray for the liberation of all beings, even those of high office and responsibility. Buddhism is not atheistic, but it’s not theistic either. They acknowledge and respect spirits, but see them much as they see humans. In Taoism, we all come from the same Tao. They give the Tao many names. Maybe most encompassing is the Great Mother and all things share in her nature. In Taoism, all things embody her.

The mystic avatars as a rule are those who want to guide humans? No. Avatars as a rule are those who act as agents of the divine, teach or not.

Like those who do channelling? There is another phenomenon related to channelling. It’s situational though. It is believed that the sprits/gods/what have you, can act temporarily not taking a single visible form, but more taking action as a “ghost in the machine”. Coordinating elements and events so their will and intervention is very visible. Thus many mystics have identified specific patterns of events, omens, etc., and not only connect them to the divine but to specific facets of the divine.

I’m not sure why they’d come within a mile of humans unless they were really keen on guiding them, or perhaps the divine puts them there? But I guess when you get to that level the humans aren’t so annoying? There is a passage in the Bible, but I will have to paraphrase. That if there were no humans the rocks would praise God. They come for the greater balance/order which includes humans, but isn’t limited to them and they do come when called.

This is the purpose of opening ritual in Voodoo. They don’t just automatically start ecstatic dance, that comes after the opening, after the evocation. They dance to get out of the way of the Loa. Loa is just an African word for spirits. They know if they lose themselves in dance, the Loa will find them and use them as they have been invited to do. They don’t always ask for specific Loa either. Sometimes they deliberately leave that open. The reason being they believe the Loa who have been lingering in the community will surface in the dance, and then they will be able to ask them what they are doing and why, and maybe negotiate peace with that Loa if they are unhappy.

Example. To Voodoo thinking, if Baron Smaedi has been offended, people in the community will get very sick. If he stays offended, there will be a lot of deaths. So if there is evidence of that, they have a dance and hope he will talk to them.

Your thoughts are welcome. Be well friends.

Travis Saunders
Dragon Intuitive
~science,mysticism,spirituality~

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“Madness” was often considered evidence of divine possession, which would be, in a sense, incarnation. The Oracles of Greece were not just translators of the Gods. They were seen as temporary vessels, and to harm an Oracle was to bring certain wrath from that God.

Oracles were always consulted? This was the way to receive divine wisdom. It was believed that the Gods were aware of current situations and would have specific things to say.

In the case of the Christian school of thought that was violently expunged, the school of thought was called Docetism, and it held that Jesus never held a flesh and blood form, but was present as an evident spirit and communicated through “hallucinations”, for lack of a better word. So they refused to engage in formal prayer or ritual communion.

Welcome to the world of Shamanism? Yes. Shamanism as a universal instinct has shown up everywhere across the world, but not always accepted for what it is.

How does this relate to avatar mysticism? In the case of Christian thinking, the Christ of your mind and heart is the real Christ, so you already embody him from the thinking of Docetism.

We are all avatars? There are passages from the Bible that corroborate this, “The word of God is written upon the human heart”. In Hermetic thinking, you cannot even have a body not composed of the four elements. So you literally embody the structure of the world itself, earth, air, fire, and water. You are an avatar in that sense.

Did these Christian people have a criteria for discovering ‘mystic avatars’? Actually yes, the Docetists did. They identified God as love, so an avatar would embody love as a force.

I assume the Catholic Saints are mystic avatars? And I believe they have a list of sorts that they must meet? They have to be able to show evidence of a direct relationship with God. Meaning showing an understanding of the Holy Spirit that was Jesus, but the same could be said of the Bodhisattvas and it is present in Shamanism as well. In Shamanism and also in Taoism, you have your presence in this world only by a process of co-arising.

What about those who do channelling? Channelers can become avatars to the degree they allow their inner nature to grow toward the being they channel. Expressing the spiritual equivalent of the old phrase “Like father, like son”.

An avatar isn’t “doing”. Priests are at the level of doing and their doing is valid, but as in some Shamanic practices there is also a “being”. The totems are the “ancestors” and the ancestors are guardians and are older than humanity. This isn’t necessarily a conscious or deliberate goal in Shamanism, but as one embraces the way/power/medicine of their guardian spirit, your own spirit changes even without your trying. As you learn the way of raven, you become raven in spirit. Showing more traits of your guardian was seen as evidence of strong spiritual power.

The Saints would be much the same. They have meditated on God/Buddha/Tao for so long that without trying these things become their nature and they no longer live as “normal” humans. You can receive many gifts when you are ready.

Your thoughts are welcome. Be well friends.

Travis Saunders
Dragon Intuitive
~science,mysticism,spirituality~

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